Two familiar faces from the MACo staff, Leslie Knapp, Jr. and Robin Clark Eilenberg, will be departing from their roles with MACo in the weeks ahead.

Les Knapp, serving as MACo’s Legal and Policy Counsel, will mark 15 years with the Association later this year. In the weeks ahead, he will step down from his full-time role with the MACo policy team, in order to commit further to his family’s farm and business in Calvert County. Mr. Knapp will remain involved as MACo’s representative and advocate on a number of work groups and issues, but will scale back his involvement to a part-time, consulting and advisory role into and through the session ahead.

“Les has covered so much ground for MACo and the counties,” said Executive Director Michael Sanderson. “He’s developed a reputation as knowledgeable but fair, and that approach has deeply benefited counties on many issues over his years with us.”

During his years advocating for counties with MACo, Les has worked on land use and environmental issues, legal and liability issues, and also developed deep expertise with ethics and “sunshine” laws for meetings and documents.

Robin Eilenberg has been with MACo for 7 years, serving the last few as Research Director. Her combined role as a policy advocate but also caretaker of many of the Association’s information-driven missions has helped expand MACo’s effectiveness. She will begin a role doing legal and advocacy work with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation later this year.

“Robin has worn different hats here at MACo,” Sanderson said. “She has become a subject matter expert on school construction, pensions, and other areas, and has added real value to our work in each of them. She has also helped MACo rethink and improve our own use of information and data in policy advocacy and county services.”