Both the recent Local Community Commission (LCC) Zoom debate and the material submitted before that debate makes it clear we have an “abundance of riches” from which to choose. Some of these candidates have backgrounds and careers similar to my own and to most of those with whom I have served during my 25 years of membership on various Island Commissions, Committees, Task Forces and Study Groups. So should I vote in my own image but just a few decades younger? Perhaps, but I am saving one vote, and very much hope you will as well, for an on Island social worker, Nejmah Guermoudi, a neurodivergent mixed race mother of three with a very different background.

Nejmah and I are both members of the Trust’s Housing Task Force. Both of us are committed to more affordable housing being built on SSI. However, she has had far more to contribute on how this desirable but difficult task can actually be achieved. And when she speaks about being income stressed and housing challenged, she speaks from personal experience, In doing so, she also speaks for a segment of the community whose voice is too rarely heard at our governance tables. That’s why I’ll be voting for her and urge you to do likewise.

But what views would Nejmah be bringing to the LCC Table? You will find these spelled out in the answers she prepared for the Zoom debate, answers still available on the Exchange. Her commitment to, and ideas about, actually building, rather than just talking about building, environmentally responsible housing are especially worth noting. They demonstrate that she is both intelligent and well informed. But how intelligent? How well informed? Personally, I consider her to be on a par with the “best and brightest” of the 7,500 or so BBA and MBA candidates on whom I conferred degrees during my fifteen years as a Business School Dean.