By Carolyn Bick
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Hyun Kim was officially sworn in as Tacoma’s City Manager on April 6, 2026. (Courtesy: City of Tacoma)
From an early age, Hyun Kim knew he wanted to go into public service. The newly minted city manager of Tacoma held his first government job when he was just 16 years old, juggling 20 hours of work alongside regular schoolwork.
“I worked for the City of Henderson[, Nevada] Parks and Rec Department … as a recreation assistant. I ran an after-school program called Children at Play,” Kim recalled. “I think about that even to this day. Working with kids after school got out … it’s something that was really interesting to me.”
Following Elizabeth Pauli’s departure from the role, Kim served as the City of Tacoma’s interim city manager, while the city put together a selection search. Following a competitive selection process, the Tacoma City Council officially voted to offer Kim the job of city manager at its March 31 meeting.
Kim was born in Cheongju, South Korea, but immigrated to the U.S. with his family at a young age. The family lived for several years in Anchorage, Alaska, where Kim grew up surrounded by a diverse community, including a community of Koreans and Korean Americans. By his high school years, the family was living in Henderson, Nevada, and Kim had begun to develop a taste for public service, shaped both by his work in local government, work as a busboy at a local restaurant, and other roles where he served the public.
“There is an innate desire to always be relevant to those we serve, and so why are we here as public servants?” Kim reflected. “I used to describe myself as a younger manager. I’m not younger anymore, but I would say that when I look back at all the opportunities to serve the public … how do we provide that passion, that meaning to the jobs that we have here in the city of Tacoma and other communities? We’re all trying to figure that out, and there’s no better place to do that than in service to others in government. You have to have a passion for it. It requires that. The job is difficult, but it’s meaningful when you have that passion as well.”
As city manager, Kim largely stays out of the spotlight. Though he leads a large cross-departmental team, he highlighted that he can’t and doesn’t do his job without his colleagues’ buy-in. He’s the city council’s single employee, and works behind the scenes to coordinate the council’s operational and policy directions.
“I describe it often as the council defines the destination of where we’re going. … I’m the bus driver, [and] I’m working along with my colleagues here who are on the bus with me—we’re going to get to that destination,” Kim explained. “How do we get there? It’s my job to chart the most efficient and prudent pathway, and that’s always seeking buy-in from the employees, the colleagues, the teams here. That’s what I do.”
He also submits balanced budget proposals for consideration, and, based on council directive, works with his colleagues to set the priority list of things, like capital improvement projects. This is perhaps the most publicly visible part of his job.
“It’s the city manager’s job to be accountable for those purposes,” Kim said. “When things are going really well, you won’t necessarily see me in that, because it’s … all credit to the team, as well as the Council, in terms of what [the public is] getting. … My office is a service department … I’m serving the 20-plus directors here in terms of their work plans and setting out their work plans.”
Though he has several goals as city manager, Kim knows he has stepped into a challenging role. The City of Tacoma is facing a $15 million budget shortfall, and has temporarily frozen hiring and promotions, expecting the temporary freeze to have a similar net gain to a freeze the City implemented in late 2024.
In his interview with the Northwest Asian Weekly, Kim didn’t directly speak about the budget shortfall, framing it instead as “some enduring challenges that are opportunities for us.”
“When it comes to the budget, the structural gap, taking a look at addressing how we are actually organized to meet the needs of today and tomorrow—that’s something that excites me about this opportunity,” he said.
“I also want to ensure that we can execute cleanly and ensure that we get to full staffing for public safety, that we can deliver a package of road projects for potential streets and sidewalk levy,” he continued, referring to a proposal meant to replace the expiring city street safety levy up for renewal this year.
Even though he isn’t in the public eye the same way a councilmember or a mayor might be, Kim believes that holding the office of city manager is nevertheless important to moving the diversity needle, especially for young Asian Americans.
“If I can even inspire the next Asian American leader that’s aspiring to be a city manager, that’s … the benefit of serving in this role,” he said. “We have a diverse number of leaders, a diverse number of public employees that are serving the public every day, and so that’s really important. But I’m also the city manager for everyone, so I also want to inspire the next leaders that want to come into this.”
He also noted that, as both a student of public administration and a career service leader, “local government is a career field where, especially to Asian Americans, may be not primary on their list of careers,” for a variety of reasons. He offered to be available for any Northwest Asian Weekly readers to chat with him about the role and learn more about what the City does. Interested readers can reach out to Kim at citymanager@tacoma.gov.
“I want to be a good ambassador,” he said. “Folks have blazed the trail for me.
I want to now start thinking about that for the next cadre of folks that are going to be coming in and serving the public.”
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