Chris Coons serves as County Executive of New Castle County, a large, diverse county of more than 500,000 residents living in urban, suburban and rural communities.
Chris was elected New Castle County Executive in 2004, and re-elected to a second term in 2008. Chris has committed his administration to building a safer, stronger, healthier, and more livable county for all residents. Since taking office in 2005, Chris has:
- revived older neighborhoods through the creation of the Problem Properties Task Force that targets code enforcement and legal efforts to clean up neglected and abandoned properties;
- strengthened partnerships with the business community through the new Office of Redevelopment, which to works with state officials and the business community to attract new and growing businesses to New Castle County;
- redeployed police officers to put more police on the streets and opened a new public safety building that puts police, paramedics, emergency communications and emergency management under one roof;
- created the Emergency Services Corps program to strengthen recruitment efforts of the volunteer fire service and the county paramedics;
- led efforts to register more than 35,000 rental housing units for the first time under the county's first rental housing code; and
- restored fiscal responsibility, cutting tens of millions in spending while delivering promised new parks and libraries across the county.
Prior to becoming County Executive, Chris served four years as New Castle County Council President and worked for eight years as legal counsel for W.L. Gore & Associates, Inc., the makers of GORE-TEX fabrics and many other high-tech materials. He was responsible for Gore's ethics training program, e-commerce legal work and federal government relations.
Chris is a graduate of Amherst College with a B.A. in Chemistry and Political Science, and earned his law degree from Yale Law School and a Master's in Ethics from Yale Divinity School. Chris also studied abroad at the University of Nairobi in Kenya.
He serves on the board of the National "I Have A Dream" Foundation, the advisory board of the Bear/Glasgow Boys & Girls Club, the Wilmington Riverfront Development Corporation, the Better Business Bureau of Delaware, the advisory board of First State Innovation, and the Delaware College of Art and Design, and on the advisory board of Hearts and Minds Film organization. Chris also has been named an honorary commander of the 166th Air Wing of the Delaware Air National Guard, and is a honorary life member of the Minquadale Fire Company. Chris is also one of twenty-four elected officials from around the country to be selected as a 2009 Aspen-Rodel Fellow by the Aspen Institute's Rodel Fellowships in Public Leadership. He is also a member of the Kiwanis Club of Wilmington. Chris and his wife, Annie, and their three children live in Wilmington.