Incoming County Councilmembers Wala Blegay, Ingrid Harrison and Krystal Oriadha Address County Business Roundtable

By Raoul Dennis

PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAOUL DENNIS AND AMIR STOUDAMIRE

The changing voice of the Prince George’s County Council may be more strongly felt in 2023 than in recent years past. Of the 11 member body, there will be four new faces – and that count arguably rises to five with the addition of Ed Burroughs.

At a September 14 meeting of the Greater Prince George’s Business Roundtable Wala Blegay (D-Dist. 6), Ingrid Harrison (D-Dist. 4) and Krystal Oriadha (D-Dist. 7) each took the podium to introduce themselves to county business leaders and to establish the vision they each have for their respective districts and the county as a whole.

Click audiobar “New Councilmembers At Roundtable Sept. 14 2020” below to hear the full presentations by each incoming member.

“When you have a massive turnover on our council, it's really nice to be able to see the person up close and learn more about them,” said Greater Prince George’s Business Roundtable President and CEO Jim Estepp just before the councilmembers began their presentations.

Ingrid Harrison

“I am a full-time employee for Children's National Hospital,” said the Bowie resident who also currently sits on the Bowie City Council. “I am in their government relations or government affairs department, and I serve directly the State of Maryland. I frequently am in Annapolis, especially during session. I'm proud to say that I've built many relationships there and have done that through my 28-plus years here in Prince George's County.”

Harrison says she plans to put those relationships to use in her new role.

“[It’s all about] partnerships and collaborative efforts,” she says. “I'm all about being open-minded. Certainly leading with integrity. I do my research, so I want to know everything so I can make informed decisions. I listen to both sides of the issue before I make any decision on anything and certainly want to do what's in the best interest of the residents, but I want to hear from you and what you would like to see. I'm very pro-business. I come from an entrepreneurial background. My dad was an entrepreneur. My grandfather was the vice president of a major corporation. My other grandfather had a small business in North Carolina, a barbecue business. I'm proud to say that I've seen it firsthand, I understand the workings of business and I want to see us increase our commercial tax base here in Prince George's. I want to see more amenities, of course, across the county, but certainly in district four. We deserve that.”

The Prince George's County Democratic Central Committee member gave voice to greater consumer options in the county, generational wealth building, schools and climate.

“We don't need to keep traveling outside of our county to shop and go to different areas for higher amenities,” she said. “We need to have that here in our county. I look forward to working with my colleagues to do that. I'm all about economic development, smart growth. I want to see, certainly, us enact and fund our climate action plan. That's one of my priorities certainly. I want to see more apprenticeship programs and helping our youth in middle school and high school and understand generational wealth, because that's something that's much needed in our community.”

Wala Blegay

“It was a very competitive race that she came out of, and a lot of hard work went into it,” Estepp said of Blegay’s district six race. “When you have good candidates, it's very hard to make choices. but Wala Blegay is someone who has also been very much involved in community service. She's been a resident of the county for over 20 years, has fought for the rights of all.”

Particularly, she's had a very close working relationship with organized labor. I want you to know well that we were the first organization in the county to have a member of labor serving on a business board of directors. That was innovative we did it,” he continued in his lead in to Blegay’s remarks. “Wala is currently the staff attorney for the DC Nurses Association, and of course, she advocates in that area of the healthcare field.”

Blegay dove in addressing the work ahead.

“We have so much work to do, like my colleague said, Ingrid. We're talking about bringing quality development into our community, in and around this area. I want to introduce myself. I am an attorney I've been representing-- I'm a hardcore nurse advocate.

I've been representing nurses, including the ones that work at Children's Hospital. Those are the people that I fight for every day.”

“My family's from Liberia, Nigeria, and I moved to the county really right before college. and I actually started working at the general assembly for Justin Ross as one of his interns in 2005. I decided I wanted to jump right into politics in Prince George's County.”

Blegay explained how labor became a driving force in her work.

“I was a big advocate of workers' rights because my life changed [because of labor]. My parents are immigrants. My dad was driving an ice cream truck, doing all different types of jobs delivering pizza doing all those things. Then he got a union job. That union job at WMATA is what changed my life,” she said.

Blegay’s reminiscing smile receded once she began talking about business.

“We're going to talk about our small businesses. We’re going to fill our developments and our economic centers with quality development, with local business owners that bring brands right into this town. We're going to uplift our folks. As Ms. Harrison said, "Build generational wealth, it's important." That's going to be one of the things that I'm going to focus on: smart development and smart development is key to quality development.”

She continued: “We're going to look at the Climate Action Plan a and make sure that we bring solar and electric cars into our communities.”

Blegay also seeks to address better options for those returning home from the penal system.

“I met with a young man yesterday who is trying to get out of that life, but he can't get a good job. Every job he has [gotten] is barely minimum wage. We don't want that guy to look to the streets. We're going to find him a full-time job that has benefits that can [help] provide for him.”

Krystal Oriadha

Krystal Oriadha believes her unique background will be an asset on the council.

“I have a really diverse background and I think that is really what's going to let me have a really good perspective on how we grow our district,” Oriadha says. “Most people in the county know me because I am always in jeans and a t-shirt, and I'm good for a protest. I've been an advocate and an organizer most of my life, but I graduated from Howard University with a minor in business, and international business. I studied abroad at University of Dar es Salaam, where I got my MBA.

“We have to make sure that we have a middle class that is thriving. We've seen by the data that that's not always the reality here in Prince George's County. We talk about it, but the reality of it is building our small businesses. For me, I think there's such an opportunity with the investment that we have with the Economic Development Corporation.

If we want to make sure that the tax burden is not on residents, then we have to build industry,” she says. “It's plain and simple. How do I make sure I work in partnership to make sure that we're creating jobs in the county and that we make sure that we have the incentives that make sense? To make sure that we can attract more businesses and industries into the county is what I look forward to doing.”