Beata Coloyan says her office frequently hears from residents that housing is too expensive in Boston. Photo by Cydney Scott

Alumni

Alum Beata Coloyan Is Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s “Eyes and Ears” in Boston Neighborhoods

Leading Office of Neighborhood Services taps her love of politics, the city—and rowing

Boston’s Office of Neighborhood Services is Mayor Michelle Wu’s “eyes and ears on the ground,” says executive director Beata Coloyan. The office takes Bostonians’ pulse on everything from potholes to trash pickup to housing affordability in what is by one measure the seventh most expensive big city in the country. Coloyan has prepared for this job her entire life. She grew up in Hyde Park. Majored in political science at BU. Worked Beantown’s neighborhoods for multiple political campaigns, including managing the two reelection campaigns (victorious, obviously) of Democratic US Representative Ayanna Pressley (Hon.’21) (7th District), and during her senior year, was a 2013 mayoral candidate (defeated, despite Coloyan’s knocking on doors “in the thousands”).

“I honestly think I’ve touched every single neighborhood on the ground at some point,” says Coloyan (CAS’13). Yet the first thing that pops into her mind when asked her most relevant experience for the Office of Neighborhood Services (ONS)?

Rowing for the BU women’s team.

“I believe that it’s the ultimate team sport,” she says. “There are no MVPs. Everyone crosses the finish line at the exact same time. And everybody needs to be pulling equal weight” in a sport where “we all need to have each other’s backs.” (The Terriers made it to the NCAA tournament her senior year and placed among the top dozen teams nationwide.)

That describes the culture she strives for at ONS, illustrated when Coloyan, appointed last October, opened a recent regular meeting of her liaisons—the 16 representatives who fan out to the city’s neighborhoods—with the encouraging question: “Who has a weekly win from this week that they’d like to share?”

People unspooled positive doings on their beats—23 neighborhoods with 655,000 residents—their colleagues snapping their fingers after each to cheer them. When Fort Point’s liaison said election officials would loan space to replace a district hall during renovation, Coloyan response: “That’s moving heaven and earth, to change a polling location.” Another liaison announced that “the elevator at the Charlestown branch library works,” touching off wows and applause around the room.

Paul Bologna, Wu’s digital communications director, made a pitch for liaisons to make social media selfie videos to show peers at City Hall what they’re working on. He couched his request with the caveat, “Nobody has to do this.” Coloyan noted that she had invited him to make his ask and see if there were any concerns from camera-shy members of her team.

As opposed to her former jobs, which frequently had her walking through Boston’s neighborhoods, Coloyan most often supports her liaisons from her eighth-floor City Hall office, with its magnificent view of Boston Harbor sandwiched between angular brick buildings. But having her team’s back occasionally requires reaching out to the leaders who deal directly with her liaisons. Although she says interactions with residents are “overwhelmingly positive,” she recalls an incident where a civic association leader, upset with local development, let fly comments that were “personal—racist at times” against representatives of color from ONS and the Boston City Council.

The next morning, Coloyan was on the phone with the civic association president, who hadn’t been at the meeting. He intervened, she says, to ensure that such an incident wouldn’t happen again.

“We will always be willing to engage with someone who wants to provide constructive feedback,” she says. “If it ever turns to a point where there are racial attacks or personal attacks, then that no longer is a dialogue that we’re open to having… I’d like to believe, especially as someone who grew up here, that it’s not happening as frequently as maybe it did during my childhood.”

Wu, currently in her first term as mayor, professes herself thrilled that Coloyan is using her experience for the administration: “As a Boston Public Schools grad and longtime public servant, she knows our communities and how to build civic engagement through excellent constituent service.”

As for Coloyan, working at City Hall, where she oversees four deputies in addition to the liaisons, fulfills a long-held ambition. As a kid in Hyde Park, she imbibed that neighborhood’s pride in native son Thomas Menino (Hon.’01), Boston’s mayor for 20 years.

“In college,” she says, “my dream job was to work for the mayor of Boston…As someone who had the same mayor for almost their entire life, it was such an awesome moment for me to now work for a mayor,” especially a fellow Asian American. (Coloyan is of Filipino ancestry.)

Loving Boston, and BU, from Birth

Wanderlust has never afflicted Coloyan, save for a teenaged lapse when contemplating colleges. Her mother, Deborah Gregson (Wheelock’84), and father, Dom Coloyan (CAS’84), both attended BU. “I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m going to the same college both my parents went to and rave about all the time,’” she says. But her parents “subliminally” influenced her, she says, by taking her to Beanpot tournaments, Marsh Chapel worship, and other events at their alma mater. Her campus tour felt as comfortable as flannel PJs on a Boston winter’s night. Parental influence is far-reaching: her sister is Emelia O’Gilvie (CAS’27), and, Coloyan says, “I told my husband that one day, I definitely, personally will be making a push for our future children to go to BU.”

Like BU, politics germinated early in her soul. Her folks were politically minded—she watched The West Wing with her dad as a kid—and even at a young age, she was aware that Menino hailed from the same side of the tracks. She started out at BU intending a dual major that included international relations, but realized the immediacy of local political service intrigued her more.

Coloyan recalls that Pressley “was in D.C. five days a week doing her job as a congresswoman and needed a staff person on the ground, in the same way that we do here in the Office of Neighborhood Services, keeping a pulse check, seeing what constituents needed.”

Pressley (who studied at BU’s College of General Studies) calls her former campaign manager “a brilliant and effective leader.” Coloyan’s “year-round organizing and community-building efforts” played a pivotal role in her campaigns, Pressley says, while her career has been spent “strengthening our communities, building coalitions, sustaining movements, and inspiring the next generation of leaders.”

Brianna Millor, chief of community engagement in Wu’s cabinet and Coloyan’s boss, says that her colleague joined City Hall “during a historical moment…where women are constantly breaking glass ceilings.” Coloyan’s résumé is vital, Millor adds, and “I am excited to work alongside such an experienced leader to strengthen constituent services on behalf of Boston residents throughout every neighborhood.”

At the civic association meetings they attend, the ONS ambassadors often hear concerns about the cost of living, housing affordability in particular. Coloyan says that since she isn’t a member of the mayor’s policy team, she doesn’t advise Wu on how to handle those issues. But one of the joys of her job is that policy advisors across departments “want to know what’s going on on the ground, so we get pulled frequently into meetings to share what the community is saying.”

The best part of the job, however, is sharing good news, as when she informed leaders in Roslindale, long beset by lead-footed drivers, that their area would be included in the city’s plans to install 500 speed humps in coming years.

“They’re like, ‘There are so many kids that live on [these streets],’” she says, recalling the glee. “Now everyone has peace of mind.”