Steuart Pittman

County Executive
Anne Arundel County

As Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman has several principles that guide his administration — create economic opportunities for everyone, restore trust in government, advocate for health and wellness and implement smart growth policies.

Elected in 2018 in his first bid for public office, the University of Chicago graduate worked as a community organizer in the Midwest and later coordinated national programs for two large nonprofits focusing on housing and reform.

What is your proudest professional accomplishment?

My career is really four separate lives and the achievements in each are so different from the others that I won’t say that one is my proudest. As a county executive, however, I am most proud of having built a team. Their skills, their backgrounds and their personalities are diverse, but through pandemic, tornado, flood and political chaos, they have figured out how to operate this ancient machine we call government and to deliver services to the people we all love even when it was sputtering and squeaking. Three years in, the machine is finally humming.

What’s is the most important life lesson you learned?

Listen. I used to train horses professionally and progress always depended on building trust. The key was the title to the blog I used to write, “Listen To The Horse.” My wife says I shouldn’t compare people to horses, but they’re not that different. If I listen well enough to either, there’s a path to trust. As a kid, I liked animals a lot more than people and we all know it’s hard to listen to something you don’t like. What I’ve learned, with some practice over the years, is how to like most people. That makes me able to listen and it’s the key to progress.