With 15 years and four terms as President of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, E. Dennis Normandy’s service as a public official unprecedented. Having served in the administrations of five San Francisco Mayors—as Library Commissioner for Dianne Feinstein and Art Agnos, and as Public Utilities Commissioner for Frank Jordan, Willie L. Brown, Jr. and Gavin Newsom, who appointed him just last September as Civil Service Commissioner. The Civil Service Commission oversees the merit system for the City and County of San Francisco. It establishes rules and policy, hears appeals on examinations, eligible lists, minimum qualifications, classification, discrimination complaints, future employment with the City and other merit system matters.
Normandy’s service is characterized by his unwavering insistence to adhere to the highest standards of service, accountability and profitability, on employing best business and science-based management practices, and on including all stakeholders in an open process of governance. Because of this, he has acquired a reputation for inclusion as well as civility, being "hard on issues, but soft on people."
In 1990, he served in then Governor George Deukmejian’s California Task Force for the Study of Asia.
Born into a French-American-Filipino family that pioneered bus transmit systems in the Philippines, Normandy was schooled in both Humanities and Business at leading Jesuit universities and later attended Harvard’s Kenney School of Government. At the age of 25, he settled in San Francisco, after serving on the boards of five private Manila corporations, while managing advertising for Standard Oil Agrichemicals in the Far East.
His Filipino roots extended to his contribution to the positive visibility and empowerment of ethnic communities in the United States. He was President of the National Filipino American Council and has chaired the Mayor’s San Francisco-Manila Sister City Committee, the pre-eminent trade and cultural bridge between the two cities. He also received Philippine Presidential Awards from two heads of state, citing his work as ambassador of goodwill between the US and the Philippines, and for his dynamic involvement in trade and commerce benefiting both countries.
( www.asianjournal.com )
( Published on December 5, 2008 in Asian Journal Northern California p. B1 )
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