Bay Area Pioneer - Charles Perl

Charles Perl

Home LC: Minnesota

AIESEC Experience Highlights: IC’88 OC; AIESEC US 88/89 VP Finance, Western RVP; 1989 Traineeship Taiwan

Places Lived: New York, NY; San Francisco, CA; Montpellier, France; Taipei, Taiwan

Footprints: Too many, let me count...

Contact me for: Public sector career advice

Contact: LinkedIn

With a public sector career spanning the past 25 years, Charles currently serves as the Deputy Chief Financial Officer at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC).

Charles’ public sector service began with a Masters in Public Administration from NYU and has evolved over the years with varied roles at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the City of Palo Alto, CA and the City and County of San Francisco. Charles lives in San Francisco, CA with his husband of 27 years and their miniature schnauzer Ziggy.

AIESEC Path and Beyond

How did your AIESEC experience influence your career and beyond?

My AIESEC experience helped me figure out who I wanted to be as my authentic self. As a young person, AIESEC helped instill important core values which continue to guide me today, including multiculturalism, diversity, inclusion and the all-important overarching wanderlust.

I see this in my choices on where I have lived over the years, including New York and San Francisco as diverse metropolitan areas. Interestingly I also see these values in the work teams and public programs I have managed. Currently, I am a core member of my agency’s Racial Equity team, which is developing and implementing an action plan for change and I am sure my AIESEC principles will help guide my work.

What’s the one thing you wish you learned before graduating from AIESEC?

Understanding our life journey is just getting underway as AIESECers and having the benefit of today’s “rear view mirror”, I wish I was more comfortable with my authentic self sooner. AIESEC took me on an incredible learning and growing journey that is completely outside my comfort zone as an introvert, and helped me face incredible challenges related to public speaking and social engagement.

I never really felt comfortable in my own skin during those developmental years. Perhaps it was the incredible learning/growing environment I was in, or perhaps my introverted personality was flagging caution. Don’t get me wrong, my years at the LC, ICC, NC, and traineeship were filled with amazing experiences with the most interesting people. If I had to do it again, I would choose to be more outgoing, have a bit more fun and perhaps not have been so risk averse. I worked so hard to avoid mistakes - that I ultimately have made many times over since joining the “real world” - that I think I sacrificed figuring out who I wanted to be as a person.

Quest and Finding Purpose

How and when did you find your purpose? How does it connect to your role in the public office today?

I didn’t have a clear view of my career path during my undergrad (5 time major change), however my time in AIESEC helped me connect to the community in ways that helped me eventually find my path. AIESEC’s exchange of ideas via the traineeship led me to a role at AFS International, a high school student exchange organization where students are hosted with families. This work, in turn, developed a curiosity with the public sector. I audited a couple classes at NYU’s business school - and one of those had a Public Finance focus on municipal bonds. That was my light bulb moment. Connecting the investment marketplace to public infrastructure financing (and all the good that does) led to me pursuing a Master’s program in Public Administration.

My first public sector role was as a financial analyst at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Working on the museum’s special exhibitions, I could see how my work helped connect the public to art programs. My current SFPUC role helps bring clean and reliable drinking water to the San Francisco Bay Area, where that water is crucial for healthy residents and a strong regional economy. Civic pride, specifically working to better the community where I live, has always been the main driver of my public service career. I encourage all of you to think about your own “lightbulb moments” as you walk your career path.

Many AIESECers mentioned that they had this power of invincibility and passion at AIESEC, but they’ve never felt it again after getting their real world jobs. Have you felt this way? What is your advice?

In looking back, I remember strongly believing the work we were doing in AIESEC was changing the world. I do think fostering a diverse and multicultural economy led to much of the economic growth we have experienced over the past 30 years. Recent trends towards nationalism, while disheartening, only means the work of AIESEC and sharing the human experience across borders is not yet done.

We all owe it to our collective legacies and the world we want for our kids to redouble efforts to strengthen the bonds that tie us together. Find that passion anew by volunteering with a non-profit, school or local agency that supports your community. Strengthening your local community provides rewards that you will see every day.

Learning Behind the Scene - A Covid Year at Public Office

As a leader who has led the SF public office in a challenging year, what is your biggest learning you want to share?

A little known fact: the public service sector got us through the pandemic. Frontline workers, oftentimes public health staff did a lot of the heavy lifting, but there is also a little known role called “disaster service workers” who were the muscle behind the effort. All public service employees are required to respond to emergencies when called upon as a disaster service worker. All major metropolitan cities declared health emergency disasters and called upon public service employees to support the response effort, first in testing and medical response and then more recently with the vaccine distribution. Thanks for supporting a strong public sector, who can step up when needed especially during those tough times.

As a leader in the SF public office, if you have a message or call to action for our members (who are all Bay Area residents), what would that message be?

Celebrate resilience! Resilience is defined as: the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties and toughness.

We all had an extraordinary amount of the unexpected tossed our way over the past 18 months. I can’t remember how many times I referred to problem solving as building an airplane as its flying…. But we bent to the unexpected, adapted to the new norms of living, and learned how to keep up with the ever changing public health rules. We all became very resilient as we recovered from the many difficulties we faced each day. Let's celebrate that resiliency effort and apply that to other parts of our post-pandemic lives. Perhaps we travel less for work because we’ve learned how to communicate remotely. Or perhaps we continue to shop locally to help rebuild the local economy and put people back to work. Whatever it is, we should look for that silver lining to help guide where we go from here.