5 in 5: Carrie S. Cihak, King County Metro Transit’s Chief of Policy

Results for America Fellowship Alumni give five answers in five minutes. This month, we caught up with Carrie S. Cihak, Metro Transit’s Chief of Policy for King County, WA.

1. Summarize what you do and how you do it.
   I bring together the expertise of public sector staff, researchers, and community to advance racial equity through a focus on outcomes and evidence-informed practice.
2. Share something exciting that you’re working on.
   I’m working with King County’s Metro Transit department to advance the view of mobility as a human right. One of the ways we are doing that is through an impact evaluation of our fully-subsidized annual transit pass for residents with low incomes. It is somewhat unusual for a transit agency to lead an impact evaluation, and even more unusual for a transit agency to focus not only on impacts like transit use and mobility but also on impacts like health and well-being.
3. Tell us one thing you learned from someone else during your RFA Fellowship.
   I have learned at least one thing from every one of the Local Government Fellows and Results for America (RFA) staff, so it is really hard to choose! I’ve been on the deepest dives in our RFA-supported site visits to Washington, DC and Philadelphia, so I’ll choose those two. From Jenny Reed, I’ve learned the value of making the serious work of evidence building FUN — Form-A-Palooza? Who wouldn’t want to join that? From Anjali Chainani, I’ve learned so much about building relationships and sharing leadership across staff teams and with research partners.
4. If you could wave a magic wand and have any data or evidence, what would it be?
   Wait — are you telling me you are taking my magic wand away?
   
   We’ve gotten better at using administrative data to improve services for the people we serve. But even my magic wand doesn’t provide us very much data about the people who we are missing. I wish we had better data on why people aren’t accessing services, or what the impact on people’s lives would be if they had better access to services. For example, administrative data tells us how people use transit now, but it doesn’t tell us all the places people would go, and the opportunities that would open up to them, if they had better access to transportation services.
5. What’s the [pick-your-adjective] job you’ve ever had?
   For most of 2020, I was detailed to support the community branch of Public Health — Seattle & King County’s pandemic emergency response. Part of what made this the most personally challenging job I’ve ever had is that, while trying to help other leaders manage through profound change in their own institutions, I was facing so much change in my own life at the same time (as every one of us experienced during that time). And, as the ravages of the pandemic on communities of color became pronounced and other events of the year unfolded, it was often hard to know how to be the best ally or feel as though our work was making a difference. Looking back, I can still experience the darkness of those times, while now I am able to reflect on what the team helped to accomplish and all I learned through that about leadership, sharing power, and allyship (or being a co-conspirator) in advancing racial justice.

Interested in learning more about King County’s work? Read the August 22, 2018 case study on King County’s Efforts to apply an equity lens to design more accessible, collaborative, and outcomes-focused contracting processes.

Carrie S. Cihak participated in Results for America’s Local Government Fellowship.