The Department of Service and Civic Innovation was established by the Serving Every Region Through Vocational Exploration (SERVE) Act of 2023 with the purpose of promoting service and volunteerism in the state of Maryland. The SERVE Act also launched two new exciting service pathways for eligible youth and adults, in addition to existing volunteer and service opportuities available through the Governor's Office on Service and Volunteerism and Volunteer Maryland.
Paul Monteiro Jr.
Secretary
Paul Monteiro is the first Secretary of the Department of Service and Civic Innovation. Prior to this role, President Joseph Biden tapped Monteiro as the Director of the Department of Justice Community Relations Service and the United States Senate confirmed his nomination in April 2022.
From 2017 to 2022, Monteiro served as Chief of Staff to the President and Assistant Vice President of External Affairs at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
In 2014, President Barack Obama appointed Monteiro as national director of AmeriCorps Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), the federal anti-poverty program established in 1965 as the domestic counterpart to the Peace Corps.
Monteiro was a member of the White House staff from 2009 to 2013 working as an associate director of the Office of Public Engagement. In that role, he worked on President Obama’s Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Initiative, the My Brother’s Keeper mentorship program for young men, and as a liaison to religious and secular belief communities as well as ethnic groups including Arab Americans and Afghan Americans.
Secretary Monteiro was an at-large member of the Prince George’s County Public Schools Board of Education from 2018 until 2022. He earned a B.A. in history from the University of Maryland and a J.D. from the Howard University School of Law.
Sarah Flammang
Deputy Secretary
Sarah Flammang serves as the Deputy Secretary for the Maryland Department of Service and Civic Innovation. Sarah is dedicated to utilizing service to others as a tool to bring people together and to maximize the potential of underestimated talent. Her career and personal life have been centered around creating service opportunities to benefit communities, people, and the environment.
Previously she helped to build Baltimore Corps, a nonprofit organization that enlists talent to advance social innovation and establish a citywide agenda for equity and racial justice. Her work focused on scaling the organization through partnerships and starting/growing new initiatives. Sarah led the organization’s COVID response efforts, playing a key role in Baltimore Health Corps which married public health and workforce development by placing and training more than 300 contact tracers and care coordinators, most of whom did not have a public health background. This program was then sustained through creation of a Public Health AmeriCorps program, Community Health Pathways. Ms. Flammang served in several roles for the organization, ultimately as Interim President and CEO of Baltimore Corps.
Ms. Flammang has an M.B.A. from Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and is a graduate of Denison University with a degree in geoscience. Sarah was also a member of the Leadership Baltimore’s Class of 2023.
