Kuba Grzeda, Chief of Staff for Fairbanks North Star Borough Interviews with Erin Morotti.

Let's do it! Break it down! Thank you! All right, well, thank you so much, Kouba, for taking the time to interview with us today. I'm excited to hear your insights and experiences as the Chief of Staff of our Fairbanks North Star Borough and our local government here in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Our students right now, they're learning about government accounting, which is a subset of the fund accounting. And a lot about it, and it's really— I think it'll help them connect the dots when they're learning through the text what the requirements are for government accounting, and then being able to watch this video and hear a little bit more about how local government works and what it's like. So, but before we dive into that and get into our questions, could you maybe introduce yourself? I know you, but could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background? Of course, yeah, thank you for the chance to do this interview.

I'm excited too. My name is Kuba Gjenda. I was— I'm a first-generation immigrant. I was born in Poland. My parents and I moved to Alaska when I was very young, and I grew up here.

And I went here from kindergarten through high school, and then I did my bachelor's degree in economics at Portland State University. And then I came back to Alaska, worked for a few years, ended up getting a master's degree in public administration, which is like an MBA but for public administration. And a couple of years ago, I started getting more involved in local government. I ran for borough assembly myself and then sat for a year on the borough planning board. And when Mayor Ward at the time created a position called the Deputy Chief of Staff in the mayor's office, I applied and got the job, and I spent about 9 months as deputy.

And when the former chief of staff left, I then took the chief of staff job, and I've been here for about 5, 6 months now. Yeah. What a journey. Yeah, it's pretty nice. I love that you are from here and now you're giving back in public service to your community.

Well, it feels really rewarding. I think that's one of the best parts is trying to see these issues in our community and on the local level and try to come up with solutions. Great. Our students are learning a lot about the difference between public and private, and government is public. They'll learn that throughout the text.

Um, but you were just talking about an MBA versus an MPA. You want to just dive into that a little bit and explain maybe why you went MPA, Public Administration, instead of BA? Absolutely. Yeah, so I've worked both in the public and the private sector. When I moved back to Fairbanks, I initially worked for a local State Farm insurance agency in town, which was fun, rewarding.

I then worked for a private consulting company for a year as well. After that though, it really wasn't the nature, I wasn't thinking about is this public or private, but I wanted a little bit of a change and there was a nonprofit called the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States that was looking for a project assistant. So I jumped into that. And did that for a couple of years. I became a project coordinator and I thought, hey, kind of the nonprofit world's really interesting.

I wanted to explore it a little bit more. So I was looking around and seeing what opportunities were out there to advance kind of my education. And knowing that I kind of like nonprofits and wanted to explore a little bit more of what that could look like if I went into a leadership position there or otherwise kind of branched out. I looked and the UA system has a couple of programs, or had a couple programs at the time. There was one through UAA and there was one at UAS, an MPA program.

And I think, you know, I just wanted to grow and I was hoping to stay at that nonprofit. Well, and I did that while I studied my degree, but after graduating I kind of saw an opportunity here at the borough and kind of jumped from there, but really it's, you know, there's a lot of overlap I think in the fundamentals of an MBA and an MPA, but public institutions work differently, you know, the goal isn't necessarily profit in the long run, it's community service and serving our community. Well, as a community we're really lucky to have you here and that you've hit so many different entities that fund accounting, well, the students county will, will get into the nonprofit side, the public side, and the private side. So neat. So what is it like working here for the local government?

What, what makes you want to come to work every day? Yeah, absolutely. Really, it's, uh, it's that kind of problem solving. So, you know, the— our borough, like, you know, communities all across the U.S., has some pretty serious looming issues that are coming up. Questions around, you know, how do we do education?

How do we build and maintain our infrastructure? So everything from parks to schools to community buildings, all those kind of big, big issues that they're called wicked problems. And I think there's something that we really, you know, trying to fix and solve them. And just the fact that, you know, every day I come in and what we do looks a little different. There's never— I don't think there's been a single 8-hour stretch where I thought, "Oh man, this is the same thing I did last week." So ever since I started, it's been a bit of a roller coaster.

