Anchorage health department director resigns amid investigation into fabricated resume (Via AKpublicnews and AmPubMedia)
As director of the Anchorage Health Department, Gerace oversaw everything from COVID-19 response and homelessness, to restaurant inspections and animal control. Monday, hours after Alaska Public Media confronted him and Mayor Dave Bronson’s office with evidence that Gerace had vastly overstated and misrepresented both his educational credentials and military background.
Reached by phone Monday morning, Gerace admitted that he was not in the Guard. He refused to share information about where he got one of his master’s degrees. And he claimed he got the other one from a school that didn’t offer master’s degrees at the time and has no record of him as a student. At times, he insisted his resume was factual, and at other times acknowledged that statements in it were inaccurate.
The mayor and other city leaders knew that one of Gerace’s former employees had raised questions about the accuracy of his resume before the Anchorage Assembly confirmed Gerace as health director. The former employee emailed her concerns to the Assembly. And she testified in a closed-door Assembly meeting that the mayor attended.
Gerace hasn’t served in any part of the Army since the 1990s, according to Defense Department databases. He enlisted in the Washington National Guard in 1991 and then transferred to the Army Reserves. When he left the service in 1999, records show, his rank was just one step above private. In July 2021, Gerace falsely told the Bronson administration that he was a “Lieutenant Colonel - Alaska Guard.” He made the claim in an email obtained by Alaska Public Media that he sent to Bronson’s community engagement director. Two months later, Bronson nominated him for health director.
Simon Brown II, commander of the Alaska State Defense Force, said Monday he was calling a special staff meeting to review and verify the documents Gerace submitted with his application, which would have included his military discharge paperwork and copies of his degrees. Brown submitted a letter recommending Gerace for the Health Department job, and Brown seemed troubled by the suggestion that Gerace had misrepresented himself.
The resume says Gerace got a master’s in physician assistant studies in 1993 and a second one in business administration in 1998, on top of a bachelor’s of science in chemistry and chemical engineering in 1988. “No MBAs during my time,” Smith wrote in an email. He also had no memory of a student named Joe Gerace.
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