Nailah byrd bio

Nailah Byrd

Cuyahoga County inspector general, 39

Nailah Byrd asked for Frank Russo's former office, but she didn't expect what she found there: a damaged wall that had been completely covered by a giant mirror.

The symbolism was perfect.

Byrd was walking into the center of the former Cuyahoga County auditor's self-absorbed personality cult, a patronage and bribery machine, a law unto itself. Byrd, the county's first inspector general, is tasked with bringing the opposite to county government: sunlight and transparency, open windows instead of mirrors.

Nailah byrd bio

"I think it sends a great message that we're no longer doing business as usual," Byrd says. "We're going to have our chief ethics investigator sitting where Frank Russo sat."

Byrd, a former prosecutor and native New Yorker, is the taxpayer's watchdog at the county building, the enforcer of a new ethics ordinance and an independent investigator of alleged wrongdoing in the government.