Right Here: A global journey brings Elaine Zelmanov to the center of Pittsburgh
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Brain gain: Elaine Zelmanov, chief of staff for City Council member Patrick Dowd.
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Elaine Zelmanov had no experience in government or politics when she and Patrick Dowd stumbled upon each other a year ago.
Mr. Dowd, a Pittsburgh councilman, was fresh off a stint as a school board member and entering his first term on City Council. Ms. Zelmanov was working as an Internet librarian at Vivisimo, a company that helps businesses and governments build search engines.
"I've worked in lots of different kinds of places," she said. "The newness wasn't terribly scary."
Ms. Zelmanov, 31, was exempted from the 20-something requirement of the column for this reason: "Lots of different kinds of places" is a bit of an understatement.
Her parents immigrated to the United States in 1977 from Minsk, then part of the Soviet bloc and now the capital of Belarus. She grew up in St. Louis, coincidentally where Mr. Dowd was raised.
She earned her bachelor's degree in foreign service from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., before spending a year in Japan teaching middle school English.
She then moved to England to pursue a master's degree in political thought and intellectual history. After completing her first master's, she moved to San Francisco and worked as a fact-checker for Mother Jones magazine.
It was only then that Ms. Zelmanov moved to Pittsburgh to get a master's in library science from the University of Pittsburgh, met her husband and decided to stay.
She's been here for five years and, despite her extensive travels, doesn't intend to leave.
"It's kind of funny to me that I ended up in Pittsburgh," she said. "I never would have guessed that this was the place that would be home."
Ms. Zelmanov and her husband, Ryan Hopkins, a lawyer, live in Shadyside.
"We were able to buy a house in Pittsburgh, which we never would have been able to do in San Francisco or D.C."
As a nonnative, Ms. Zelmanov shows an appreciation of Pittsburgh that a lot of lifelong residents lack. "Pittsburgh is constantly surprising me. Just when you think you've got something figured out, you scratch at the surface and there's more beneath it," she said.
She marveled at how she was able to land a job as chief of staff without any experience -- or connections.
"In another city, would this even be possible?" she asked. "I wasn't connected to anybody."
And though she's impressed with all that Pittsburgh has to offer for a city of its size, she's not blind to its problems.
She says that one of Pittsburgh's biggest issues is the availability of jobs outside of the booming industries of health care and education. Even though she loves her position as Mr. Dowd's chief of staff, it's not what she came here to do.
"I came to Pittsburgh to become a librarian, and it was tough to stay here and work as a librarian," she said.
Though the city has its downsides, one thing it doesn't have, she says, is "a marketing problem."
"I think everyone knows Pittsburgh is a great place to live. The New York Times tells us every six months what a great place this is," she said, referring to two recent stories in which the paper raves about traveling in the city and thriving during an economic recession.
"[Pittsburgh] has everything going for it. We have natural assets, we have beautiful housing stock. We have a history of innovation and entrepreneurship," she said.
"It's not going to be New York or San Francisco, but it's better that way."
First Published January 16, 2009 12:00 am
