The Bolinas Community Public Utility District will soon see a change of guard. Jennifer Blackman, who has served as the general manager of the district for nearly two decades, will retire this spring, and Georgia Woods, a neuroscientist who sits on the local school board, will replace her. BCPUD board president Jack Siedman said the board unanimously chose Ms. Woods based on her qualifications. “I am thrilled the district has been able to hire someone of Dr. Woods’s caliber as the next general manager and I look forward to working with her during the upcoming transition period,” Ms. Blackman wrote to the Light. “I have been extremely fortunate to work with a wonderful and dedicated board of directors, as well as with a truly incredible, hard-working staff. Over the years, I have found the general manager position to be consistently challenging and rewarding—and it is never boring!” BCPUD stewards the town’s water supply and sewer system and manages its waste disposal contract, but it also acts as a de facto town council. “There have been countless issues that have come to this board over the last 20 years, some more emotional than others, but every time, Jennifer dealt with them objectively and fairly,” Mr. Siedman said. “We look forward to Georgia coming aboard and continuing to do a good job running the district.” Ms. Woods was born in Montreal but moved to Bolinas with her parents when she was young and attended Bolinas-Stinson School. After graduating from the University of California, Davis, with a Ph.D. in neuroscience, she taught courses on anatomy, physiology and neurobiology at Dominican and Touro Universities. For the last decade, she has worked as a researcher for the Buck Institute in Novato, where she studies the molecular underpinnings of aging diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. In 2016, with her youngest daughter at Bolinas School, she made a successful run for a seat on the school board. As a trustee, Ms. Woods helped to address gaps in broadband coverage in Bolinas after the district shifted to Zoom classes during the pandemic. She co-founded the Bolinas Stinson Internet at Home program, raising $40,000 to strengthen the reach and speeds of internet in town and to subsidize installation prices for low-income families. Before the initiative, just 11 percent of Bolinas and Stinson families with school-aged children had access to broadband internet; only 3 percent of children from low-income families and no children from Spanish-speaking households had access. Now, nearly every family requesting access has been served. “It was almost revolutionary,” trustee Nicolette Hahn Niman said. “In the time I’ve spent on the board, I can’t think of any single action that has had a bigger impact than that program. She improved the quality of education that our children are getting. She has a particularly good insight when something has an equity lens to it.” Ms. Woods said the initiative was her first foray into addressing local infrastructure and was what inspired her to apply for the utility district position. Her experience on the school board gave her insight into working from the ground up, she said. Ms. Woods will begin her role on Jan. 8. She will leave her job at the Buck Institute but stay on the school board until next fall.