New executive director at OCO wants to keep nonprofit moving forward to help others — he spent many years in Central Asia, in places like Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Yemen doing exactly that
By Stefan Yablonski
Kevin Dean has more than 20 years of experience in roles focused on improving lives through health, education and economic programs. He’s now continuing that as the head of Oswego County Opportunities. He was named as the new executive director in 2025 and officially began in January of this year.
After undergraduate study at the University of Iowa where he earned bachelor’s degree in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, he attended Georgetown University where he earned a master’s degree in foreign service and began his career with the State Department and later, USAID.
“I got a job with the US Agency for International Development; I stayed in that field of work for a while up until the summer of 2025,” he said. “All through that time, we’re talking from the end of 2008, beginning of 2009, I stayed abroad basically up until a few months ago.
“I did a lot of things for USAID. My first job was in 2004. I did a few different things. One was not dissimilar from Bridget’s [Dolbear, development coordinator at OCO] job. I was the outreach and communications person and I was also managing health programs. Then in 2008, the week before Christmas, I was the deputy office director in the Tajikistan office. [Tajikistan is a country in Central Asia surrounded by Afghanistan, China, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.] It was a very small office at the time, nine of us in the office. Then I was working primarily on strategy, good governance administration project. Working with their government to change some of the boring crunchy sides of government as well as some of the more exciting ones like opening a more transparent public service office. None of it was rocket science. It was like instead of standing in a long line waiting to be served, you take a number and go sit down like a human and wait for them to call you.”
Dean also worked in Afghanistan and in Egypt and then back to Tajikistan in a more senior position. He finished with the Yemen program based out of Saudi Arabia.
“I did the math and I am pretty sure that I was in 11 countries from 2000 until last year. You develop a lot of air miles,” he said.
So, does he speak a multitude of languages?
“I am terrible at foreign languages,” he laughed. “I can speak Russian reasonably well. I can read a menu in a lot of languages. I can figure out what a menu says in German and most of the Central Asia languages. If you give me a lot of time I can fake it with Arabic.”
When USAID ended as part of the reduction in workforce action by DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), Dean said he had to identify his next chapter of life.
That’s when he fondly recalled a place called Oswego.
When he was about 16 or 17, he was a member of a marching band which traveled all over the country. The best competition he ever went to was in Oswego, he said.
“The band was the Colts Drum and Bugle Corps of Dubuque, Iowa, which is part of Drum Corps International,” he recalled. “Basically, it was a travelling marching band. We were doing an eastern leg of our summer tour in ’96 or ‘97. I don’t recall exactly where the performance was. Sometimes we would stay and practice in towns as far as two hours from the show site. I just got on the bus when I was told to and got off when it stopped. My memory is that we were staying in Oswego; this was 30 years ago, but the name stood out because there is also an Oswego, Illinois, that we had been to.”
“One evening a local organization, that I think was the Knights of Columbus Council, hosted us for a meal. It was an elaborate turkey dinner for all 128 band members and our travel team — almost 200 people. I remember it was in a park. A free home-cooked meal on the road was a real treat. More importantly, they sat and talked with us. It was such a gracious act of hospitality. No one else ever welcomed us that way,” he continued. “It stuck with me and since then I have had a soft spot in my heart for Oswego. I then remember a few years later coming back to Central New York with my wife and seeing the signs for Oswego and that was when I understood where we had been.”
So, when he was searching online for career opportunities and discovered Oswego County Opportunities was looking for an executive director, he saw it as a perfect match for his experience and ideals and a chance to return to a place with fond memories.
Goals – don’t sink the ship
“I have been here in this position for a month; it is a tremendous amount to learn,” he said. “It is a little bit like someone gave you the task of documenting the size of a forest. The tool that I have to do that is like skiing through the trees. You’re constantly trying to avoid slamming into a tree as you’re documenting them. So, I am coming out of that now that I am a month in.”
“My big goal is to not sink the ship that [former director] Diane [Cooper-Currier] got going — don’t sink Diane’s ship,” he quipped.
