Carcieri names Brian Stern as new chief of staff

BRIAN P. STERN, executive director of the R.I. Department of Administration, will become the governor's chief of staff March 1. /
BRIAN P. STERN, executive director of the R.I. Department of Administration, will become the governor's chief of staff March 1. /

Gov. Donald L. Carcieri yesterday named Brian P. Stern his new chief of staff, effective March 1. He replaces Jeffrey Grybowski, who is leaving state service become a partner at the Providence law firm Hinkley, Allen & Snyder LLP.

Stern, of East Greenwich, has been the executive director of the R.I. Department of Administration since January 2005.

“Brian has repeatedly proved himself as one of the most talented administrators in state government,” Carcier said. “As the Executive Director of the Department of Administration, and as a former legal counsel at the Department of Business Regulation, [he] understands how state government operates and how it can operate better.”

As executive director of the Department of Administration, Stern acts as the state purchasing agent and oversees legal services within the executive branch and the Governor’s Fiscal Fitness program. He joined the department in March 2004, as its executive counsel and administrator of legal services. He previously had worked at the R.I. Department of Business Regulation, as deputy chief of legal services and before that, as chief securities examiner.

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Before entering state service, Stern had been a partner in a private law practice in New York City from 1991 to 1998, and an adjunct professor at the Roger Williams University School of Law from 2001 to 2005. He received his B.A. in government and public policy from Clark University in 1988, and his J.D. from Brooklyn Law School in 1991.

“I will continue to strive to make government more effective, efficient and responsive to the needs of all Rhode Islanders,” Stern said, adding that “as a father of three young children, it is important that we do our best to assure Rhode Island prospers.”

A native of Cumberland and a resident of Providence, Jeffrey Grybowski, a Cumberland native and Providence resident, has been Carcieri’s chief of staff since May and previously served as his deputy chief of staff and policy director. “Now that the Governor’s successful re-election is past,” he said, “it is time for me to return to my original career path in the private practice of law.”

Before joining the Carcieri administration, he had practiced law with Hinkley, Allen & Snyder from 2001 to 2003 and the New York firm of Sullivan & Cromwell from 1999 to 2001, and had served as a law clerk to U.S. District Court Chief Judge Ronald R. Lagueux. A 1993 public policy graduate of Brown University, Grybowski received his J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law in 1998.

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