Lynch promotes 2 execs, hires policy director

PROVIDENCE – Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch announced several appointments this weekend including the hiring of Jeff Guimond, a top aide to former Lt. Gov. Charles J. Fogarty, as his director of policy and legislation.
Also announced by Lynch on Sunday were the promotion of John Palangio to chief of staff and Special Assistant Attorney General Parisa Beers to director of the Consumer Protection Unit, the post Palangio held before his promotion.
Guimond comes to the Attorney General’s Office from The Mayforth Group, with which he had worked from January through Oct. 5, authoring an economic development study for the Town of Middletown and helping secure state and federal funding for the North Providence-based Fogarty Center. He joined Fogarty’s office in 1999, rising to become director of legislative and governmental affairs, a post he held from 2003 to 2006.
A South Kingstown native, Guimond is a 1998 graduate of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and went on to receive a master of science and public affairs in 2005 from the McCormack Institute of Policy Studies at UMass-Boston.
Palangio, who headed the Consumer Protection Unit from 2003 to 2005, had served in a variety of executive level positions in the Secretary of State’s Office from 1995 to 2002, and previously had served as a legislative budget analyst for the House Finance Committee.
A Providence native now living in North Kingstown, he graduated from Rhode Island College in 1988.
Beers has worked for the Attorney General’s Office since 2001, when she joined the Civil Division’s Government Litigation Unit. She will continue to work with that unit as a member of Lynch’s lead-paint litigation team, in addition to fulfilling her duties as head of consumer protection. She previously had served as a law clerk to R.I. Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Williams, and had been a member of the New Lawyers Committee of the Rhode Island Bar Association.
An alumna of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, she earned an M.S. in special education from Syracuse University before graduating from Northeastern University School of Law in 2001.
“I look forward to positive contributions from Jeff in the important capacities he will be handling for me, and to continued excellent service from John and Parisa in the roles they will fill in my second term as attorney general,” Lynch said in a statement. “All three understand and appreciate the powers and responsibilities of this Office. I am confident that they will work hard to fulfill our mandate of trying to improve the quality of life of all Rhode Islanders.”