This year is OCO’s 60th anniversary.
“We started the same year as the Super Bowl and the blizzard of ’66,” he said. “We’re using that as an opportunity to remind people of all the great things that OCO has been able to do for this county.
“For the long term, I am looking at two things that I think are really necessary for OCO and for the county. For OCO especially I want to diversify funding. We are primarily grant funded and I would really like to get to the point where we have more private donors, more planned giving. Not so much so that we can expand programs — although it would be nice to be able to do that. So, we could be able to adjust a little bit more nimbly to what we are seeing in the community. If it is grant funding, whatever Albany says is what we do. Whatever Washington says is what we do. Sometimes those are completely appropriate for what we are trying to do and sometimes they are better geared for what they need in Chicago or Los Angeles. What we are looking to do is to try to get more money for Central New York so we can adjust as things go.”
He also wants to look at ways OCO can go to the drivers of poverty in addition to a lot of what they do, which is the conditions of poverty.
“We have a program to help someone when they are unhoused or in severe need of food. What I’d like to do is to get to the point where we are stopping people from getting to that point.,” he explained.
One of the big challenges that is facing the families is childcare. It is a statewide concern — there aren’t enough childcare slots.
“There are eight and a half children — young children under 6 — for every childcare slot available. The number of childcare slots went down 24% since COVID and the cost — the average cost — in the county is just under $22,000 a year — for one kid. That’s $44,000 if you have two kids! It is hard to justify having two people go out and work if you have to pay that amount in childcare,” he said. “That sets back careers, it hampers businesses; it is a problem in the short term as well as a huge problem. A family should be able to afford to go to work.”
Family matters
Dean has two kids. One is a sophomore at Binghamton and the other is a freshman in high school.
“My family is all in Binghamton. My wife, Alanna, grew up in Syracuse. Her father, Dr. Mahtab Shaikh, was a professor of biology at Onondaga Community College,” he said. “We met at a foreign language program. I did a study abroad in Russia and she was doing an internship. She was doing an internship in Uzbekistan.
“She was there and she found a job. I was done with school and thought about what my next step was; but I knew I was tired of living in a different country with my girlfriend stuff. So, I just moved to Uzbekistan and thought I’d figure it out.”
That was about the time they got engaged (2002). They came back and got married in Jefferson County.
“We got married in the Thousand Islands because that is where she always wanted to get married. We stayed mostly overseas up until I went to grad school. We went in DC and I went to Georgetown University,” he said. “Then almost immediately, a few months after graduation we moved back overseas with her parents and our son. Our older son and her two parents moved to Tajikistan with us. It’s a relatively small country on the border between north of Afghanistan and west of China.”
“What did I want to do? Going way, way back to like elementary school, for some reason, I wanted to do standup comedy. I guess eventually I realized that involved a lot of long unpaid nights in bars and not a lot of health insurance. So, I decided I wanted to do something else,” he continued.
Before deciding on his current career, for a while he wanted to be a writer and then while in high school, he “was really considering becoming a pastor.”
In his free time, Dean enjoys skiing. “I have never cross-country skied. I am kind of used to Upstate winter. I’ve been in Russia and other countries that gets winter,” he said. “But this is the first time I have had snow like this that sticks since I was in Russia.”
He also loves to read and spend time with family. He is currently between dogs. “We always had a dog. We are in the process of finding the right dog for us. We are small dog people; we want it to be a dog that my wife can comfortably pick up.”
Lifelines
Name: Kevin Dean
Position: Executive director, Oswego County Opportunities
Birth Date: July 16, 1978
Birth Place: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Residence: Oswego
Education: University of Iowa, Bachelor of Arts in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies; Georgetown University, Master of Science, Foreign Service
Personal: Wife, Alanna Shaikh, sons Zach (20) and Sam (14)
Hobbies: Tabletop games (current favorites are Dungeons and Dragons, Wingspan and Fluxx), reading and writing speculative fiction, learning about ancient history.