There's a lot happening, a lot going on, looking forward, trying to react to things that pop up and put out those fires. But yeah, it's been really rewarding. It sounds like it. And you have quite the team here at the Bureau. It always has seemed— we've worked together for years and it's always seemed like a fun place to work.

Absolutely. I think you have a great place here. How did, um, so you had, you took quite a, a trip to get here. Um, how did your experiences align with or, or differ from what you, um, expected when you first started in your journey? What were some events that maybe steered you in a different direction?

Yeah, that's, that's a great question. You know, honestly, I think, uh, I don't, I can't remember the first time that I was asked what I wanted to do when I grew up in school. It must have been like first grade or third grade or something, and I never really knew how to answer that question. So I think some kids just, just know. I didn't.

Even through, through high school, through my undergraduate degree, it was in economics, and I think that was something that I consciously chose because it was— it narrowed things down a little bit but wasn't super concentrated and specific, so it gave me some options. I knew I wanted to do humanities or something in business or something in government, kind of looking at that. And after I graduated, I was a little lost. I didn't know really what those next steps were. I don't think anybody growing up or otherwise really expects to walk into like a chief of staff position.

That's not a very really common one. Yeah. But it turned out to be an amalgamation of things that I was really interested in doing and pursuing, and I feel really fortunate about that. But, you know, I don't know if I had another chance to do it all over again if the right circumstances would have landed in my lap. So I'm very thankful.

Yeah, and it's been fun to watch your trajectory to this position. You've had a great deal of success now, and what would you contribute to that success? What are some skills or habits that you've been able to identify that help you be successful? Yeah, I appreciate that. I think, you know, maybe a strong technical kind of foundation as the basis.

It's kind of the jumping-off point, but, you know, on top of that, really, it's been maybe a willingness to raise your hand and say, like, hey, I'm gonna give this a shot, or I'm gonna do this, or, you know, even if no one's out there calling for asking you to do something, being willing to jump into something that's difficult, something that you don't know if it'll succeed or not, and being willing to try those things. I tried a bunch of things that didn't work, and, you know, if I hadn't had that opportunity both professionally and personally, then I don't know if I'd be here today. Well, I'm so glad you are. So tell me, how important is it for people that are just getting into this, aspiring, leaders, how important is it for them to understand broader business strategy or come in with like a strategic mindset? It sounds like you did that when you, you got your degree in economics, you then got your MPA, you went to nonprofit, private, public sectors, you tried all these things out.

How did that all come together and how important is it to test those things out and to bring that to the table? Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think I'd say the most efficient way to accomplish something is to know where you want to go to, right? Is to have that vision, have that goal. For me, at least professionally at the start, it didn't really work that way.

It was more a little bit of some purposeful blundering, I guess. But I think that blundering was useful in itself too. I, you know, again tried a lot of different things and had a chance to learn quite a bit. You know, now that I'm here and have had the chance to settle in a little bit. I think that broader business strategy, whether it's in the private sector or the public sector, is really important.

You have to know what the goals of your organization are or what they can be, and having that sort of vision for accomplishing, you know, big things or solving.

Big problems is really important. What are some of the goals, the organizational goals that you focus on here? Yeah, it's a good question. So we have had a mayor that's come in just for a few months now, and we're going to be having strategic planning next month to kind of really write down and, and highlight those goals for the administration for the rest of his 3-year term and hopefully 3 more years after that. That.

But really, you know, the Bureau's mission is to serve, lead, and thrive. That's the mission statement. Those are the values. So, you know, service is making sure that what we do, we do well, where we serve our community, we provide the services that people expect at the quality that they expect. Them at.

We lead, we take, we're the first ones through to help solve these big problems that our community faces, whether it's something we can directly influence or something we can support, and the goal of having a community that thrives as a result of that. So, you know, I think it's, you know, each of our various departments, and we have over a dozen, has their own very specific mission statement, whether it's the library providing resources for, for students and for kids and for adults in our community, or it's our Public Works team, which builds and helps with infrastructure and new buildings. Our borough is a lot of things to a lot of people, but I think public service is the heart of that. Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely the heart of you.

