Sending a Message
Ruth Ravitz Smith has a passion for mentoring people. She now has a chance to do that in her relatively new role as chief communications officer in the Office of Communications and Outreach for New Hanover County.
“I want to do a better job of telling the story of the county,” Smith says. “I’m blown away by the commitment of the employees to serving the public. That question is asked when we hire new employees. It’s interesting when you ask someone what public service means. We don’t hire people if it doesn’t come from the heart.”
Smith came to this position September 1, after the county government reorganized its executive leadership team.
“It’s a new job essentially, and I’m helping write the job description. It has an outreach piece. I’m going to be out in the community to help facilitate policy input from the community,” she says.
Interacting with the media, acting as a source of information to the public, branding and marketing the county as a great place to live, vacation, or retire are on her to-do list. Her scope is both local and national in telling the story of New Hanover County.
“One of the components I’m excited about is creating jobs here,” Smith says. “My career has been about connecting dots and making connections. One reason we like the community is the college and university, tourism, and film industries – my job brings that all together.”
Not only does she reach the public through New Hanover County television programing through the NHCTV outlet, showing the public what local government is doing, but she pulls on her boots and faces the families.
During the flooding rains in October, Smith had her first chance to pull duty at the county’s Emergency Operations Center. When her stent was over, and she was back at home, she got the call to come out again to speak to families. She arrived on location with no boots to forge the water, so the firefighters loaned her a pair, and she went out to look families in the eye and tell them their government was going to be there to help them.
Smith feels that’s an important part of her job.
Taking leadership roles comes naturally to her after an extensive career in external affairs with General Electric, Alstrom, and the Aerospace Industries Association. She joined GE Hitachi in 2010, based in Washington D.C., supporting the nuclear business and reporting to the CEO.
“I had a great adventure traveling all over the world meeting with leaders from local government to heads of state,” Smith says.
No stranger to this area, Smith and her husband bought a house here in 2008, and she’s glad to make it a full-time residence.
“I’m very proud to call myself a New Hanover County employee – and I’m a jaded Washington DC person!” Smith says, laughing. “My friends are jealous; they want to work on the local level and make a difference for people.”
An eastern Long Island, New York native, Smith graduated from Hood College in Maryland, when it was a women’s school, with a degree in law and society. Internships were important, so she was active in county government in Maryland and spent breaks working for her congressman from New York.
Smith’s college experience set her on a trajectory of leadership because of the examples she found there. The college president, all senior leadership, and most of the professors were women. Leadership was a natural role for women in that setting.
“I went away to American University in Washington one semester, and it was apparent to me that the women who interacted most with speakers were from women’s colleges,” she recalls. “The others had a tendency to sit back in the classroom.
I’ve seen that later in my career, too. Women’s college graduates have a tendency to rise to leadership roles … Maybe it’s the lean-in movement. We learned to get involved.
I feel really strongly that women should look out for each other.”
Smith and her husband plan to be involved in the community and nonprofits. She is mentoring a junior from University of North Carolina Wilmington already and recently became certified to teach ESL. She especially wants to teach a citizenship class for ESL students. And she’s enrolled in the ten-week New Hanover County Sheriff Office’s Citizen Academy to learn how that department serves the community.
“It’s the perfect culmination for my career to be here,” she says – and for more than professional reasons.
“My husband and I met on a golf course in 1995; two weeks later we looked at each other and both said we wanted to live in Wilmington. We were married at Bald Head Island in 1998 … and we set goals to end up here,” she says.
With plenty of golf opportunities and a boat waiting in dry dock while they remodel their 1909 home, the couple is settling into the lifestyle.
“I’ve had a passion for this community for twenty years,” she says, “but I’m bringing in a new perspective.”
To view more of photographer Chris Brehmer’s work, go towww.chrisbrehmerphotography.com/
