Alumni & Friends : Alumni Profiles

Serving Future Generations

Mike Hein
MPA '91

In early April, Mike Hein took on the biggest responsibility of his career to date and immediately got to work on issues facing the City of Tucson as its new city manager.

Among those issues: the ever-looming challenge of swelling regional transportation demands. Pima County recently created a regional transportation authority that for the first time has leaders from all members of the Pima Associations of Governments—municipalities from Oro Valley to Sahuarita, including the Tohono O’odham nation and Pascua Yaqui tribe—sitting down together to create a regional approach to infrastructure and capacity solutions.

Not surprisingly, Mike is well prepared for the challenge. Since graduating from the School of Public Administration and Policy at the Eller College after earning an undergraduate degree in his home state of Wisconsin, Mike’s career has included some of the toughest assignments a public administrator could face. As the director of community and economic development for the City of South Tucson, Mike dealt with everything from public safety issues to challenging the results of the 1990 decennial census, which had significantly undercounted South Tucson’s Hispanic population and thereby impacted funding.

“Having the opportunity to work for the City of South Tucson meant really learning about the wide variety of issues facing local governments,” Mike recalls, noting that “sometimes your first job is the toughest. There were a lot of challenges and issues facing the community, and a lot of fiscal constraints, but it gave me a great opportunity. They needed help in a lot of areas, and I gained exposure that I might not have had at a larger organization.”

From a job like that, where do you go, except to something even more complex? Mike headed to Nogales to become planning and zoning director, dealing with border issues on the heels of approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Having reached the equivalent of city manager there, he moved on. As town manager of the City of Marana, he oversaw a $62 million dollar budget in what was then the fastest-growing community in the state. Now that budget responsibility has jumped from $62 million to $1 billion as Hein becomes the youngest person to take on leadership of Tucson’s 6,000+ employees.

Through it all, Mike has maintained a disarming humility. In fact, he recalls that one of the biggest challenges of his career has been overcoming the self-doubt that often comes from growing up in a lower socio-economic strata, as he did. “I lacked confidence,” Mike says. “I remember sitting in classes at the Eller College with MBAs and feeling daunted by the differences between by background and some of my peers.”

But it’s the “tremendous amount of support” from those peers, as well as advisors and professors at the Eller College, which Mike credits for much of his success, in addition to an education that’s helped him “identify systems and better understand the synergies between federal, state, and local governments.”

Understanding those synergies has helped make a positive impact in every position Mike has held, and this is the reward that drives him. “There’s a real satisfaction in the notion that you’re imprinting on the future,” Mike shares. “I’ve been offered positions in the private sector for a lot more money, but it’s not money alone that matters. It’s the ability to actually work with communities and hopefully make them better for future generations.”