Calgary's new city manager brings fresh ideas, decades of experience, Nenshi says

David Duckworth has been promoted to the role of city manager, from his previous position as Calgary's utilities and environmental protection general manager.

"Do you want a person who comes from within the organization and knows how our systems work, or do you want an outside perspective to bring new ideas to Calgary?" Mayor Naheed Nenshi asked in a release Thursday.

"In Duckworth's case, we actually check both of those boxes."

He joined the city in March of 2018, bringing to the city 29 years of local government experience.

• Calgary city manager leaving with no apologies

"This is a great honour and privilege for me,"Duckworth said.

"To be a successful civil servant, you need to have some good mentors. Over the last year and a half, I've probably had the two best mentors I could have ever imagined, Jeff Fielding and Glenda Cole. [They're] two of the most outstanding people I have ever met and two of the most outstanding and extraordinary civil servants."

Duckworth, of Langley, B.C., worked with the cities of Vancouver and Kamloops and the regional district of Okanagan-Similkameen for 27 of those years.

He has a bachelor of applied science in civil engineering and MBA from the University of British Columbia.

DuckworthreplacesCole, who held the acting city manager role after Fielding left the position in April.