By Eric Kuznar
Zionsville Town Council President Susana Suarez has been named to the transition team for Eric Holcomb and Suzanne Crouch, who will become Indiana’s governor and lieutenant governor, respectively, in January 2017.
Suarez and 15 other members of the transition team will help set priorities, fill administrative positions and manage inaugural activities for the new administration until it takes office. She hopes the transition team can help put Holcomb and Crouch in a position to achieve their goals.
“I have known Eric for years,” Suarez said. “From the very first time I met him I knew that this was a person with a servant’s heart.”
Suarez, who worked for both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush during their presidencies, has experience working in politics on both the local and national level. She said working on the local level creates a special connection with the people in the community.
“Working at the local and state level makes it that much more personal,” Suarez said. “It makes everything much more real, the people that you are affecting are your neighbors and are the teachers of your children.”
Suarez said that it is important to come together as a community after an election.
“At the end of the day we all live with each other,” she said. “We are neighbors. We are friends, and we can’t forget that. We all strive for that same American dream and the same American ideals, so we need to continue pushing that message forward.”
Suarez was first elected to the Zionsville Town Council in 2010 and took office in 2011. She is also vice president of the Board of Police Commissioners, a member of the Indiana Commission for Higher Education and CEO of her own company, Media Moon Communications.
Suarez said there is no timeline for the transition team to finish, but she said she is happy to help as long as she can.
Holcomb, a Republican, defeated Democrat John Gregg in the Nov. 8 election. He will become Indiana’s 52nd governor.