So it sounds like you do run into some challenges and issues that as Chief of Staff and, and throughout your career, it sounds like you've hit a couple. What, what are some of these challenges and how did you approach solving them?

Yeah, yeah, I think You know, there's always going to be, you know, if there weren't any challenges, I wouldn't have a job. That's true. So I'm grateful for that. Job security. In a way.

I think the biggest challenges are really those wicked problems and working through them. So things that are very complicated, have a lot of stakeholders involved. Yeah. Issues that there's no one right answer, there's just a lot of different ways to do something. In those situations, I think it takes a lot of generally public input.

It takes a lot of research, a lot of working with experts on that topic. And then, you know, taking that all in and trying to make the best decision based on that information. And, you know, there's pros and cons to every decision. So I think listening to the community is really important. Do you keep saying wicked problem?

Can you explain that just a little bit? Oh sure, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Wicked problems are something that I really learned about. They were really at the core of my MPA program, but a wicked problem is something that has really— a long-term solution to a wicked problem is very far away, and it's such a complicated issue that one entity by itself can't solve it. Solve it.

So like, um, if you look at, for example, drug addiction in the US, that's a wicked problem, or homelessness, or any other manner of, of those really complicated topics. We have those here too. You know, housing is one, kind of on a smaller scale. How do, how do we approach encouraging housing here where construction is expensive? And it's, you know, it's not easy.

So we try to find a balanced approach that can mitigate the issue, the wicked problem, as best as we can. And if it's ours to solve, we can. Otherwise, we try to work with other entities to help as best we can. Wow, that's a great process. So based on the experiences that you've had and advice maybe you've received or shared What steps would you recommend someone just starting out in their, in their journey?

What advice would you give them and what steps would you share with them on how to, how to get to, to being a successful leader in our community? Yeah, I appreciate that question. I think in general people, people who are just starting out shouldn't be afraid to jump into learning opportunities, whether it's personally or professionally. Again, not be afraid to raise their hands and try something, whether it's something like a business or a particularly challenging assignment in their workplace. You know, I think all of that is really important for growth, and a lot of the time, unless you, you ask or even take action, no one's going to to come to you with any kind of opportunity.

Yeah, I think it's important to jump out there and let people know and learn yourself that, hey, this is something they can do and this is something that we can make happen. Wow, that's awesome. If someone wanted to take that leap and apply for a job here at our local government at the borough, what steps would should they take? Well, we'd love to have them, first of all. We've got a finance department with about 30 positions.

That's a lot. It is, it is. Yeah, there's a lot of money moving around. It's a department that interacts with pretty much every other department in the borough. Yeah, um, you know, we have everything from accounting technicians to our CFO, our chief financial officer.

Um, if folks are interested in applying, we have our own website, fnsb.gov. There's a place there for current open positions right on the front page. We have a number of them in our finance department too, so that's a good place to go and apply and look what's out there. If anybody from your class or anybody in the community has any questions about pursuing a career in finance at the borough, they can also just email me. I'll give you my card.

Great. Happy to chat and connect them with someone. To kind of go from there. Great. Well, I hope that this generates some folks that are interested in the finance journey, that they, that they check out the borough and see if that's a good fit.

Well, thank you again for all of your insight and advice and experiences. Your journey will be incredibly valuable to the students in this class. I think it'll inspire them. I think that it'll show them a way maybe that they didn't think of before. And before we wrap this up, do you have any final thoughts or anything you'd like to share with the class that we didn't touch on?

Well, I, yeah, I appreciate that, Erin. Thank you for the chance to interview, and thanks for, I guess, taking the leap yourself and teaching this class for the first time. So yeah, like, like we've talked about a little bit, know each other for a while long time and I think your students are going to definitely benefit from having you at the helm. Yeah. But yeah, but you know, I think with this and any other career, um, it's important to, uh, to, to try new things, try different things.

Um, I'm not sure how many folks out there are, uh, jumping into this straight out of high school versus, uh, maybe a bit of a career switch, but, um, I think whatever route gets them to where they want to go is, is a good one. So thanks for taking that leap and getting in the group. Thank you. Thank you again. Thanks, Erin.