The U.S. Census Bureau appointed a slate of managers for a new 2010 Census in Chattanooga at 5600 Brainerd Road, Suite 3-C, in the East Gate Town Center. The Chattanooga office will support census operations in six counties: Bradley, Hamilton, Loudon, McMinn, Monroe and Polk.
Three offices opened in 2008 to carry out operations to prepare for the census in the state. They are located in Knoxville, Memphis and Nashville. The Chattanooga office is one of seven new local census offices in Tennessee, bringing the total number to 10.
The new managers bring a wealth of experience to the 2010 Census.
Karen A. Stanley, local census office manager, worked 26 years at the Veterans Administration Medial Center in Chillicothe, Ohio. She was a local census office manager in Census 2000 and recently was a recruiting assistant and field operations supervisor in the Knoxville census office.
Donna Thomas, assistant manager for field operations, worked as regional sales and marketing director in the hospitality industry and as a professor at Cleveland State Community College. She has spent the last 15 years developing subdivisions as a licensed residential/commercial/industrial contractor.
After retiring from 35 years of service with El DuPont de Nemours and Co., Inc., Marvin Turner, assistant manager for quality assurance, spent four years in Asia as a project development director. He has volunteered with several nonprofit organizations, including SCORE.
Daniel Pratt, assistant manager for administration, spent most of his life as an entrepreneur, building six different companies in retail, wholesale or the service industries. He also was a high school teacher and principal.
Mari “Dee” Townley, assistant manager for recruiting, has an extensive background in human resource management. She worked in the public and private sectors, establishing a human resources, benefits and retirement-consulting business of her own.
Michael Holmes, assistant manager for technology, has a background in sales and customer service. After spending four years in the U.S. Navy as a cryptographic technician, he earned a degree from the University of California-Berkeley in mathematics.
Census counts are used to determine the number of congressional seats for each state, the shape of legislative and local government districts, and how more than $400 billion in federal funds is distributed annually to communities across the country.
April 1, 2010, is Census Day, the reference day for collecting census information from every household in America. Census questionnaires will be mailed or delivered in mid-March. The Tennessee offices will close after census operations end in 2010.