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Serving with Excellence
Striving for perfection has never been optional for Colleen Cousineau. She expects it of herself; she expects it of her staff; and as its director for 32 years, she has expected it of CSG South/the Southern Legislative Conference (SLC).
Under her leadership, the region has provided trusted advice to state leaders, convened meetings to explore pertinent policy topics, pursued impactful research and developed networks of collaborative communication across state and party lines.
To understand her tenure only in those terms, however, would miss an important part of the picture. As she approached the end of her time at CSG, state leaders and staff alike paid tribute not just to her expertise, but also to her friendship and caring spirit. Both as a leader and as a friend, she not only expected excellence — she exemplified it.
“Ms. Cousineau’s many warm friendships with Southern state legislative leaders reflect how much her consummate professionalism and decades of service have been appreciated by them,” said CSG Executive Director/CEO David Adkins. “With her resignation, Ms. Cousineau leaves behind a rich legacy of leadership at the CSG Southern Legislative Conference.”
Cousineau’s career at CSG was more serendipitous than planned, she says. Armed with a degree in political science and government and administration, in addition to seven years of experience in Georgia state government serving people with disabilities, she was hired to work on a grant for CSG South/SLC in 1980. After the grant was completed, she consulted for the 1982 CSG South/SLC annual meeting, and returned for other projects in 1983. She has served as director of the SLC since February 1989.
“It just evolved from there,” Cousineau said. “I tell people there is rarely a day I didn’t want to go to work in almost four decades. You get tired, but I think few people can say that you wake up with just some joie di vivre, some wonderful opportunity to do myriad things, not have a structured schedule, and sometimes fly by the seat of your pants when a crisis comes up. Who would not want a job that had those sorts of unknowns, and great challenges, but also the opportunity to do remarkable work with remarkable people?”
Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers, who has known Cousineau since the mid-2000s, has appreciated her wealth of knowledge about the region.
“I was always amazed by Colleen in one thing — she knew everything that was going on,” Stivers said. “She knew the policy side of it, what the big issues were. She had a pulse on what was going on in every state and who the players were, and that amazed me. But she also knew the people, and to me, that was her big strength. She could say, “Kentucky is working on this, and it could be beneficial in Tennessee, or Alabama is doing this, and Mississippi could join with Alabama.”
Her knowledge went beyond politics, though. Stivers says she also understood what was going on underneath a person’s political life.
“My chief of staff, Becky Harilson, and Colleen would stay in touch about how Becky’s husband was doing after open heart surgery,” Stivers said. “She knew my son had
just left for the Marines and would ask how he was doing. […] She’s quite the softy, if you really want to know the truth, because she’s always checking in on people.” “Softy” or not, Cousineau lets nothing stand in the way of her pursuit of excellence. “Falling short is not really an option,” she says, and credits her parents, who “loved the possibility of what this nation could become,” as early influences who encouraged her to be her best. Her motivation, though, is largely internal — and it’s intense.
A sense of duty to the states, as well as her tenacity, guides Cousineau’s leadership.
“We are the stewards of state money,” she said. “The foundation of our service work is state appropriations, and so that commitment to using those resources as effectively and as carefully as we can, to provide programs and services that are relevant and pertinent, is what really gives me that purpose of going into the office every day.”
Fulfilling that duty to the states hinges on others’ contributions as well, and Cousineau considers herself fortunate to have talented and dedicated support in the SLC, both from staff and from the CSG South/SLC executive committee. Additionally, she credits her close association with — and reliance on — her fellow CSG regional office directors with keeping her grounded and focused.
“It’s easy to brainstorm, but if you don’t have competent staff to execute those programs and provide the best level of service that you can, you’re just not going to succeed,” she said. “We could not be where we are if we didn’t have that kind of staff in our office. I credit much of my success to my staff and, of course, to the members. The CSG South/SLC executive committee has such trust in me to run the organization, and, by and large, that’s what keeps you going — their support, guidance and trust.”
Cousineau ranks The Southern Regional Project on Infant Mortality near the top of the achievements of the SLC during her tenure. Running from 1984-1997, the project provided both a foundation and framework for state elected and appointed officials to explore and implement policy interventions that would impact the health and well-being of future generations.
“During that period, it made great headway in terms of reducing infant mortality and infant morbidity in the region, and that was a monumental undertaking. The Project was successful because of the collaboration of bipartisan support from governors, legislators and health policy officials,” Cousineau said. “Notwithstanding the tragic issue in and of itself, we recognized that the most effective way to get this in front of governors and legislators was to show the fiscal impact of infant mortality and the health of young mothers and the high rate of adolescent pregnancy. So we spent a year just developing the fiscal impact and we took that to all the legislatures in the South and all the governors and had lots of success in moving the needle on reducing infant mortality.”
According to Cousineau, the SLC also pioneered the coordination of state primary elections in what has come to be known as Super Tuesday.
“In 1984, at the Greenbrier in West Virginia, we convened almost every house speaker, senate president and lieutenant governor and basically held strategy meetings as to how we could move the presidential preference primary to March 8 of 1988,” Cousineau said. “While the Southern region was firmly held by Democrats at the time, contrary to popular belief, the objective of Super Tuesday was to ensure presidential hopefuls spent time in the region to learn about our issues, our concerns.”
At that time, the 15 states in the Southern region included Maryland, but did not include Missouri, according to Cousineau. The effort was significant — Cousineau says the Southern region has “notebooks and notebooks of every tarmac visit, every visit of every candidate — and it became a significant focus of our work for nearly four years.”
Other achievements of the SLC are many, from legislative staff exchange programs to international delegations to policy workshops and leadership programs, like the Center for the Advancement of Leadership Skills (CALS) and the newly created Staff Academy for Governmental Excellence (SAGE).
The “boundless opportunities to affect change” have been some of the most rewarding aspects of her career at CSG, Cousineau says. She emphasizes to her staff that things don’t have to be done the way they’ve always been done — there’s room for innovation and new ideas. Above all, everything must be done with excellence, because that’s what members deserve.
“We have to maintain the highest expectation we can,” Cousineau said. “Knowing that staff are there to support members at the same level of high expectation that the members have of their own staff is critical. We have the opportunity to see firsthand the challenges and difficulties that public servants have. We’re not here to judge; we’re here to support them.”
