Charlotte Golar Richie Bio

The Cabinet Chief of Housing for the City of Boston, Charlotte Golar Richie, advises the Mayor on policy, legislation, community relations and coordinates the Mayor’s local housing advisory panel. She also manages the Department of Neighborhood Development (DND) as the Director and oversees the city’s federal entitlement grants, which provide funding for housing, commercial and human services program.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino appointed Charlotte Golar Richie to his Cabinet in 1999. Ms. Richie served as State Representative of Boston’s Fifth Suffolk District prior to her appointment to the Mayor’s cabinet. Elected to the House of Representatives in November 1994, she was appointed House Chair of the Joint Committee on Housing and Urban Development in 1996 marking the first time in over three decades that a first-term legislator was appointed to a leadership position in the Massachusetts Legislature.

A former U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya, Ms. Richie has worked as a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency and as a newspaper and television reporter. Ms. Richie holds a B.A. in English from Rutgers University and an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University. She is currently working on her M.B.A. from Suffolk University’s Sawyer School of Management. She is married to Winston Richie, a senior marketing director with John Hancock; they live in Dorchester with their two daughters.