Me: Municipal Implementer; professor; consultant; volunteer EMT; retired mayor; person.
My vibe: Good governance, outdoors, photos, writing, music, travel, and all things local.
Me: Municipal Implementer; professor; consultant; volunteer EMT; retired mayor; person.
My vibe: Good governance, outdoors, photos, writing, music, travel, and all things local.
Me: Municipal Implementer; professor; consultant; volunteer EMT; retired mayor; person.
My vibe: Good governance, outdoors, photos, writing, music, travel, and all things local.
Me: Municipal Implementer; professor; consultant; volunteer EMT; retired mayor; person.
My vibe: Good governance, outdoors, photos, writing, music, travel, and all things local.
Me: Municipal Implementer; professor; consultant; volunteer EMT; retired mayor; person.
My vibe: Good governance, outdoors, photos, writing, music, travel, and all things local.
Latest Projects
Hanover NH Town Manager
Starting in June 2022, I was hired to serve as the Town Manager of Hanover, New Hampshire where I oversee the day-to-day municipal operations, create and support public engagement and other key programs, and help the staff, Selectboard, and community effectively plan for the future.
Check out our Town's podcast Hanover Happenings to learn more!
Strategic Management and Decision Making
At Seton Hall, we've been tackling some of the most challenging problems presented to up and coming public and nonprofit managers. In the MPA course I have been teaching since 2014, we have helped prepare students to be more creative, strategic, intentional in the way they build their careers and design effective public programs.
Learn more at Seton Hall
Rethinking Podcast
In 2020 I started my own podcast Rethinking with Alex Torpey. In it, we take a critical, nuanced, multi-disciplinary look at how we conceptualize consciousness, decision-making, management, technology, and governance.
Check it out at online or wherever you listen to podcasts!
Cross-Country Road Trip
In the summer of 2021, I took four months to travel across and see more of the country. I visited old friends and met new ones, explored several cities, and mostly, spent days and weeks at a time offline in some of the most beautiful public lands in North America.
While on this trip I also started writing a science-fiction novel exploring interesting themes around governance, media, culture, technology, climate, individuality, liberty, love, and what it means to be free.
Community Civics
Inspired by the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s, I have been working with a number of stakeholders to identify some of the key challenges to facilaiting a more constructive civic environment in our communities in the United States.
Programs for our Planet
In part prompted by working and living more rurally in Hunterdon County from 2019-2021, my roadtrip in 2021, and the growing environmental issues in our communities and world, one of the driving passions that lead me towards being interested in government in high school - our environment - has become reignited. In 2021 - 2022, I'm living and teaching environmental/outdoor education part-time in Sussex County at the Fairview Lake YMCA (A special place for myself and many others), while gaining new knowledge and skills in the field, such as through taking various professional classes, like the "Master Ecologist" certificate at Duke Farms.
Past Projects
Researching: Art of Governance
A long-term research project that aims to document, evaluate, organize, and make more accessible news, ideas, theories, and best practices related to better understandings of how we can create more sustainable, fair, and effective governance structures. This project has spurred several side projects, including the "Rethinking with Alex Torpey" podcast that dives into an exploration of some of our most widely held assumptions about "how things work."
NJ Muni Management
Many communities struggle with financial challenges. By implementing comprehensive, transparent, and interactive budget and strategic planning processes, communities can significantly improve their economic outlooks and take a more intentional role in their futures. As a Business Administrator I deployed robust programs that addressed needs in budget and finance; technology and online services and accessibility; public safety and preparedness; downtown support and redevelopment/planning/affordable housing; ethics and compliance; sustainability and climate awareness; and more, while building transparency and participation from the public.
Consulting and Advising
Since selling the company I founded, Veracity Media, in 2015, I have worked as an independent consultant with organizations such as Run for America, the John Jay College Foundation, Sustainable Jersey, and more.
Most recently, I worked with Unity Charter School in Morristown, NJ in 2022 to design and implement a pilot program to help integrate civics education into their creative and inter-disciplinary approach to teaching.
To learn more about what services I offer and my availability, please visit my consulting page.
Progress in South Orange, New Jersey
While mayor (From 2011-2015), South Orange saw four years of the lowest tax increases in over fifteen, hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, especially in the downtown, three years of debt reduction, four years of crime reduction, increased commitment to sustainability, better use of technology and more support for the arts. Most important, all done with a civic space now compromised of constructive, collaborative leadership and an informed, engaged public actively involved in shaping the future of the community.
Check out our progress in South Orange to learn more.
Inspiring and supporting a new generation of leaders
With Rethink Leadership, we helped connect young elected officials from around the country to eachother. Figuring out what exists that motivates and demotivates people from entering our civic space is critical to understanding how best to make running for office more accessible to a wider range of Americans.
I also have served on the advisory board of New Leaders Council New Jersey, as a James Madison Fellow at the Millennial Action Project, and on Sustainable Jersey's Civic Engagement Task Force.
Check out for more on Rethink Leadership to learn more.
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Empowering innovation through Veracity Media
I founded Veracity Media to help support those trying to make the world and their communities a better place. In only a couple short years, we grew our scrappy firm to a major player in the political digital arena. Through designing and implementing digital, outreach, and management strategies and platfroms, we helped fight for access to affordable higher education, better veteran benefits, more women in elected office, more independents in our government and much more.
I left an active role in Veracity in 2015, but I recommend checking out what they're up to: veracitymedia.com to learn more.
Building confidence and teaching skills at YMCA
While applying for and evaluating local government employment options in the fall of 2017, I got the unique opportunity to work at one of my favorite places - YMCA Fairview Lake. I attended the camp in my younger years, and got to come back and teach young people outdoor skills, environmental education, and help them build their confidence as potential future leaders.
Creating new pathways for better American civic leadership
Consulted as the Program Director for Run for America to research, iterate and implement a new, nationwide, cross-partisan program to help inspire, provide support for and ultimately make more accessible running for office at all levels of government and integrating a greater level of long-term civic impact into their lives. The program “graduated” thirteen individuals in its first run, and its methodology is still being used developed and integrated into other leadership development processes.
Bringing practical public management lessons to the classroom
At Seton Hall University, we're expanding the scope of experimenting with new ways that an MPA education can prepare students not just for jobs in the public sector, but to be critical stewards of the public sector.
Training, learning, and volunteering in Emergency Medical Services
From learning simply what to do if you see someone collapse in public, to triaging and managing Mass-Casualty Incidents and working in small teams in ultra-high pressure environments when lives are on the line, to seeing the consequences of our country's deficient homeless and veteran care, training, learning and logging nearly 5,000 volunteer hours with the South Orange Rescue Squad was one of the most valuable and memorable experiences possible.
Self-designed East Africa governance study
After years of studying governance environments at home, I designed a two-month study abroad, taking me back to East Africa, were I lived, studied, worked, and traveled with organizations and individuals in Rwanda and Uganda. This time included interviewing, discussing, and evaluating topics related to governance, economic development, education, media, elections, and organizational development.
Critical Incident management in South Orange
In addition to the statutory responsibility as the municipality's mayor, I was also the OEM Director in South Orange, which put me in the middle of our responses to storms such as Hurricanes Irene and Sandy. Seeing municipal operations, coordinating operations and communications, supporting community members, and seeing first-hand the major deficiencies in regional, state, and federal responses as well as our utility infrastructure was a particularly insightful and formative set of experiences.
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