After the company she was working for was sold, Cecilia Lenk ’76 decided to indulge a long-standing interest in politics. She ran for a seat on her city council, won, and found herself applying what she’d learned decades earlier as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins.
Lenk joined the nine-member council that oversees Watertown, Massachusetts, in 2009. A city of 32,000 just west of Boston, Watertown has an industrial base dating back to the 19th century, and several land parcels that need to be rid of chemicals and pollutants. The town borders the Charles River that flows into Boston, so storm-water runoff from its asphalt-covered roads is a major concern.
Lenk, who earned a PhD in biology from Harvard, brought a great deal of experience to her job on the town council. She’d been a senior manager at a large corporation (chief information officer for Decision Resources), had spent her working life in urban environments (Baltimore and Boston,) and had volunteered for a variety of community organizations.
Now in her third term, Lenk is chair of the public works subcommittee and serves on the budget and finance committee as well. In addition to her political work, Lenk keeps her hand in education—she’s now part of a Boston company called FableVision that develops educational games and apps. She’s also chair of Johns Hopkins’ Society of Engineering Alumni—and is always looking for more alums to lend her a hand.