New Los Alamos County Council Chair Rick Reiss

Staff Report

The Los Alamos County Council this evening selected Councilor Rick Reiss to serve as its chair for 2016 and Councilor Susan O’Leary vice chair. 

Reiss was appointed by Council Sept. 6, 2012 to fill a vacant unexpired term and elected in 2014 for another term. He is a local small businessman and real estate developer.

Reiss has lived in Los Alamos since 1993. He was raised in southern New Mexico, received his Bachelors degree from New Mexico State University and is married to Deborah Reiss. They have two grown children, Rikki and Jason. The children graduated from Los Alamos High School and are successful in their careers in Texas.

Reiss is active in Kiwanis, is a graduate of Leadership Los Alamos, a former co-chair, with his wife, for United Way, and a former board member of the Los Alamos Public Schools Foundation. His term on Council ends Dec. 31, 2018. Email Reiss at rick.reiss@lacnm.us.

New Los Alamos County Council Vice Chair Susan O’Leary

O’Leary earned a B.A. from Georgetown University and an MBA from New York University. After holding other jobs in publishing, she joined The Washington Post in 1992 and served as the vice president of advertising from 2001 until 2005. In that role, her job was to align the individual efforts of her 500 person department to achieve the company’s strategic goals and to meet annual revenue goals of $750 million.

She led her team to grow revenue, to improve the customer experience and to control costs by upgrading technology, by replacing decades-old operations processes, and by creating new print and online products. She also served on the Executive Board of the newspaper, participating in strategic planning, policy development and resource allocation.

O’Leary, her husband and their two elementary school aged children moved to Los Alamos from a barrier island on the North Carolina coast in 2011. Since arriving in Los Alamos, she has volunteered extensively in the community.

O’Leary believes that success for any organization involves having clear, meritorious goals and having the disciple to act consistently in support of those goals.  As a member of the Council, O’Leary is leveraging her business experience to help build a more effective County enterprise by: 

• Contributing to strategic planning efforts that reflect the priorities of the community and that will effectively guide the County Government;
• Contributing to clear policy that supports strategic planning goals on a day-to-day basis;
• Supporting budget priorities that align spending with strategic planning goals;
• Evaluating and improving the County’s management effectiveness as an enterprise;
• Improving the County’s public engagement with community stakeholders; and
• Strengthening public trust in government through increased two-way communication and other transparency efforts.

Email O’Leary at susan.oleary@lacnm.us.