MAVERICK , TRAILBLAZER, LEADER New state cabinet member Joseph Wood never took the easy path

By Dwain Hebda

For as long as he can remember, Joseph Wood has felt just a little bit different from the people around him. Adopted into a large family, he felt at times growing up a stranger among siblings, and attending college in diversity-starved Iowa only reinforced how few Black and brown faces there were to mirror his.

Even his political philosophy — a conservative of color — earned him a place in an exclusive club that began in his 20s. And today, in his role as Arkansas Secretary of Transformation and Shared Services, he shepherds a department few people have ever heard of, let alone know what it does.

Yet, after all of this time, being different is precisely the credential that he points to as most essential in his successful career in the corporate world and in public service. Even if it took Wood a little time to realize it himself.

“It was not on my radar — transformation and shared services,” he said. “In fact, I will say even though the governor did her research and said, ‘This is what you’ve done, and that’s what we need,’ I couldn’t initially put two and two together. She said, and I believe it, and she can hire folks with particular skill sets and qualifications, but do they really understand and can they buy into a vision?

“I starting looking back on what I did as deputy secretary of state and as county judge, where I was that change agent, a disruptor asking the question, ‘Why?’ You’re not supposed to ask why in government; this is just how we’ve always done it. Well, that’s not acceptable to the governor. She wanted someone who can come in and help continue the work of transforming government, looking for effective ways to do our business in the state and how to be more efficient.”

Wood’s department grew out of Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s initiative to reorganize state government departments, a process that stalled during the COVID pandemic and subsequent change of administrations following last fall’s gubernatorial elections. Its purview is broad but goes unnoticed by many rank-and-file citizens, focused as it is on back-office elements such as HR and benefits functions, new employee onboarding and maintaining information systems to support the work of all other state offices.

Dry though that may seem at times compared to overhaul- ing Arkansas’s education system or luring a major new manufacturer here, it’s nonetheless a critical part of how government operates and functions in service to its constituents. Even if, as is often the case, the public isn’t aware of it.

“Transformation and shared services has the responsibility of helping to reshape and reform state government by looking at sharing services,” he said. “We look at redundancies, duplication and trying to narrow and cut that out for cost savings to the citizens of the state. It also brings nimbleness in how we do state government.

“For me, it’s about being responsive and showing the value. What is it that the citizen is saying they need, and what is our process to help departments fill that need? Are we thinking outside the box or do we need a new box?

“At the same time, continuous improvement means that whatever we come up with to streamline and be more efficient and more responsive, we’ve still got to make sure at the end that we understand who the recipient of that is. Is it an employee or is it a citizen, and are we satisfying them? Are we getting them what they need?”

Wood admits being mere months into the new role means much of what occupies his time now is exploratory, but his resume leaves no doubt as to the capacity he has for affecting meaningful change within organizations at the highest level. Among his stops on the way to Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ cabinet were stints as head of international recruitment for Walmart and as deputy secretary of state, where he forged a reputation for cutting government waste, reducing red tape for businesses, managing budgets and improving services.

After that, he served two terms as Washington County Judge, where he developed and improved county buildings, roads and bridges; created a crisis stabilization unit; presided over the quorum court; and generally rode herd over the third-largest county in the state and one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation. During that period, he also served as chairman of Community Economic and Workforce Development for the 3,100 counties that comprise the National Association of Counties.

“Where we are now is, it’s still a discovery,” he said. “I’m coming in here and trying to unravel what has already been created and done. Some of that work had already started, and now that we’ve gone from 42 different departments down to 15, we’re looking at what people have identified in each respective department as ways to share some services to be more streamlined.

“Then, where there was output, the question now becomes have you started executing some of those? If not, are they even still a priority? What was a priority back when you turned it in may be very different given some of the direction of the current governor.”

If it all seems very chaotic, then chaos fits Wood like a welltailored suit. Nothing in his demeanor suggests panic or impatience, but neither is there an equivocating timbre to his voice.

“Gov. Sanders and I get a chance to work with a fresh slate. We’re looking at some of the things going on in the Department of Commerce, for example, where they can share some services and achieve some efficiencies. Those things may not work with the Department of Labor, but they might work with the Department of Education. I get a chance to work with all of them, which is a unique and pretty cool role, to participate and work with all my colleagues.”

Wood’s personal backstory is also a study in managing the unknown into meaningful order. It began sometime shortly before a brutal 8-degree night in his native Chicago. Caesar Johnson, on his way to work where he was a supervisor at the Campbell’s Soup factory, happened to notice a shoebox left on the steps of an apartment building. Something made him nudge the box and when it moved back, he looked closer to find a baby inside wrapped in a thin blanket. Johnson snatched the box from the stoop and, awakening his sleeping wife, warmed the infant and waited for the cops.

