Jim Gomes, Class of 1975 - A life of advocacy

By Jim H. Smith

When Jim Gomes ’75 was growing up in Lowell, Massachusetts, his parents offered him some pithy advice. “They told me not to embark upon a career in politics, because it was too unpredictable, and not to become a lawyer, because there were too many lawyers already,” he says.

But Gomes—who last fall was named the first director of the Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts—says he was “fascinated by elections from an early age.” Arriving at Trinity in the early 1970s, he encountered “a high level of student activism,” and says, “I realized this is the stuff I care about.”

So the political science major spent his four years at Trinity planning “a career in government, politics, and public service” that would be neither the legal career nor the political career his parents had envisioned. For help shaping his vision, he credits his wife, Rose Udics ’75, a classmate he met in his first year, and Professor Clyde McKee, his adviser, who inspired him in his Constitutional Law class and helped him obtain a formative semester-long internship with the Connecticut General Assembly.

After earning his J.D. degree from Harvard Law School and a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 1979, he joined the Boston law firm Hale and Dorr. There, as a young litigator, he says he honed a skill that has served him well throughout his career. “As an advocate, it’s important to be able to effectively marshal facts and use them to argue for your client’s position,” he says.

Newly-elected Lieutenant Governor John Kerry picked Gomes as his chief of staff in 1983. Gomes remained with Kerry through his two-year tenure and served as his policy director during his first successful U. S. Senate campaign.

In 1989, he became Massachusetts’ Undersecretary of Environmental Affairs. As the Dukakis administration’s chief representative in negotiations with legislative, industry, and citizens’ groups, he helped enact the state’s Toxics Use Reduction Act in 1989.

But in 1991 he left government to become, first, chief operating officer of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, an international organization of public interest entrepreneurs based in Washington, D.C, and, two years later, president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts (ELM).

Gomes remained with ELM 14 years. During that time, he helped found the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance, a collective of seven organizations that collaborate to promote economic growth and affordable housing in the context of more efficient land use and natural resource protection. The Environmental Protection Association presented him with its Environmental Merit Award in 1998 for his advocacy and leadership. At his departure from ELM, the organization honored Gomes with a tribute event featuring Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, former governor Michael Dukakis, and Senator John Kerry.

Last October, he accepted the challenge of running the newly created Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise, which conducts research on a wide range of public policy issues. The institute has spent part of its first year researching why some schools serving disadvantaged inner city populations produce exceptional results while fully 50 percent of students in large urban districts don’t graduate.

“It’s a disgrace,” says Gomes, “and we hope to make a change. We actually know a lot about how to educate urban high school kids. We have done it successfully, and we need to learn from the successes and repeat them on a large scale.”

To that challenge, Gomes brings a lifetime of pertinent experience. “To be a public policy advocate, you need the right combination of patience and impatience,” he says. “If you’re not somewhat impatient, you won’t dedicate yourself to making change happen. But if you’re too impatient, you’ll get frustrated and burn out. Progress comes about deliberately.”