20 People to Watch - Michael Sterling: The reformer

Can Sterling turn around the Atlanta Workforce Development Agency, the city’s most dysfunctional organization?

On Michael Sterling’s first day as executive director of the Atlanta Workforce Development Agency last May, his desk was piled with subpoenas for a federal investigation, a state report blasting the agency’s financial mismanagement, and a city audit calling for Mayor Kasim Reed to shutter the organization. His predecessor had just retired, allegedly after misusing hundreds of thousands of dollars, funneling federal grant money to City Hall cronies, and spending money on nonexistent programs. Sterling, 32, had to rebuild an agency left in shambles. It was hard to know where to begin.

“There were a lot of problems,” Sterling says. “But I’ve tried to maintain perspective. The mayor didn’t ask me to take over the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.”

The Beaumont, Texas, native has spent the last several months overhauling the agency that, according to a blistering city-commissioned report released last August, was so poorly managed that it basically existed in name only. In a sense, Sterling has nowhere to go but up at AWDA, an organization originally created to train thousands of unemployed Atlanta residents and place them into local jobs. Business at the city’s most dysfunctional agency could continue as usual if he fails at his job. But he says he won’t settle for anything less than complete reforms that pass the test of another audit.

Sterling’s path to AWDA began in 2004. The then-Morehouse College senior signed up for an internship at the Georgia General Assembly with a Georgia Legislative Black Caucus member. He was randomly assigned to Reed, then a state senator. His program supervisor gave Sterling one major caveat: Reed had fired his last three interns. The mayor confirms this fact.

“I thought to myself, ‘What kind of human being fires free help?’” Sterling says.

The intern’s work ethic and integrity quickly caught Reed’s attention. The future mayor, a lawyer outside the Gold Dome, mentored Sterling as he attended law school at Texas Southern and worked for prestigious legal firm Sidley Austin LLP in Chicago. In 2009 Sterling began prosecuting criminal and civil cases ranging from narcotics to money laundering for the U.S. District Attorney’s Office.

In October 2011 Sterling joined Reed’s cabinet as a senior adviser. In that capacity, Sterling helped orchestrate the city’s Occupy Atlanta strategy, established the city’s film office, and negotiated the construction of a contentious Family Dollar in southwest Atlanta.

Reed turned to Sterling this past May during what the mayor calls an “awful and embarrassing storm.” Former AWDA Executive Director Deborah Lum had resigned in the wake of a scathing Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation into the department’s rampant corruption. After Sterling spent three months in an interim role, Reed surprised him with a promotion in the middle of an August event with U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez.

“Whenever you have an office that’s in crisis, integrity is essential,” Reed says. “I know Michael Sterling’s integrity is unimpeachable. As he reformed the organization, I knew he would tell me the truth.”

Sterling’s first task was to settle debts: AWDA had $1.5 million in unpaid bills. Then he attempted to overhaul the agency’s internal culture. More than 50 AWDA staffers, who had grown used to little oversight or transparency, met one-on-one with the new executive director. Sterling says he has since outlined clear expectations, opened regular lines of communication with employees, and established more transparent procedures. Those efforts, he says, hadn’t happened in years.

Sterling then turned to reforms to the agency based on recommendations outlined in the city report. He took steps to ensure that AWDA didn’t lose state or federal grants. He’s currently focused on improving job-seekers’ experiences with the agency and actually placing them into good jobs — a critical task in the city with the highest income inequality of all major American cities.

According to Reed, Sterling’s effectiveness will largely be measured by how many people the agency trains to become “job and career ready” in 2015. The task sounds simple enough for a workforce development agency. But Sterling says his biggest goal is to prevent AWDA from returning to its darker days.

To remind himself of that mission, he hung a 2004 AJC article that he found in the agency’s computer lab on his corner office’s wall. The story, titled “Atlanta employment center glows anew,” praised Lum for transforming the job agency after 18 months on the job. Sterling knows what happened next.

“I don’t want that to be me,” he says.

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