Matters of state

Cecilia Ugarte Baldwin, Rappaport Fellow in Law and Public Policy 2007
by Jane Whitehead

The most predictable part of Cecilia Ugarte Baldwin’s day may be her early morning run. Baldwin, 33, Deputy Director of Cabinet Affairs in the Executive office of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, is a marathon runner who gets up around 5.45 most mornings to fit in a training run before work. Once she reaches her cramped quarters under the eaves of the historic State House, says Baldwin, an Arizona native, “there’s no such thing as a typical day.”

The Governor’s Chief of Staff, William “Mo” Cowan, graciously offers his own elegant room overlooking Boston Common as the setting for an interview, after meeting Baldwin and a visiting reporter on their way back from a tour of the Governor’s and Lieutenant-Governor’s office suites. In case Baldwin should be too discreet to mention it, says Cowan, he’d like to note that she is working “at the epicenter of one of the most important issues facing the state, and probably the nation,” – health care cost containment.

“We are a global office that connects all the different agencies as we push the governor’s agenda forward,” explains Baldwin. Much of her working day is spent reading and analyzing policy documents, she says, and with meeting colleagues from the agencies and secretariats for which she is responsible; the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, Health and Human Services, and Energy and Environmental Affairs.

Baldwin joined the Governor’s staff as a policy analyst in February 2011 and was promoted to her present post as Deputy Director of Cabinet Affairs in September. But her attraction to public service dates from her experience as a student volunteer and peer leader in Boston after-school programs, as a Boston University undergraduate. “I could see that there were serious, complex issues in the lives of some of these kids we were working with,” she says. “It really took me out of the student bubble.”

After college, Baldwin worked for a couple of small non-profits focusing on after-school programs, helping develop state wide policies to improve and monitor them. When the former executive director of the Massachusetts Afterschool Partnership suggested she consider law school, Baldwin saw that a legal education would equip her well for public service. “I especially wanted to be a better advocate on behalf of those after-school programs and families who rely on these programs and other services,” she says. She enrolled in the evening division at the New England School of Law in 2006, and never looked back: “I value and cherish everything I’ve learned through law school, and the experience that led up to that,” she says.

Baldwin credits the Rappaport Fellowship with a key role in establishing her on the public policy track, as it helped her land an internship in the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (EOPS) in the summer after her second year of law school. “It was perfect timing,” she says. “I knew the fellowship would provide networking opportunities and the chance to meet peers who share similar values about public service.”

That summer gave Baldwin an insider’s view of how laws are shaped, “how things are maneuvered and put together, how decisions are made to get to an end point,” she says. While supporting the EOPS legal staff as they analyzed bills being sent to the Governor’s desk, Baldwin encountered “a wide variety of issues, some that are common to a lot of legal offices in executive agencies, but also some subject matters are unique to EOPS,” for example, programs for managing sexual offenders.

“Just being in that environment, you absorb a lot,” reflects Baldwin. She relished the chance to work with “dedicated, smart individuals who care very much about supporting the state and the people of the Commonwealth, and making good decisions to help advance the governor’s priorities.” The secretaries and under-secretaries were all “very accommodating,” Baldwin found, and the relationships forged over that summer have served her well since she returned to the State House.

As a member of the Rappaport Center Advisory Board, Baldwin sees a broader significance in the Fellowship program, beyond her own experience. “I think one of the larger points about this fellowship over the years is developing this legacy of committed individuals and creating a forum for them to stay connected with each other,” she says, noting that she still keeps in touch with many of her peers from the 2007 cohort. She sees the Rappaport Center forums, which have tackled subjects from the impact of budget cuts on the ability of the courts to administer justice, and ethics and lobbying reform, to homelessness and human trafficking, as important contributors to improving the quality of debate on vital public policy issues.

Since November 2010, Baldwin has served on the board of directors of the Disability Law Center of Massachusetts, a group that provides legal advocacy services to a vulnerable population with little access to legal representation. As for future career directions, she’s not prepared to look beyond her service to the Patrick administration, except to say that she’s committed to continuing to work for the public good.