When Judith Hall Bean first walked into the Cabinet Office to begin work as a clerk typist in 1965 she never imagined that four decades later she would drive in as assistant cabinet secretary.

Mrs. Hall Bean and Clarence Smith of Marine & Ports were recently honoured by Government for being the longest serving Civil Servants on the island.

Royal Gazette reporter Jessie Moniz sat down with Mrs. Hall Bean to talk about her long career, and her goals for the future.

Speaking of her long career she said, with no small amount of satisfaction, “Not bad for a student from Prospect School for Girls.”

“It has taken me 41 years to move to this position which is the second in charge of the Civil Service,” she said. “When I first started this wasn’t my goal. I think I wanted to be a teacher.”

Teaching was not to be her career, however. Over the years she has worked her way up through the ranks, working as head of management and personnel services, acting permanent secretary of health, and eventually director of tourism. She moved into her current position last year. In December the job title changed slightly under the Ewart Brown administration and she became assistant cabinet secretary (committees) responsible for administrative support for the Premier’s cabinet.

“My career has been very fortunate for me,” she said. “I found out late in the 1960s and early 1970s that I liked human resources. In 1975 or 1976 I started in the Cabinet Office.”

After ten years in human resources, she came to a “what next” point in her career.

“I have to give credit to the former head of the civil service for stretching me,” she said. “He said, ‘go and be director of tourism’. I was like ‘tourism?’ I didn’t know anything about the industry. I had never worked in tourism before.

“Oddly enough, I enjoyed it. It was purely an administrative and management role. I got to learn the industry. I worked in tourism for a couple of years, working under various Tourism Ministers including Renee Webb. Then this post became available.”

Mrs. Hall Bean readily admitted that controversy surrounded her leaving her post in tourism. There were rumours flying that she left tourism due to differences with then Tourism Minister Webb.

But Mrs. Hall Bean said she left simply because other opportunities had presented themselves.

“I don’t dwell on that, because I look at things as opportunities. The opportunity opened for this particular position. I moved back down here in November 2003. At the time it was as deputy head of the civil service. They did away with the head of the civil service position. There are plans to do something else with it. After December 1 it will be a different ballgame again.”

She said she owes the Government a lot as an employer for several reasons.

“I have never been bored in any position I have found myself in,” she said. “I never got to the point where I was bored. There was always an opportunity for me to do something else.

“There was always an opportunity to keep studying, or move to something different. Even at this stage after forty years, I am still getting new opportunities.”

In the past, Mrs. Hall Bean has said that civil servants are among the hardest working people in Bermuda.

“I can be here, if you call me at 7 a.m. If you call me at 7.30 at night I am still here. It depends on what day of the week it is and what I have to do. You can come by here on a Saturday and I’ll be here.

“We do what we have to do in order to get the work done. I have heard some people say they came into the civil service because they thought it would be an easy ride, but now that they are here they have never worked harder in their lives.”

Her average day deals with any staffing policy issues. On this particular day she’d just finished a morning meeting with all heads of departments to go through issues relating to staffing and policy.

Over the years she has faced what she terms “the usual obstacles” in getting ahead.

“Being a female in this organisation is like any other,” she said. “It is not always easy. I can’t talk about any overt real issues in terms of being a female, but that is always there. Being a Bermudian was once an issue. At one time when the human resource department was managed by someone from the United Kingdom that was a particularly trying time in my career. That was probably the worst, but I got through that. Except for the female issues and the Bermudian issues, I can’t really say I had many obstacles.”

Mrs. Hall Bean said the tourism department wasn’t bad to work in, and she still has respect for former Tourism Minister Renee Webb.

“There were differences of opinion and differences of style,” she said. “I have nothing against her.”

Growing up, Mrs. Hall Bean was strongly influenced by her grandmother Mary Phillips.

“I was raised by my grandmother,” she said. “I have this theory that people who are reared by their grandmothers are special. She instilled in me from an early age I could do anything I wanted to do. No one was better than me. She said that as long as I was honest, and didn’t do anyone any harm, at the end of the day I would be okay. That has been the determining factor in my life.”

Mrs. Hall Bean came from a single parent home until her mother eventually remarried. She has three siblings, Julian, Deborah and Lynn Hall Jr.

“When we were growing up it was a time when your cousins and your aunts were always around,” she said. “There was always someone to take care of us when my grandmother wasn’t home. Parents were very protective then.

“I can’t say I had a bad childhood or I was in need of anything. My mother worked hard.”

She and her siblings and family are still very close today. She and her husband Gladwyn have a foster daughter who is 27 years old, and two foster grandchildren.

“When my foster daughter was a baby they brought her to my church, because her house had caught on fire and she didn’t have anywhere to live,” said Mrs. Hall Bean.

“So I took her in, and had her from six months to about a year. I gave her back to her mother and never saw her again until she was 22.

“When I saw her she had some challenges, so I took her back in. She and her children are now living in one of my apartments.

“I take responsibility for her eldest daughter, Jahkeya’s education, and see that she has what she needs. She is 11.”

Mrs. Hall Bean said she doesn’t think she will wait until age 65 to retire.

“I won’t be here too much longer,” she said.

“I turn sixty next year. I could have retired at 55. The mandatory retirement age is 65. I don’t think I’m going to go all the way to 65.

“I look forward to having some quality of life, but I will work here for a couple more years.”

In her spare time Mrs. Hall Bean likes to read mysteries, travel, and shop till she drops.