Principal community engagement specialist Gloria Pinzon Marin
Once upon a time, Gloria Pinzon Marin wanted – she thought – to be a city planner.
Fresh out of college with a degree in community development and starting a new role working for the City of Tigard, her hometown, Gloria already had experience being the bridge that connected people to government resources. She had previously worked for a local Head Start program, where she'd helped teen mothers and other families of young children enroll in early education services. The work had shown her first-hand just how profoundly government programs could affect people's lives.
But at both Head Start and her new job at the city, Gloria noticed that government programs, hindered by bureaucracy and lack of culturally-informed outreach, often struggled to serve their communities effectively. As Gloria explains, "Bureaucracy is a huge barrier to equitable public engagement – for staff and the public. Who do you go to for what? Who decided? Who was considered? And for staff, implementing a culturally responsive engagement project can be challenging."
The problem, it seemed, was not one of intention, but education. No one's born knowing how to navigate a government bureaucracy and few people know where to go to learn how. This lack of civic literacy not only makes it harder for people to access the information and services they need, but discourages them from civic participation generally. Finding herself preoccupied with solving this problem, Gloria realized that while she was deeply interested in the creative work of city planning, she was passionate about community engagement. She explains herself emphatically, "I want to help people participate in their democratic society."
In 2019, Gloria's passion led her to apply for her first role at Metro as the community engagement lead for the Waste Prevention and Environmental Services department. Building off the experience she earned in WPES, Gloria more recently accepted a position as principal community engagement specialist in Communications, where she has been tasked with, in the most literal sense, writing the book on public engagement.
Luckily for her, she didn't have to start from scratch. "When I started in this role, we had a 2013 version of the public engagement guide that had been written by Cassie Salinas, which I used as a basis," Gloria says. "But by 2023, that guide wasn't being used anymore and didn't reflect our current practices and lessons learned since the adoption of the Strategic Plan to Advance Racial Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in 2016. I've been working on updating it now for almost a year."
The most immediate need to update the guide was federal demand. "Metro needed to comply with federal guidelines about engagement around transportation work – in fact, all of our work – or else risk losing federal funds. But besides informing the public about our transportation planning and engagement processes, the federal government also requested that the guide clarify Metro's full work portfolio."
Once again, the key to better community engagement seemed to be education. Gloria is careful to clarify, "Many people who work with Metro know about one aspect of our work – something that connects to their personal interests, like conservation or recycling – but aren't familiar with the rest of what we do. I want to address that. I would like to help highlight the full range of our resources and help people understand how to access them."
This big-picture approach to community engagement as a way for Metro to inform, build trust, and boost civic participation within the communities it serves – rather than simply acquire feedback about a project – characterizes Gloria's vision for the new guide.
Gloria has also been clear from the start on what she wanted the guide not to be: A how-to for selling people on decisions that have already been made. "Public engagement is often seen as a tool for legitimizing projects that have, for the most part, already been decided upon. But what it should be is a collaborative identification of issues and solutions that informs later decision making. And it needs to be ongoing. Touchpoints need to happen more often than just the beginning and end of projects."
The latest edition of the public engagement guide was adopted by Metro Council in February. It will be a living document, reviewed and updated, if needed, every three years. In addition to giving clear, racial equity-informed direction to Metro's community engagement staff, it incorporates and gives context to several other Metro tools, like the DEI department's equity framework tool.
"This updated version of the guide was created with input from staff, the public, local community partners and Council. It shows us walking the walk by prioritizing transparency, accountability, equity and consistency in the ways we serve our communities."
"Ultimately," Gloria explains, "We, Metro, need to support a culture of civic engagement – and that means not just seeking info or approval from communities, but educating them on government systems and processes. These skills will help them self-advocate for the rest of their lives. As an immigrant who grew up in Tigard and saw how the people around me felt hopeless to slow the gentrification happening across the city, I can definitely say: we need more civic involvement. And that means working towards public trust in our processes. We need more voices informing what we, as a government, do."