I spent more than 10 years working in Massachusetts municipal government, culminating as the Executive Director for a $200 million public pension fund serving over 1,500 people. I'll be honest with you: it was one of the most overwhelming jobs I've ever had.

Chapter 32 is genuinely complex. The law itself is dense, PERAC guidance is scattered across years of memos, and the regulations don't exactly read like beach fiction. I watched administrators (myself included) spend hours hunting for answers that should have taken minutes. Even when we were lucky enough to find what we were looking for, there are exceptions to every rule. With the many and varied demands of the job, myself and my colleagues across the state were and are often forced to make decisions without having all of our questions answered.

That bothered me. It still does.

When I served in the retirement system, I created a community Slack channel so that retirement administrators across our state could have direct access to the institutional knowledge that's often required to do the job. I needed answers to do my own work, and I knew that others would benefit from having a place to share and exchange knowledge as well.

Now, I've built this Chapter 32 Wiki because I believe retirement system administrators deserve better tools. Not a PDF buried on a state website. Not a line buried in a webinar that suddenly becomes best practice. Not a memo from 2011 that you have to know to go looking for. We should have a single place where the law, the guidance, and plain-language explanations live together and actually make sense.

I envision a world where retirement system administrators across the state have an easier time doing their jobs. I believe the work that retirement administrators do is honorable and noble, because they are the ones keeping the promises made to our public servants.