'I knew it was going to be a learning experience'
Her time as the governor's chief of staff was short, her departure sudden. But she believes she made a difference.
Her appointment made history. Her departure made headlines.
One hundred days into the Patrick administration, a period marked by serial political missteps and "Coupe Deval" jokes, chief of staff Joan Wallace-Benjamin abruptly left. Had Wallace-Benjamin, a prominent member of Boston's African-American community and the first black woman to head a Massachusetts governor's staff, jumped ship or been pushed?
State House savants wanted to know.
Wallace-Benjamin was exercising at home one morning last April when a local television station aired news of her exit. "Wallace-Benjamin gets dumped by governor," it said, or words to that effect.
Her first reaction was to yell, "I was not dumped!" But counterspin would have been fruitless, Wallace-Benjamin says now, four months after resuming the job she left to join the governor's staff -- another twist to the story -- that being chief executive of the Home for Little Wanderers, New England's largest private child and family service agency. "That wasn't even close to what happened. But people said, 'Let it go, Joan.' So I did."
Candidly discussing her coming and going from Patrick's staff, Wallace-Benjamin recalls the media's "cruelty and doggedness" and says the experience reinforced her reasons for not running for office herself.
"There are pros to it but cons, too, like lifestyle, privacy, and financial cons," she says during an interview at her Huntington Avenue office. "I knew it was going to be a learning experience for me. And a gutsy decision on the governor's part. Had a white guy won, nobody would have questioned had his chief of staff been another white guy."
Having lived in the Boston area since the 1970s, Wallace-Benjamin continues, she also understood the significance her appointment held for black professionals who've chosen to make the Hub their home, notwithstanding its troubled racial past. Still, the governor-elect's offer last November caught her by surprise, since she'd played only a minor role in his campaign and knew him better socially than politically.
"I didn't even know what a chief of staff did," Wallace-Benjamin says with a laugh. "Leo McGarry from 'The West Wing' was my image," a reference to the fictional White House operative played by the late John Spencer. "Of course, he's dead now," she adds wryly.
All went smoothly before inauguration day, according to Wallace-Benjamin. Once in office, however, there was no road map for moving forward. Four days later came the first newspaper story questioning whether Patrick was living up to his campaign promises. The criticism grew harsher, she says. "Three months later, I wasn't loving the environment. Not because of the hits we took in the press, frivolous or deserving. But because the job was very operational in ways I wasn't used to. I could do it, but I'm more an outward-facing communicator than internal manager."
Not like McGarry, in other words, a master at managing delicate egos behind closed drapes? "Right, right," Wallace-Benjamin says, nodding. "I was the ego everyone was managing for the past 20 years."
Meanwhile, the Home for Little Wanderers called her, saying it was finally ready to hire a new CEO, provided Wallace-Benjamin had no interest in coming back to the roughly $250,000-a-year-position. Or did she? It was a job she had loved -- and had left with no hard feelings on either side. The following Monday, she walked into Patrick's office and received his blessing to move on.
Asked to comment on her departure, Patrick e-mailed: "Joan has spent most of her professional life working on behalf of some of the most vulnerable members of our society. . . . She maintains a great sense of humor through it all, too. I am forever grateful for all she did to get my administration up and running in those early days."
Says Wallace-Benjamin, "I'm confident that when I go to my grave, I can say I made a contribution. I was the first African-American chief of staff [serving] with the first African-American governor. How cool is that?"
Laheus is working for
Laheus admits she didn't like high school much, yet she wants to work with children someday and knows furthering her education will "help me be someone." Council meetings, she says, let members give the Home staff candid feedback on how programs are working. Or not working. The food's pretty good, too, Laheus says.
When it's her turn to address the group, Wallace-Benjamin expresses pride in what they've achieved and confidence in their futures. "I'm just a phone call away if you need me," she says with genuine concern.
Being a phone call away -- and owning one of the city's golden Rolodexes -- has marked Wallace-Benjamin's long career as an institutional leader, networker, and advocate for the disadvantaged.
Raised in Queens, N.Y., she grew up during the civil-rights movement and went on to graduate from Wellesley College, then earn a PhD at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management. Leadership positions followed at several city-based social service agencies, including ABCD Head Start and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston. In 1989 she was named president and CEO of the Massachusetts Urban League, where Wallace-Benjamin helped raised its visibility dramatically over the next 11 years. She did not shy away from controversy, criticizing Boston magazine for slapping a provocative headline ("Head Negro in Charge") on a 1998 profile of the Rev. Eugene Rivers, a founder of the Ten Point Coalition and a major player in Boston's African-American community. After Rivers took issue with her protest, the Urban League removed him from its board.
Today she and Rivers are on cordial terms, she says. More importantly, "There's a strong clerical and agency leadership here that's very different from when I arrived," she says, citing agencies like the YMCA, Urban League, and Home as nonprofits that today enjoy "a reasonably powerful voice within state and city government." Thirty years ago, she adds, college graduates like herself would leave the area for Washington or Atlanta. "Now there's a critical mass of us spread across broad areas of the community, not just pockets."
In 2003, Wallace-Benjamin was tapped to lead the Home for Little Wanderers, which was founded in 1799. With a staff of 800 and a $46 million operating budget and an $80 million endowment, the agency runs more than 20 programs ranging from residential care and special education to foster care and adoption services. A major Department of Social Services provider, it also serves hundreds of DSS families every year, making Wallace-Benjamin acutely aware of the agency's tarnished image in the wake of several well-publicized tragedies in recent months.
While the abuse of any child in DSS care is "terrible and unacceptable," she says, the numbers alone -- DSS serves 40,000 families a year -- make it hard to avoid all such tragedies.
"We've spent a lot of time putting systems in place to make sure risk is seriously minimized," she says. "But yes, I go to bed every night worrying about a kid getting hurt in one of our residences. Or running away."
The Home recently held a reception for new DSS commissioner Angelo McClain. He talked about "destigmatizing" the agency and its clients. Having looked at state government from both sides now, Wallace-Benjamin knows what a tough but necessary task that will be. Serving society's most vulnerable, she says, "is what we come to work to do each day, too."
Joseph P. Kahn can be reached at jkahn@globe.com. 
