Maryann Huhs on Blogger

About Maryann Huhs

Now retired, Maryann Huhs began her career in 1971 when she became the first woman to be hired by the County of Los Angeles Chief Administrative Office. While working there,, Maryann Huhs earned a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Southern California. .Several years later, she married and moved to Seattle and began work for the Seattle City Budget Office. Subsequently, she was elevated to the position of Policy Analyst for the City Council. She explained, " At that time, the City Council was the epitome of good government. Every day we were challenged to listen to all voices and develop the very best policies for Seattle's citizens." While working at the City Counsel, she presented analyses and recommendations regarding the use of deadly force by police officers. Written in 1978, the paper is still cited by the Department of Justice and various articles on the subject.

Between 1982 and 1984, Ms. Huhs served as the assistant engineering director for the city of Seattle’s Engineering Department . Once again, she was the first woman to serve in an executive capacity at the department. In her role as director, she was involved in the oversight of a $170 million operating budget. She went on to hold the position of Director of Primary Care at Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound, where she directed the operations of seven primary care clinics, and slater held the position of statewide director of occupational health. Her work on the company’s occupational health product line resulted in a 100 percent increase in revenue in just a year. While working at Group Health, Ms. Huhs was tapped by both the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations and the National Committee for Quality Assurance, the premier health care accreditation companies in the world, to evaluate the quality of care in a health care organizations. Ms. Huhs noted that her most interesting assignments were to evaluate health care in Federal prisons, where she once spent several hours in lockdown during an attempted prison break. . Before her retirement in 2010, she owned and operated a boutique art gallery in Bellevue, where she implemented a sales and marketing strategy that doubled the gallery's revenue projections.