Most young people get their first job babysitting for a friend, mowing the lawn for a neighbor or working at a local restaurant or retail store.
At age 16, Maura Sullivan got her first job working for the mayor of the biggest county in Tennessee, Shelby County Mayor Bill Morris.
"I got to see how government worked and how local government can make a difference and I fell in love with it," Sullivan recalls.
Two decades and a half dozen jobs later, Sullivan is still working in local government. But at the end of last year, after working in a variety of planning, court and local government administrative posts in Memphis, Sullivan agreed to leave her hometown, cross the state and take a top job at Chattanooga City Hall for Mayor Andy Berke.
Sullivan is chief operating officer for the city of Chattanooga, responsible for working with city department heads to help coordinate functions, implement the mayor's programs and help oversee and direct the 6,000 employees in Chattanooga's city government.
"Not only does Maura have decades of experience in municipal government, she has a passion for service," Berke said when he announced her appointment in December 2015.
Berke met Sullivan while he was a state senator and she was assistant superintendent for planning at Shelby County schools. Both worked on legislation regarding the merger of Memphis and Shelby County schools. As head of planning for the 47,000-student Shelby County school system, Sullivan says she was able to use her business, legal and public administration training to help the district grow while conforming with court-ordered desegregation mandates.
Berke was impressed with Sullivan, and last fall he was looking for a new chief operating officer after Brent Goldberg resigned - the third person in the job during the Berke administration to leave City Hall for another job in the private sector.
In college, Sullivan pursued a degree in business administration and law, majoring in international relations and public administration. But Sullivan says she is drawn to government work and what it can do for people.
"Working on the bottom line just didn't seem to do it for me," she says.
For now, Sullivan's husband, Jeff, is still working out of Memphis but his travels across the Southeast bring him often to Chattanooga. Their 12-year-old son, Jack, is a student at Normal Park Elementary.
"There are so many fantastic things happening in Chattanooga it's just a great time to be in this position," Sullivan says. "With its Gig fiber and innovation district, I really believe that Chattanooga has set itself up to show the next way of how we do business."