Candidate Profile: Terrell Thomas

Terrell Thomas has not worked for the Orange County Clerk of Courts Office for eight years, but he still considers himself a “member of the Clerk of Courts family.” He served five clerks for 20 years in the technology services office.

Thomas, 48, spent the last eight years as a tech consultant, working for companies that helped courts and justice agencies update and streamline their operations. In 2022, he started his own consultancy, Dev.G9, and serves as its CEO which works with organizations to create websites, strengthen their online presence and create more efficient workflow platforms since 2022.

Now the Orlando resident, who grew up in Auburn, New York, wants to return to the Clerk’s Office with an idea to build the office of the future: Clerk Forward. He told VoxPopuli recently that the platform for Clerk Forward is built on conversations he had with former deputy clerks who he asked three key questions: What works? What doesn’t? What should change?

Whether Thomas has the opportunity to implement Clerk Forward, meant to “future ready” the Clerk’s Office by “embracing technology, streamlining processes and driving continuous improvement” according to his campaign site, hinges on the outcome of the Aug. 18 election. The nonpartisan race is a four-way matchup between him, Orange County District 4 Commissioner Maribel Gomez Cordero; former Orange County Property Appraiser Rick Singh; and Roberta Walton Johnson the Clerk of Courts general counsel. Clerks of Court serve four-year terms and earn $161,796 annually.

Although Thomas did not respond to the News Collaborative of Central Florida questionnaire, he spoke with VoxPopuli. Responses have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Why are you running for the Clerk of Courts Office now?

I'm a man of faith, so I do believe there, the timing, you know, to everything there is a season, right? There's a time. So I feel like all the years prior, everything has kind of built me up to this moment.  I left the Clerk's Office back in 2018, but I never left the clerk's family. I've always been tied. There's just those roots that are there.  Even when I went on to another opportunity, I'd stop in every couple months, and I made it my business to connect with family. This is truly family. So I never really left in that sense. So the legacy is so important. I believe the Clerk's Office needs a leader who understands the mission. They have the roots that I have. They didn't just wake up and say, You know, today I wanna be the Clerk. This is not ambition for me.  It's about preserving the legacy. But understanding that we must move into the future. So I want to build off that legacy and continue building the Clerk's Office of the future.

What is Clerk Forward?

Clerk Forward is supported by three pillars: Culture, Community, Connectivity.

Transforming our culture is investing in our people, making people feel respected, having appreciation of not only how they serve the public, but how they serve each other. Service across the board is external and internal. We're serving each other one way or another. I'm constantly in service because I'm constantly collaborating or providing or whatever it is. So I'm constantly in that flow. I want to bring that mindset to the organization culture-wise.

Community is creating a Clerk's Office that works for everyone. Increasing the trust in the community by engaging with them creating opportunities to make service better, faster. You know, this is why the institution exists. We exist to serve. We're servant leaders. We're public leaders. We’re people first is, is, is, is very important. You know, the more you take care of your people, the more your service delivery goes up. Your morale stays up. Your people wanna serve. I want this to be a place where you can build your career and you can take care of your family. You know that, that there are opportunities that lie ahead.

Connectivity is modern technology, modernized technology. It would be just making sure that we are higher than the standards as far as cybersecurity. Making sure that we can serve up records efficiently and quickly, and that folks who are doing business with the Clerk's Office, attorneys, the judicial community, the legal community, can get records fast. That they’re safe and secure and accurate records. Making sure that infrastructure is in place to implement those safeguards and keep things safe and secure.

What unique skills are you bringing to this job?

 My technical capacity to understand how systems work, the inner workings of systems. I spent time in the private sector specifically with Tyler Technologies, they are the vendor to the courthouse, uh, to the current clerk of courts. So I was able to get experience on the other side in the private sector with Tyler to further understand the inner workings of, of the system and how things are configured.

What’s your experience managing large budgets?

I've never managed a multi-million dollar budget, I'll be the first to tell you that. I would have loved to have gotten to that place even in my private business here but not quite. So this would be the first. But here's what I would say to that. As much as this is about electing a political race and a constitutional officer, it is also about how that leader manages teams. So they have to be able to put together the right team. I can come to the table with a perspective all day long, but I'm only as good as the team that supports me, right? So it's about managing those teams and finding that expertise which will support making decisions and developing a budget that’s in line with being fiscally responsible.

We look at the fiscal pie, I call it, and I would just look at, where we are and understand what our needs are and work with our financial team and our folks who are experts at that and say, Hey, listen, this is what I was thinking. You know, how does this look? How does this affect us operationally? How does this affect us in capital projects? Or whatever it may be. Here's the need, here's the want. Where are we here? Can we squeeze a little here? Or how much of this can we actually put toward our employee salary base?

How do you plan to work with Tallahassee to ensure Orange County gets what it needs?

I am going to be very engaged. And any opportunity that I could get to the FCCC (Florida Court Clerks and Comptroller Association) I plan to show up and build new relationships. I plan to as an NPA [no party affiliation], I'm gonna be reaching across the aisle at both sides.

How do you view the relationship between the Clerk of Courts Office and the community? What would you do to build that relationship?

I'd like to bring the courthouse to people. I know we have satellite locations, but I think that it needs to go beyond that, where we have what I call pop-up payment stations or pop-up opportunities to handle business with the clerk. So that may be where we're doing some data analysis in the community to see where we're underserved or where folks in the community can't quite get to the clerk's office. So we would say, We're gonna be in this part of the community on this X, Y, Z day. And we'll have our little mobile Clerk’s Community Opportunity here.

And the other thing is I want an app that’s intuitive and easy to use, but it's robust and secure, uh, where you can make a payment, you can file, uh, a, a lawsuit, or you could, you know, do some of the things, uh, quite easily from your phone that you could do, uh, at the clerk's office, uh, or on the website, and simplify it, not just necessarily going through the website and going through each link, but going through that app and that interface, and being able to do it, um, you know, from the comfort of sitting in the, in the, you know, in the barber shop.

And I want to create a signature event with the Clerk's Office in the community. And again, Clerk Russell's been tremendous at this, and certainly would honor her legacy that she started. But I'd put a different twist, something new and fresh for the community.