INNOVATING TO STOP COVID Tapped to coordinate contact tracing for the city of Baltimore, Brendan Hellweg ’14 helped create a model program that generates jobs as it protects public health BY KEVIN MARKEY
B
altimore natives are quick to list the city’s emblematic attractions: quirky neighborhoods, great regional food (crab cakes! pit beef!), water taxis, the Ravens and Orioles. Brendan Hellweg ’14 has a transplant’s appreciation for all those things, but what really drew him to Charm City was its welldocumented challenges. Offered an opportunity to grapple with them after graduating from Yale in 2018, he jumped at the chance. “I’d never been to Baltimore before interviewing for the job,” he says. “I came because I knew the work would have immediate impact. Efficient city governments are places where you can directly deliver meaningful services.” As special project manager and data lead in the Mayor’s Office of Performance and Innovation, Hellweg helps devise and implement data-driven solutions to stubborn urban issues like poverty and public safety. Until last spring he spent much of his time figuring out ways to keep at-risk young people from entering the criminal justice system. “Then,” he says, “the world changed.” Anxiously watching as the pandemic clobbered the East Coast,
28 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL
