Mainer rides wave to D.C. office

loading...

WASHINGTON – Often jet-lagged from his the job, William Brennan commutes home to Topsham, Maine, to see his family every two weeks if he’s lucky. Taking a look at his fall calendar, the Maine native recalls how in 12 days he went from Washington, D.C., to India, Spain, Ireland and back.

Brennan has temporarily left his family – wife Heather, sons Will and Tyler, and daughter Hayley – to ride the tide that has taken him into the Bush administration.

Appointed last spring as deputy assistant secretary for international affairs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the 51-year-old is now working for an organization that is “by definition ‘oceanic and atmospheric’ … You can’t get more globally focused than that.”

Growing up in Castine with a father who worked at Maine Maritime Academy, Brennan said during a recent interview that living by the ocean helped prepare and inspire him to reach greater waters.

“I had spent time working in the Merchant Marine and some time working on commercial fishing vessels,” he said, “and that’s what helped generate my interest in the ocean and in marine resources.”

Now based in the nation’s capital, Brennan is grateful “to be working with people of [NOAA’s] caliber and to be dealing with what are some capstone issues of our time.”

His initial challenge is to develop a “coordinated and functional international affairs office,” which means lots and lots of traveling.

“It’s kind of neat in one respect, but it’s not like I’m going on sightseeing trips,” he said. “I’m not saying I don’t like it, it’s just the nature of it, so for any readers out there who say, ‘This is great, for at the government’s expense this guy gets to go hang out at resorts around the world,’ [it’s not really like that].”

Learning how to live on international time zones, deal with exit taxes and convert currencies are all new to Brennan, but because it’s all still new, he said he finds it fascinating and exciting. In addition, he said, the work is rewarding and he’s practicing the marine policy he always has hoped to do.

“I’ve been involved with marine education over the years, and I know at the collegiate level, the kids’ interest in the marine world is formed by the images they grew up with, Jacques Cousteau, Flipper or whatever,” he said. “I had more of a work orientation toward the ocean because of the commercial vessels, the commercial fishing industry and the Merchant Marine. I loved the working waterfront and the activity that’s associated with that – the human relation to the marine environment.”

While working in Maine, Brennan said his view of the state was of a natural resource-based economy.

“Maine, in many respects, economically was still very dependent upon traditional principle activities like fishing, farming and forestry, and that continues today,” he said.

It was during these formative years in the state that Brennan said he began to realize that his “actions and decisions had an impact on people, on families and on welfare … and that you’re really managing the activities of people, not the activities of fish.”

Today at NOAA, his efforts are global in nature and have a more dramatic impact on people and the earth.

“I am a delegate to the world, on issues of sustainable development,” he said, rattling off examples of how the agency tracks weather patterns such as El Nino and climate changes and what they cause, such as drought and famine.

Brennan’s gone full circle since he graduated from the University of Maine in 1977 and started working for the National Marine Fisheries Service, a branch of NOAA.

He said he is thrilled “at this stage of my life and career to have been offered this kind of opportunity to, in essence, come back to a place that I started working for in 1977 … Now I’m one of the top five people managing this agency, which has a $3.3 billion budget and tens of thousands of employees all around the world.”

After graduating from UM with a degree in marine biology in 1977, Brennan worked on Soviet ships for the Fisheries Service at laboratories in Sandy Hook, N.J., and Woods Hole, Mass. While working as a scientist on the ships, which he called a “microcosm of society,” he realized that he was interested less in marine science and more in policy, leading him to the University of Rhode Island where he earned a master’s degree in marine policy.

Hired in the mid-80s to be a legislative assistant to then-1st District Rep. John McKernan, Brennan handled matters before the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee and eventually addressed other issues, including energy and judiciary, which ultimately made him McKernan’s senior legislative assistant.

“When [McKernan] was elected governor, he gave me the best recommendation that I ever could have received because he asked me to come back to Maine with him and be the commissioner of marine resources – which is basically like a mini-NOAA,” Brennan said.

After working with McKernan for 12 years throughout his terms in Washington and Maine, Brennan moved on to begin his own private marine policy and consulting practice in Portland. During that time, he was appointed the Sawyer Professor of Ocean Studies at the Maine Maritime Academy, which gave him the opportunity to research and teach for the academy. He also went back to school to receive his doctorate from the College of Environmental Sciences at the University of Maine last May.

“When I left the commissioner’s job, I had realized that after eight years of managing marine resources in the state of Maine [and the New England area as well] that there were a number of issues that needed to be addressed…. There were gaps in my understanding on some of the issues that really drive fisheries management, the human element.”

Those gaps gave Brennan the momentum to pursue his doctoral degree. He spent the time studying and doing homework with his kids, who were then in middle school and high school, and competing with them for grades.

“I’d like to think it was beneficial to them as well to realize that education is a long-term experience,” he says. “You shouldn’t look at education as something you finish when you get out of high school or even college. [It’s] something to do throughout your life.”

As he neared completion of his studies, people in the industry approached Brennan and asked if he was interested in going to Washington to utilize at the national level the background and experience he’d gained at the state and regional levels.

“I wanted to get to a higher level. I wanted to look at the policy. I didn’t want to get mired in the trees of running the agency and not be able to look at the forest from a broad perspective,” he said.

When he decided to put his name forward for a high-level position with NOAA, Brennan began a networking campaign. McKernan, members of Congress, friends in Maine’s fishing and political establishments and family members – including his mother-in-law, Doris Russell of Castine, who previously served as a Republican National Committeewoman – helped put Brennan’s name forward.

“There were people who had trust and faith and experience in me, and I guess they must have had enough respect for what I had done before that they saw it would be worth supporting me,” he says.

“Bill was a great fit from the first time we talked,” said McKernan recently. “Throughout my public career, I needed someone who really understood Merchant Marine issues to be able to adequately represent Maine. … He was committed to public policy and actually had experienced working in fisheries and boats.”

McKernan said Brennan’s new job is a “great progression” and that there’s no better way to govern international activities than by applying such real-life experience. Brennan, he said, can offer NOAA both the academic approach and the real-world approach to understanding and addressing international issues.

Instrumental to his career, Brennan said, have been both McKernan, for his confidence and guidance, and his wife, Heather, for her support and commitment to “manage a family separated like this.”

“It’s difficult to deal with on an emotional level as well as physically to not have him here, but it’s do-able and we’re making it work,” Heather said in a phone interview from their home in Maine. “He’s getting the support from us up here and support down there [from colleagues and other relatives].”

He also credits fishermen and fishermen’s wives in Maine for helping him gain the understanding of and perspective on what managing fisheries is really all about.

“You don’t manage fish,” he said. “You’re really managing human activity, and consequently you’re managing human behavior.”

Finally, he praises his father, Bill, who “always figured hugely in his life” and who had the water-associated career that gave Brennan the ingrained exposure to the ocean, which he said is responsible for taking him to a level where he thinks he can really make a difference.