Brian D. Newby
Election Commissioner
Brian D. Newby was first appointed Johnson County Election Commissioner by Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh in January 2005 and has served under Secretary of State Chris Biggs and the current Secretary, Kris Kobach. He is the 8th Johnson Countian to serve
as Election Commissioner.
Newby has administered more elections than any of his predecessors and is the only Election Commissioner in state history to have been appointed by both Republican and Democratic Secretaries of State. During his tenure, the office has received national recognition for operational and technological innovation excellence.
In just his first full year as Johnson County Election Commissioner, the Office was awarded the prestigious Best Professional Practice of the Year award by the National Association of Election Officials (the Election Center) for Johnson County’s Text Messaging and Podcast Voter Notification initiative, targeted at young, mobile voters. The program also received recognition as a winner for Outstanding Achievement in Local Government Innovation by the Alliance for Innovation and was highlighted on the front page of USA Today in October 2006.
The following year, Johnson County’s redesigned Election Office website was named a 2007 Best of the Web winner by the Center for Digital Government as one of the top five local Government-to-Citizen sites in the country. The award was Newby’s second Internet-related award after receiving the 2001 Frost & Sullivan Market Engineering Award for Internet Marketing Strategy Leadership for Wholesale Telecommunications while Newby was at Sprint, where he worked for 20 years in various operations, sales, public relations, marketing, business development, and strategic planning executive positions.
At Sprint, he led the sales initiative to sign three of Sprint’s 25-largest contracts, led the marketing of Telecommunications Relay Service from start-up to market share leader and annual revenues of more than $65 million, and was part of the wholesale executive leadership team that doubled annual revenue from $600 million to $1.2 billion in three years, from 1996 to 1999. His last position at Sprint was director-strategic planning and industry analysis while working as the business division's planning point person for Sprint's restructuring as it transformed from separate wireless and wireline divisions to business and consumer divisions.
While at Sprint, he also was elected to the City Council in Shawnee, Kan., (population 55,000), where he served as the chairperson of the Finance and Administration Committee (2003) and the Public Works and Safety Committee (2004) before resigning to join the Election Office in 2005. During his tenure in Shawnee, he was the city's representative with the Shawnee Economic Development Council and the Johnson County Stormwater Management Advisory Committee.
Nationally, he was a member of several National League of Cities committees, including FAIR (Finance, Administration, and Inter-governmental Relations), CED (Community and Economic Development), First-Tier Suburbs, and the Municipalities in Transition panel on Family and Communities. In March 2005, Newby was recognized by the National League of Cities Training Institute for the completion of the Bronze Certificate - Leadership Fellow in the Certificate of Achievement in Leadership Program. The presentation was made in Washington, DC at the annual Congressional City Conference.
Currently, Newby serves on the Election Center Legislative Committee, is a member of the International Association of Clerks, Recorders, and Election Officials (IACREOT), and is a former board member of the National Association of County Records, Election Officials, and Clerks (NACRC). He is a member of the faculty at the Baker University School of Professional and Graduate Studies, having taught on-ground and online MBA courses in executive leadership and in marketing.
A Kansas City, Mo., native, Brian holds a Master's Degree in Public Administration from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, with an emphasis in policy and planning, and a bachelor's degree in communications studies, with an emphasis in public relations, from the same school. He is a former board member of the Greater Kansas City Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America. He moved to Johnson County in 1985 and lives in Shawnee with his wife and two children.
(Brian Newby is not related to Wyandotte County (Kan.) Election Commissioner Bruce Newby.)
Staff Members
"Serving the public by administering the election process
and by promoting voter participation"
As staff members, our goal is to provide excellent customer service! From a telephone request to a tour of our office or a virtual tour of our website, we focus on one thing - serving YOU!
| Brian D. Newby | Election Commissioner | (913) 715-6850 brian.newby@jocoelection.org |
| Debbie Tyrrel | Deputy Election Commissioner | (913) 715-6827 |
| Jeanie Nichols | Assistant Election Commissioner | (913) 715-6810 |
| Tom Ray | Assistant Election Commissioner | (913) 715-6814 |
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| Jackie Boos | Election Coordinator | (913) 782-3441 |
| Alison Collins | Election Specialist | (913) 715-6821 |
| Tom Freeman | Election Systems Administrator | (913) 715-6819 |
| Sarah Horn | Election Systems Manager | (913) 715-6818 |
| Karen Jackson | Election Manager | (913) 715-6836 |
| Zachery McIntosh | Election Assistant | (913) 715-6815 |
| Sheryl Roederer | Election Manager | (913) 715-6843 |
| Janette Scobey | Election Systems Administrator | (913) 715-6842 |
| Gina Shortino | Election Coordinator | (913) 715-6805 |
| Melanie Shelton | Election Coordinator | (913) 715-6809 |
| Kathy Spann | Election Manager | (913) 715-6841 |
| Jessica White | Election Office Administrator | (913) 715-6828 |
Last Updated: March 10, 2010 11:31 AM
