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ARC’s Anna Roach on metro Atlanta: ‘There’s something for everybody here’ BY MARIA SAPORTA For Anna Roach, being executive director of the Atlanta Regional Commission is the job she dreamed of getting. When she was working at Fulton County — first as chief strategy officer and then as chief operating officer — her boss, Dick Anderson, asked her to name her dream job. “In 2016, I told Dick my dream job would be to run ARC,” Roach said in a recent twohour interview at the Peachtree Center space that houses ARC. “I could zoom out and look at how things should work and rethink how government and public entities can deliver better outcomes.” At Fulton County, so many issues she encountered didn’t stop at the county line — homelessness, housing, aging and youth, transportation and infrastructure. “It’s about looking at these issues across jurisdictional lines,” Roach said. “I knew
Anna Roach at the main entrance to the Atlanta Regional Commission’s offices. (Photo by Maria Saporta)
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there was a magic in being able to zoom out and take a look at social and infrastructure issues across the different jurisdictions.” ARC is a federally-designated metropolitan planning organization for the 20-county Atlanta region. It also is the state-designated regional commission for the 11-county Atlanta region. Anderson, Fulton’s county manager, remembered their conversation about her dream job. So, when Doug Hooker an-
nounced last year he would be retiring as executive director, Anderson encouraged Roach to go for it. “I have spent seven years working with Anna, and I have an enormous amount of respect for her,” Anderson said. “She has a great understanding of the issues facing metropolitan Atlanta. She also has the ability to make the complex simple. It’s a place where she can bring all her skills to bear.” In her first interview since taking the helm at ARC last month in a transition pe-
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