Dr. Heidi Welsch has been formally approved as the new Dakota County Manager after the Dakota County Board of Commissioners approved Welsch’s employment agreement on Tuesday, July 23. Welsch will be the first woman to head the county and will begin as County Manager Sept. 3, 2024.
Welsch previously worked as Olmstead County Administrator since 2017 and before that worked in Dakota County as Director of the Office of Planning and Analysis and then as the Deputy Director of the Employment and Economic Assistance Department.
“It means so much to come home to my home organization,” said Welsch. She credits Dakota County as the place where she “grew up professionally.”
That previous experience with not only some of the bodies within Dakota County, but the staff that compose them was one of the selling points of bringing Welsch back to Dakota County.
“Counties in general, and Dakota County is no different, are so broad in terms of what they do. And when you have a job as a policy person, you really get a taste for all of the different areas of the county so that set me up to understand counties really well,” said Welsch.
Welsch’s approval comes after a search of more than 50 candidates for a new County Manager that began after former County Manager Matt Smith retired in May of this year.
“I know the staff is excited for Heidi to lead us into the future,” said Commissioner Mary Hamann-Roland. The board echoed Hammann-Roland excitement for the county moving forward with Welsch at the helm.
For Welsch the future of Dakota County means addressing issues like workforce shortages, providing services to a changing and more diverse population and applying new technologies while maintaining county security.
Welsch’s approval comes mere days after cybersecurity company CrowdStrike distributed a faulty update to security software that brought airports, hospitals, corporations and even local counties to a standstill. While Dakota County was not affected, many Minnesota counties were, including Ramsey and Hennepin.
According to Chief Public Relations Officer of Hennepin County Carolyn Marinan, “The outage did impact a significant number of employee laptops and applications. IT either remotely remedied those issues or handled in-person. […] Staff were mitigating the issue by 2 a.m. and by early morning all major production systems were up and available. I would say there are some lingering issues but very minor.”