Mr. Carter is a veteran social-service administrator with nearly 20 years of experience at the local, state and federal level. His track record is one of successful innovation in the delivery of entitlement programs, homeless services and prevention, child care services, adult protective services and teen pregnancy prevention.
Prior to coming to Arizona, he was Director of the Department of Human Services for Washington, D.C. for 3 1/2 years. He also served as Deputy Administrator for the Food Stamp Program with the United States Department of Agriculture and was Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Social Services.
During his federal tenure, he managed the $30 billion federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and implemented the program’s provision of emergency food stamps for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
He also served as Director of the Federal Office of Community Services (OCS), where he managed the development of a new construct for the delivery of human services in the United States.
In Virginia, his program was instrumental in an effort to bring more citizens to self-sufficiency. In his first five years, more than 25,000 public assistance recipients obtained gainful employment, earning in excess of $200 million. During his tenure, Virginia’s public assistance rolls were reduced by more than half, from an all-time high of 74,000 families to a 30-year low of 31,000.
Mr. Carter has long been a voice for transformation of the nation’s social safety net from and aggregation of single-purpose programs to an integrated, person-centric model focused on growing the capacity of the socially and economically challenged in our society. His work in the George W. Bush Administration and the District of Columbia have allowed him to lay the foundation for this transformative model, work he continues in the Department of Economic Security in Arizona.
Mr. Carter has testified before Congress, appeared on several public affairs programs including; Crossfire, and BET’s Our Voices, and shared his views on America’s human services challenges before an international assembly.