Naomi Mitchell · 2016 Honoree

Naomi Mitchell was born in rural Arkansas but at 3 moved to the San Francisco Bay area where she grew up in a large family that she sees as having set the pattern of her life. As a result of her parents’ divorce and remarriages she was one of nine siblings with two mothers and two fathers. “Nobody used the word ‘step’ or ‘half’ about anyone. We were all just family,” she says. She did a lot of “boy things” like hanging out in the junk yard, playing marbles and walking on fences, becoming an accomplished swimmer and kickball player. She was also everyone’s favorite babysitter, secretary of the student body at her high school, president of her senior class, and a California youth delegate to a White House conference in 1958. The pattern was set early – sustained by a tightly-knit family, Naomi was enterprising, capable, and community oriented. 

Part-time jobs with the Oakland City Recreation Center and as a Job Corps dorm counselor in a male youth residential vocation program led Naomi to work as a regional grants manager with the Office of Economic Opportunity in the heady early days of the War on Poverty. In 1972, married and with two preschool children, Naomi came to Washington for a position coordinating the Office of Management and Budget with regional federal offices and state and local governments. By the time Naomi opted for an “early out” from federal service in 1995 she had spent twelve years in the office of the Secretary of Defense as a senior management analyst.

Newly retired at the age of 55, Naomi felt “like a trust fund kid,” for the first time in her life able to think more about doing things for others than about paying the bills. A few years earlier, as a divorced empty nester, she had moved from Northwest to Capitol Hill, intentionally choosing a block with “the haves on one side, the have nots on the other.” She made it her business to get to know everyone and to find ways to bring people together – block parties, holiday dinners, picnics. In 2004 she joined Tommy Wells’s campaign for City Council; when he won Wells coaxed her out of retirement to be his community liaison, assisting residents in resolving issues with city agencies with particular concern for seniors and vulnerable families, and making sure information flowed to and from ANCs and a plethora of other civic associations. When Charles Allen, who Naomi describes as “a perfect example of a committed public servant,” succeeded Wells on the Council he convinced Naomi to continue in that role with him. When her government issue cell phone rings on weekends and late at night Naomi always answers it. As someone who, in her own view, has had a particularly rich and full life, she sees this less as work than as an opportunity to serve her extended family in the community.

Naomi Mitchell has two grown children, Nona and James, and 3 grandchildren.