Mayor Names Permanent Director to Department of Parks and Recreation

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Mayor Adrian M. Fenty today announced that Clark Ray has been selected to serve as the city’s director of the Department of Parks and Recreation. Ray will join the department after successfully serving as the Director of the Mayor’s Office of Community Relations and Services.

As director of the Mayor’s Office of Community Relations and Services, he was responsible for leading the charge to improve the quality of life for District residents through increasing the visibility of the Mayor’s constituent services efforts and ensuring that city government agencies provide coordinated and scheduled delivery of high-quality basic services for every resident, visitor, and business owner.

Results-oriented visionary Clark Ray brings more than 20 years of community outreach, executive leadership, and education and training experience to the District of Columbia government.  

In August 2004, Ray was named the director of external affairs of the DC Sports and Entertainment Commission. As director at the Commission, Ray oversaw, coordinated and managed the location, design and construction of recreational sports facilities in the District. While serving in this capacity, he also was responsible for developing and monitoring project budgets as well as implementing and maintaining a community outreach plan to ensure that facility designs, development and operations took into their consideration valuable community input.

From 2000 to 2004, Clark served as Neighborhood Services Coordinator in the Office of Neighborhood Services in the Executive Office of the Mayor. Under the Neighborhood Service Initiative, he was responsible for developing a core team of District Government agency representatives while simultaneously establishing systems to monitor and maintain the coordination of timely responses to service needs of District residents. As a team leader and coach to Core Team members from participating agenci