Not much came from the inquiry — no one saw anything, and the snow yielded no tracks — so it was unlikely anything would actually come of the discovery. Still, when one of the officers tucked the box under his arm to leave, he had enough humanity to say, “Thank you; you saved the kid’s life,” before disappearing into the night of March 20, 1965.

Wood spent the next decade at St. Vincent’s Infant Asylum, a local orphanage. At age 10, he was placed in foster care with Loretta and Sylvester Wood — she an educator and he a construction worker — but from the word go, his mother made up her mind to adopt him. When the marriage fell apart, Loretta took her four children from the Rosemont neighborhood to Chicago’s notorious Jeffrey Manor and set about the daunting task of providing for her offspring.

“People moved into Jeffery Manor because housing prices were so much more affordable then,” Wood said. “It was plagued with a lot of drugs and gangs. My mother ended up telling me, ‘You have to do something to keep your brothers and sister from getting caught up in the gangs and drugs. I’ve got to pick up a second job.’ She was a teacher and she did some work in the evening.”

A mere teenager, Wood at first didn’t know what he could do to fulfill his mother’s instructions, but Loretta was relentless.

“Mom, she loved us, she was crazy about her kids.” he said. “She was always saying, ‘You could be anything. You could do anything.’ I couldn’t have had a more supportive, more motivating encourager than my mother.”

At last, Wood formed a teen group called Teens Together to provide his siblings a safe place to go and hang out. Once parents in that neighborhood heard about the club, the once-abandoned Wood discovered just how many honorary brothers and sisters he had.

“The local church gave me keys to the church’s big fellowship hall. So, any time I needed to pull kids together and meet, that’s what they did,” he said. “I remember, it grew so fast and grew so big because so many parents in that neighborhood of Jeffery Manor were really trying to figure out where can they take their kids to keep them safe and keep them from doing something destructive.

“To this day, I’ll get a call from some of those guys who remember that club. I had no idea it made such an impact; I was doing it because Mama told me to do it. But she also told me, ‘For the rest of your life, you need to be engaged in where you live because that’s where you live.’ And that’s what I’ve done my whole life.”

His against-the-current conservatism began when, on a break home from Iowa State University, he was shocked at how little had been improved in his old neighborhood. Once home for good, he started getting involved in local school board elections but to little avail — and his frustration grew. Finally, when an incumbent politician was invited to the front of church during services to make an appeal for votes, his anger boiled over.

“I was so mad that you would stop church to do that,” Wood said. “Then, I was even more mad at the guy who came in, because this same guy we keep electing, he’s passing the same broken buildings and dilapidated streets and yet we keep voting that same type of guy in.”

One night, as he worked his job at the downtown Chicago Hiltonhead Towers, Wood railed to a regular about what was happening.

“He was an older Black man, and he was like, ‘Whoa, whoa. Slow down. You’re talking to me like I’m a Democrat,’” Wood said. “I looked at him like, ‘What are you talking about? Everybody in Chicago’s a Democrat; Black, white, old, young, everybody.’ He said, ‘No, no. I’m a Republican. In fact, I’m a thirdgeneration Republican. I watch what you do in the community and then you go and vote against everything you believe in and stand for on Election Day. Let me help you understand what a Republican is because I know you don’t know anything about it.’

“As he started talking, the scales fell off my eyes. I’m like, ‘Whoa. That lines up with what I believe and what I do.’ Then after he’d shared all that, I switched parties. That was in 1988, and I haven’t looked back since.”

Today, Wood is still acting on his mother’s directive, guided by his conservative conscience. In addition to his job in the public sector, he’s also heavily invested in community service work. He’s a state board member for The Call and an advisory board member for Opportunity Arkansas, and he formerly served in leadership positions for KIPP Delta Public Schools, Sister Cities International and the Chancellor’s Diversity Advisory Board at the University of Arkansas. He’s also authored two children’s books, “Saving Joey” and “Adopting Joey,” based on his unique origins story.

“I definitely want to be seen as what I call a lighthouse; I want to be a beacon of hope and inspiration, if you will, not just for the community in which I came out of back in Chicago or where I was a judge in Washington County, but to the entire state,” he said.

“I will always have a foot in working with the communities in which I live, because that’s what I’ve always done. Writing books, speaking in church, going into schools and speaking and reading to kids, I will always have that as part of my involvement. People can connect through that and then say, ‘You know what? I never thought about that; I think I can do that.’ Or they may be like, ‘If he can do that, surely I can do that! Oh, my word!’ And that’s fine. That is all fine.”