Eleni Varitimos joined MassDevelopment in June 2014 as Vice President of Community Development for the Northern Region of Massachusettts. In this Lawrence-based role, she manages the Commonwealth’s Brownfields Redevelopment Fund, the Transformative Development Initiation (TDI) program, including the development of its collaborative workspace and placemaking programs, and predevelopment lending in fifty-five communities including seven Gateway Cities. Ms. Varitimos was the District Manager for TDI:Peabody and a collaborator on TDI:Haverhill and TDI:Lynn.

Ms. Varitimos spent 11 years on Beacon Hill as Chief of Staff to Senator Steven A. Baddour focusing her work on statewide transportation policy and fiscal affairs. Most notably, Ms. Varitimos managed the drafting of the 2004, 2006 and 2008 Transportation Bond Authorization bills, and was the partial author of the Commonwealth’s landmark Transportation Reform Act (Chapter 15 of the Acts of 2009), which reorganized the state’s transportation delivery system. In her role, she coordinated the Joint Committee on Transportation’s Big Dig oversight hearings which provided evidence that ultimately enabled the state to recoup millions of dollars through the cost recovery process.
Prior to working in the Massachusetts Senate, Ms. Varitimos worked at Fidelity Investments providing strategic marketing services to their portfolio companies and as a Business Analyst at PrimeStreet Corporation. Her earlier work including helping launch the non-partisan public policy think tank MassINC and its independent policy magazine, CommonWealth. She is affectionately referred to as employee Number 5.

Ms. Varitimos earned an MBA with magna cum laude honors from the F.W. Olin School of Business at Babson College after graduating from Bryn Mawr College where she concentrated her studies in political science and Latin American Studies. Her minor in 17th and 18th Century European History is seldom mentioned, except when fact checking PBS period dramas.

The daughter and granddaughter of Lawrencians, Ms. Varitimos is married to Lawrence-native Kevin Higginbottom, an urban education administrator. Their two boys keep them overly involved with soccer and their three kittens keep them overly involved with mayhem. Although she no longer lives in Lawrence, she has a continued commitment to its revitalization.