Joseph A. Dear

Joseph A. Dear is a 1976 graduate of Evergreen. His senior project--to write a monograph on Washington's state tax structure--led him to his first job. Upon graduation he became director for the People for Fair Taxes, an organization that advocated for a state income tax. His career then led him to positions with the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO and the Washington State's Department of Labor and Industries.

In 1993 Joe and his family returned to his hometown of Washington D.C. when he was named assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) of the U. S. Department of Labor. He was highly regarded in Washington and, at the time, described as "the man who saved OSHA." Joe resigned his position with OSHA in 1997 to join the newly elected Governor Gary Locke as chief of staff. In 1995, Harvard awarded Joe the Government Innovation Award for his work at OSHA. He received the same award in 1992 when he helped transform a $225 million shortfall in the worker's compensation fund of Washington's Department of Labor and Industries into a $350 million surplus over a six-year span.

Joe spent a year and a half at the Frank Russell Company in Tacoma as government relations officer, before returning to public service in November 2002 as executive director of the Washington State Investment Board, which manages $65 billion in state pension and industrial-insurance investments.