When the Tide is High
WASHINGTON, Nov. 24, 2002–“I never really wanted to be Jacques Cousteau,” William Brennan confesses.
Appointed deputy assistant secretary for international affairs at the Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) last spring, Brennan’s now working in an agency he says is, “by definition oceanic and atmospheric…. You can’t get more globally focused than that.”
Brennan, married to his hometown sweetheart, Heather, and the father of Will, Tyler and Hayley, has temporarily left his family and Topsham home to ride the tide that’s taken him into the Bush administration. Growing up in Castine with a father who worked at the Maine Maritime Academy, Brennan says that living always by the ocean helped prepare and inspire him to reach greater waters.
“I had spent time working in the Merchant Marine and some time working on commercial fishing vessels,” he says, “and that’s what helped generate my interest in the ocean and in marine resources, which is different than you know, wanting to be Jacques Cousteau.”
Gainfully employed now in the nation’s capital, Brennan is grateful “to be working with people of [NOAA’s] caliber and to be dealing with what are some capstone issues of our time.”
His initial challenge is to develop a coordinated and functional international affairs office, which means lots and lots of traveling. Trying to rise up on the learning curve of certain issues, Brennan is catching on quickly to everything but sleep. Often jet-lagged from the job, Brennan commutes home to see his family every two weeks if he’s lucky. Taking a look at his fall calendar, Brennan recalls how in 12 days he went from Washington to India, Spain and Ireland.
“It’s kind of neat in one respect, but it’s not like I’m going on sightseeing trips,” says the man who represents the United States at frequent international meetings on matters like the conservation of Atlantic tuna and climate change. “I’m not saying I don’t like it, it’s just the nature of it, so for any readers out there who say, ‘This is great, for at the government’s expense this guy gets to go hang out at resorts around the world,’ [it’s not really like that].”
Learning how to live on international time zones, deal with exit taxes and convert currencies are all new to Brennan, but because it’s all still new, he says he finds it fascinating and exciting. In addition, he says, the work is rewarding and he’s practicing the marine policy he’s always hoped to do.
“I’ve been involved with marine education over the years, and I know at the collegiate level, the kids’ interest in the marine world is formed by the images they grew up with, Jacques Cousteau, Flipper or whatever. I had more of a work orientation towards the ocean because of the commercial vessels, the commercial fishing industry and the Merchant Marine. I loved the working waterfront and the activity that’s associated with that-the human relation to the marine environment.”
Brennan’s gone full circle in his laps of employment and says he’s thrilled, “at this stage of my life and career, to have been offered this kind of opportunity to, in essence, come back to a place that I started working for in 1977 at the top of the organization.”
“I started out my career with the [National Marine] Fisheries Service (a branch of NOAA) and now I’m one of the top five people managing this agency, which has a $3.3 billion budget and tens of thousands of employees all around the world,” he says.
After graduating from the University of Maine with a degree in marine biology, he worked on Soviet ships for the Fisheries Service, at laboratories in Sandy Hook, N.J., and Woods Hole, Mass. While working as a scientist on the ships, which he called a “microcosm of society,” he realized that he was interested less in marine science and more in policy, leading him to the University of Rhode Island for a master’s degree in marine policy.
Hired to be the legislative assistant of then-1st District Rep. John McKernan, Brennan handled matters before the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee and eventually addressed other issues, including energy and judiciary, which ultimately made him McKernan’s senior legislative assistant.
“When [McKernan] was elected governor, he gave me the best recommendation that I ever could have received because he asked me to come back to Maine with him and be the commissioner of marine resources…which is basically like a mini-NOAA,” Brennan says.
After working with McKernan for 12 years throughout his terms in Washington and Maine, Brennan moved on to begin his own private marine policy and consulting practice in Portland. During that time he was appointed the Sawyer Professor of Ocean Studies at the Maine Maritime Academy, which gave him the opportunity to research and teach for the academy. He also went back to school to receive his doctorate from the College of Environmental Sciences at the University of Maine last May.
“When I left the commissioner’s job, I had realized that after eight years of managing marine resources in the state of Maine (and the New England area as well) that there were a number of issues that needed to be addressed…. There were gaps in my understanding on some of the issues that really drive fisheries management, the human element.”
Those gaps gave Brennan the momentum to pursue his doctoral degree. He spent the time studying and doing homework with his kids, then in middle and high school, and competing for grades.
“I’d like to think it was beneficial to them as well to realize that education is a long-term experience,” he says. “You shouldn’t look at education as something you finish when you get out of high school or even college. [It’s] something to do throughout your life.”
As he neared completion of his studies, people in the industry approached Brennan and asked him if he was interested in going to Washington and parlaying his background and experience at the state and regional levels into the national level.
“I wanted to get to a higher level. I wanted to look at the policy. I didn’t want to get mired in the trees of running the agency and not be able to look at the forest from a broad perspective,” he says.
When he decided to put his name forward for a high-level position with NOAA, Brennan began a networking campaign. McKernan, members of Congress, friends in Maine’s fishing and political establishments and family members–including his mother-in-law, who previously served as a Republican National Committeewoman–helped put Brennan’s name forward.
“There were people who had trust and faith and experience in me, and I guess they must have had enough respect for what I had done before that they saw it would be worth supporting me,” he says.
“Bill was a great fit from the first time we talked,” says McKernan. “Throughout my public career I needed someone who really understood Merchant Marine issues to be able to adequately represent Maine…he was committed to public policy and actually had experienced working in fisheries and boats.”
McKernan says Brennan’s new job is a “great progression” and that there’s no better way to govern international activities than by applying such real life experience. Brennan, he says, can offer NOAA both the academic approach and the real world approach to understanding and addressing international issues.
Instrumental to his career, Brennan says, have been both McKernan, for his confidence and guidance, and Heather Brennan, for her support and commitment to “manage a family separated like this.”
“It’s difficult to deal with on an emotional level as well as physically to not have him here, but it’s doable and we’re making it work,” Heather says. “He’s getting the support from us up here and support down there [from colleagues and other relatives].”
He also credits fishermen and fishermen’s wives in Maine for helping him gain the understanding of and perspective on what managing fisheries is really all about.
“You don’t manage fish,” he says. “You’re really managing human activity, and consequently you’re managing human behavior.”
Finally, his father, Bill, who “always figured hugely in his life,” had the water-associated career that gave Brennan the ingrained exposure to the ocean, which he says is responsible for taking him to a level where he thinks he can really make a difference.
“If you looked at my resume, it looks like I set out one day to become something, and nothing could be further from the truth,” he says. “It really was a matter of serendipity and happenstance with an ocean-related theme.”
Published in The Bangor Daily News, in Maine.
