ALUMNI PROFILE
Milton Dohoney
Milton Dohoney (Psychology ’77) never thought he’d consider 100° cool after spending much of his childhood and adult life in Kentucky and Ohio. However, in 2014, he moved to Phoenix, Arizona, to become the Assistant City Manager and he’s now used to life in the “consecutives,” when each day in the summer is expected to be over 100°.
Dohoney was living in Louisville, Kentucky, when he graduated from an all-male Catholic high school, and he chose IU Southeast because the “IU brand spoke for itself in terms of quality education.” IU Southeast offered him the opportunity to play basketball too – something he was eager to do.
Dohoney notes that “the seeds of my ability to do were honed at IU Southeast,” and he has used those skills very effectively in his career. The Arizona City/County Management Association (ACMA) recently awarded Dohoney with the Outstanding City/County Manager award. The ACMA was particularly impressed by Dohoney’s role in securing contracts to have the NCAA Final Four (2017) and Super Bowl (2023) played in the Phoenix area. His other accolades include creating a public process for hiring the city’s Police Chief, which connected residents with city services. This was no easy task for a city with over 1.6 million residents.
Dohoney has dedicated his life to public service, and he began that work right here in the Louisville-Southern Indiana metropolitan area. After graduating from IU Southeast, he earned a graduate degree in Personnel Management. From there, he took off, first working in Louisville’s City Government, and then moving to Lexington, Kentucky to do the same.
By 2006, he had become the city manager of Cincinnati, Ohio, a role he came to relish. City managers oversee many of the public works in cities and counties, including an array of city services, such as police and fire, law, emergency management, Convention Center operations and major event hosting, like the Super Bowl.
Since moving to Phoenix, Dohoney finds ways to stay in touch with IU Southeast and his family. He came back to campus recently and shared tips for success with our students, encouraging them to fine tune their work ethic, communication skills, and critical thinking. He also inspired them to be active on campus. Dohoney feels much of his success stems from the days when he was an anchor on the closed-circuit campus news program. Of course, Dohoney studied hard too. “As crazy as it sounds,” he recalled, “I loved spending hours in the library.”
Like many of our students, Dohoney was the first in his family to attend college, and he had to navigate college on his own. It’s that spirit of understanding that has urged him to give back to the university. He stated that “when I look back on what helped make me the professional, and the man I have become, IUS played a significant role in that. Aside from my loyalty to the school I feel like I owe it to the university to affirm with my presence and my money that I support it.”