Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Community Leader: Michelle McGurk attends a community meeting in the Rose Garden, one of hundreds of meetings she's attended over the years as a representative for District 6 Councilman Frank Fiscalini's office.
Michelle McGurk leaving behind local politics for a new career at nonprofit
Chief of staff for Frank Fiscalini put in long hours working on community issues
By Chantal Lamers and Kate Carter
Michelle McGurk admits that it's tough to leave her job as chief of staff to San Jose Vice Mayor Frank Fiscalini.
Michelle McGurk has become something of a Willow Glen fixture during the past five years. Working alongside Vice Mayor Fiscalini since 1995, she's become a familiar face among residents of Willow Glen. But as all good things, Fiscalini's term is coming to an end in December. And his chief of staff, McGurk, is leaving to pursue a new career as director of communications for the Community Foundation Silicon Valley, located in downtown San Jose.
"It's a good step for me," McGurk said. "I wanted to do something to serve the community. I was ready to do something outside of the political world. I've known for quite some time that my time with Frank's office was going to have to end, because of term limits."
In case the name Michelle McGurk still doesn't ring a bell, picture a young woman with short brown hair who has been at just about every community meeting in Willow Glen for the last five years. Whether it's parks, schools new developments or retail shops being built in Willow Glen, McGurk has been to almost every meeting.
McGurk even rescued the Founder's Day parade in 1999, when the Willow Glen Business and Professional Association had a tough time putting it together. Within a matter of weeks, McGurk put together the annual parade and it was a hit with residents.
Over the past year, McGurk has been working with Longs Drugs to ensure the new store planned for Lincoln Avenue blends in with neighboring stores. She spent hours walking up and down Lincoln Avenue with the Longs architect, pointing out the unique architecture that lines the historic street. She's also been diligently working on two new senior housing complexes planned for Willow Glen.
McGurk also spent months working on a fair and legal process to get the design review ordinance passed through city council. This ordinance is also known as the monster-house law.
She has a knack for working alongside residents and developers, helping each negotiate the process.
She knows District 6, which includes areas such as Willow Glen, Rose Garden and San Carlos and The Alameda, like the back of her hand. McGurk spends at least two to three nights a week attending community meetings in those areas, and often works 60-hour weeks. She's also a resident of the district.
McGurk says that although she has enjoyed working in Willow Glen, it hasn't been without its challenges.
But on Sept. 15, McGurk said goodbye to her job at the city of San Jose.
In saying goodbye, she just can't help but remember how she got here in the first place. McGurk didn't grow up in San Jose, but it was the place she frequently visited as a child. San Jose was the place where grandma and grandpa lived.
She remembers going to the old Sears Department Store, where Midtown Safeway is now located, with her mother and picking out winter coats for school each year.
"It was neat to move back and discover pieces of my family that were here, because my grandparents lived here," she said.
McGurk grew up in San Pablo and remembers her father taking BART to Berkeley every day before she left for school.
After high school, McGurk enrolled at Northwestern University as a journalism major.
"I went away to school, and I needed to do that to appreciate California," she said. "I loved living outside Chicago. That's where I learned to love architecture, art, history. But when I graduated, I knew I wanted to come back. I wanted to move back to the Bay Area."
After she graduated, she returned to the East Bay and went to work for a group of newspapers based in Oakland.
The company, Senior Spectrum, grew to cover the entire Bay Area. A few years later, McGurk moved closer to the South Bay and became the managing editor of Nurse Week, a trade magazine for nurses.
While McGurk was at Northwestern, her parents moved to Sacramento, but she chose San Jose.
"I didn't have a hometown anymore," she said. "I had to find my own hometown. This is where my husband and I have made our home."
Some friends of McGurk got her involved in Tom McEnery's congressional campaign. She ended up making phone calls and walking precincts on behalf of McEnery. After McEnery lost, McGurk decided to go to Campaign Training Camp, a kind of boot camp for campaign workers.
In a matter of days, McGurk learned how to run a political campaign, manage volunteers and how to target voters. After the camp, McGurk left journalism to work on political campaigns.
Looking back, she says it wasn't the smartest thing to do. But she smiles, because she knows it may have been the best move she ever made.
She began volunteering again and by the end of 1995, she was hired as the legislative assistant in Fiscalini's office. Because there are so many active neighborhood groups in District 6, all three staffers in Fiscalini's office took the responsibility of attending neighborhood and local business association meetings.
At the time, Joe Guerra was Fiscalini's chief of staff. But when Ron Gonzales made his run for San Jose mayor, Guerra was gearing up to act as Gonzales' budget director. And when Gonzales won, District 6 lost Guerra and gained McGurk as its chief of staff.
McGurk said her transition to chief of staff was a natural move. She said that Fiscalini is very supportive of giving staff opportunities to grow and to promote from within.
"There has been something very special about working for Frank, having the opportunity to spend time every day just chatting with him," she said. "I have learned so much from him. It has strengthened my feeling about community and about giving back."
Although Fiscalini trusted McGurk to get the job done well, she knew that she had a lot of growing to do. She said that Guerra was a real expert on land use, and McGurk had to earn the trust and respect of residents and developers. And she was up to the challenge.
When Gonzales became mayor in 1999 and named Fiscalini as his vice mayor, it also made McGurk's job more demanding.
Suddenly, people wanted the new mayor to attend all sorts of events. So many that Gonzales asked his new vice mayor to often fill in for him. McGurk said that she and two other full-time staff members learned to adjust very quickly.
One of the projects McGurk worked on, redeveloping the former Del Monte canning plant, is expected to break ground in October. The project was an emotional issue for many longtime San Jose residents who spent their lives working in the building.
McGurk said that Fiscalini's staffers worked very hard with developers to find a way to preserve the past, and they succeeded.
McGurk said because the demand for housing in Silicon Valley is so overwhelming, she's very proud of the number of units that have been approved in District 6 during her tenure as chief of staff: approximately 1,600.
She said because Fiscalini's staff does so much public outreach when a new project gets underway, it reduces the number of angry people who show up to planning commission meetings, ranting about planned developments.
She says community meetings give residents, city staff and developers the chance to work together and find some common ground before the plan goes to the commission.
McGurk, who grew up in a family who firmly believes in participating in community service, says she's ready to begin a new life and a new job at the Community Foundation Silicon Valley.
She says it'll be tough, adjusting to a schedule that allows her to get home to her husband Charles Berry, before 10 p.m.--but somehow she'll adjust.
"It will be nice to go home from work at night, have dinner with my husband and read a book."
McGurk is looking forward to working for a foundation that has a lot of opportunities to make significant gains in the booming valley. She says last year, the 46-year-old foundation was able to give $49.8 million in donations and grants.
McGurk, who once considered a run for the District 6 council seat, says she's not sure if she'll ever be back to City Hall. But, in the meantime, she'll probably be throwing herself into her new career with all the dedication she gave her old one.
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
