Hadley offers lessons in business, parenting in bid for City Council
Suzanne Hadley. Photo
Suzanne Hadley walked away from a thriving business career two decades ago to focus her energies on being a mother. She always envisioned one day returning to that career, but now, 23 years and four grown children later, Hadley has made a choice that sometimes even surprises her.
She’s running for City Council in the March 5 election. And she’s not apologetic about her time as a stay-at-home mom — quite the opposite, she believes it is directly relevant experience. Last week, at a candidate forum at American Martyrs Church, Hadley said that being a mother often means practicing fiscal restraint. “Sometimes,” she said, “you just have to say no.”
She again referenced this experience while arguing for one of her central campaign promises, which is to keep the city’s fire department rather than contracting the service out to LA County.
“Again, I go back to being the mother of four kids,” she said. “I believe in doing the basics well. I will stay in my lane at City Council. I consider police and fire a core municipal service. That is why you live in towns and cities — public safety police, fire, trash, sewers. It’s not sexy, it’s not glamorous. Being a stay-at-home mom with an MBA for 23 years is not sexy and not glamorous. I did it willingly, I did it with honor, I did it patiently. I will keep police and fire in-house. I have the financial chops to make it work. Will there be tradeoffs? Absolutely. I’m not going to promise you the moon. I didn’t promise the moon to my kids. I’m used to people not being happy with me, for 23 years. When you are raising a family, you are not looking to be best friends.”
Hadley, who to this point in the community has probably been best known for being married to former Assemblyman David Hadley, came from humble beginnings. She grew up in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, a town of 5,000. After her parents split up when she was 13, Hadley experienced financial hardship that would be formative in how she would live the rest of her life. After graduating from Badger High in her hometown, she went to Mount Holyoke College, one of the prestigious “Seven Sisters” universities historically founded as an all-women’s Ivy League equivalent. She studied economics and Russian.
“I wanted to reinvent myself, and start something brand new,” she said.
Hadley spent a semester in Moscow in 1983, in the waning days of the Soviet Union when the tensions of the Cold War were at a peak. It was a broadening experience. She witnessed food shortages and met dissidents, sometimes covertly, including a cross country skiing rendezvous in a birch forest just so they could be sure to speak safely.
“It was intense, it was difficult, it was wonderful…it was a very meaningful time in my life,” Hadley said.
After graduating, she took a job in commercial banking with Bankers Trust, who gave her an intensive nine-month training in corporate finance and then offered her a finance position in Atlanta. She took it.
“Frankly on a whim, and frankly for money,” Hadley said. “I grew up with so little money, I was highly motivated to support myself and not need anybody.”
Next, she went into corporate finance for a Fortune 500 company, going to work in the treasury department of RJR Nabisco. Eventually, when that company was subject to a hostile takeover, she took a buyout as she gained entry into Tucks Business School at Dartmouth College. She obtained her MBA in general management and then returned to New York, newly engaged to David, to take a marketing and analysis job with Columbia House. She worked there four years, until the couple had their first child in 1995. She realized immediately that she would have to put her career on indefinite hiatus.
“I was not a natural mother. I had a really hard time,” Hadley said. “My whole life went up in smoke…I struggled as a new mom. My husband is my rock. I said ‘You know, I’m not one of these women who can do it all.’”
They knew they wanted more kids and didn’t want to raise them in NYC. David is originally from Orange County, so 1996 they decided to look for a new home in Southern California.
“We looked around all LA County and we found Manhattan Beach, and it was just so special,” Hadley said. “It was like my hometown in Wisconsin, with the City Council, a Chamber of Commerce, a little league, a public high school. The beach was like extra; I just loved everything else.”
The Hadleys would eventually have four kids, and Suzanne’s community involvement began in local schools. She was chair of the board at Circle of Love Preschool from 2002 to 2006. Then, as all four kids attended Manhattan Beach Unified School District, she was an active parent volunteer in everything from marching bands to sports to site council. By 2016 she became president of the Mira Costa site council and treasurer of the MB Coordinating Council; that same year, she went back to work, starting as a page and eventually becoming an aide at the Manhattan Beach library. This year, her youngest daughter is a senior at Costa, and as Hadley considered reentering the private sector, a phone call came from an existing councilmember (who she declined to name, at least until post-election) suggesting she run.
The thought had never occurred to her. Hadley had always considered the city relatively well-run, but she was bothered by the previous council’s approval of more than $1 million in new management hires and the $1.4 million spent on a Downtown Specific Plan.
“That sort of bummed me out. Two million dollars goes a long way,” she said. “I thought, ‘You know, if they need analytics — I am a mom, so I’m compassionate, but I am a bottom line oriented gal…Okay, I’m going to get in.’”
Her platform is simple: limit government spending, increase public safety, and keep local schools strong and safe. She pledges her first action on council will be to propose an ending to councilmembers’ $475 monthly phone and transportation stipend. As a ten-year Neighborhood Watch captain, she advocates strengthening policing by adding two officers and installing three new automated license plate readers.
“MB has been so good for our family. I feel so blessed to have raised four kids in this community…And I want to pay that forward,” Hadley said. “I want to save money, I want to keep police and fire, I want to keep Neighborhood Watch, I want to protect our small businesses. Because the young families moving in are supporting us all with their property taxes, and it’s those property taxes that I will be a good steward of. I will not waste them. I am a cheap mom who grew up with next to nothing.”
“So I’ve learned. I was a supplicant, a stay-at-home mom, with my husband. I said, ‘We can only spend what you make. I am not going to nag you to make more money. We are going to make this work.’ And that’s how I feel about this city. I am not going to nag the residents, or ask for a raise in taxes. I am going to say ‘Look, this is our revenue base, this is our budget, how are we going to make this work?’”