Biography
Prior to being elected as the Clark County Clerk, Goya was a freelance journalist who wrote for local, regional, and national publications including USA Today, Audubon and the Boston Globe. She is an award-winning playwright; an Emmy-nominated writer; received the Frederick L. Ryan Award for Economics; the JCPenny Golden Rule Award for community leadership; and the EMERGE Nevada 2016 Alumni of the Year.
Goya oversees the Marriage License Bureau in Clark County, which services five cities and the famous Las Vegas Strip and the City of Las Vegas. The bureau issues approximately 73,000 marriage licenses in 2019 to couples from almost every country in the world. This legacy industry supports over 18,000 jobs and contributes $2.5 billion in annual economic activity including lodging, restaurants, entertainment, sports, spas, outdoor activities and shopping.
When Goya took office she immediately discovered a sharp decrease in wedding tourism, she promptly took action, working with the legislature to create a special wedding promotion fund that generates over $1 million per year; reaching out to the industry and the state and local tourism departments. She created a public/private partnership with the wedding industry that evolved into the Las Vegas Wedding Chamber of Commerce and in 2021 the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) created its first national campaign dedicated to weddings: Forever Happens Here. Due to her hard work and persistence, after a persistent, steady year-after-year 20-year decline in weddings, 2021 is on pace to outperform 2019 in the number of wedding licenses issued -- even during COVID and the loss of thousands of international couples!
Current Leadership
2021 -- Vice-President elect for Nevada’s County Fiscal Officers Association (CFOA).
2015 - present -- Advisory Board Member for the Las Vegas Wedding Chamber of Commerce
2019 - 2021 Board member of International Association of Government Officials (IGO).
Awards and Recognition:
- 2021 iGO Excellence in County Government Award for various achievements and initiatives
- 2020 Cashman Good Government Award Finalist from Nevada Taxpayers Association for “Ensuring Marriage Integrity”
- 2019 iGO Innovator Award (Clerk’s Division) for overhauling the Marriage Officiant program to include online and in-person training
- 2019 Center for Digital Government, Government Experience Award for MLIC.Vegas and online customer service improvements for national and international customers
- 2018 Honorable Mention Good Government Award from Nevada Taxpayers Association for innovations supporting the addition of new married names to marriage certificates
- 2018 NACo 2018 Achievement Award for streamlining and standardizing the marriage officiant application process
- 2016 Best Practices Award – Records Management from the National Association of County Recorders, Election Officials, and Clerks (NACRC) for "Low-Cost Tech Innovations Save Time and Money for County Clerk"
- 2016 NACo Achievement Award for "Low-Cost Tech Innovations Save Time and Money for County Clerk" (Video)
- 2015 Women of Distinction Award for Corporate and Government Services from the National Association of Women Business Owners of Southern Nevada (Award)
- 2015 Alumni of the Year, EMERGE Nevada
Achievements
- Have brought the resorts, the chapels and hundreds of small wedding businesses together to celebrate Five Million Love Stories, a year-long wedding celebration based on the county issuing its 5-millionth wedding license;
- Spearheaded promotional campaigns resulting in over $20 million in national and international publicity for Las Vegas weddings to bring much-needed attention to a declining Las Vegas wedding market including Las Vegas Marries the Military; "Say Yes to the UK Dress"; “Hitched in Vegas”; Royal Wedding Month; and the Pop-up Marriage License Bureau at McCarran Airport. After 20 years of steady year-over-year decline, Las Vegas is finally on track to see an increase in marriage licenses issued.
- Created a trusted source of information for couples from around the world to find wedding resources and information, WEDDINGS.VEGAS;
- Provided a QR code for chapels and wedding planners to use on their literature that directs customers to our mobile-friendly application. Now, 100 percent of the couples use the online application, which reduces wait time for couples and printing costs for the department;
- Worked with the legislature to provide much-needed technology funds to all Nevada county clerks that Clark has used to improve customer service;
- Implemented a strategy to protect digitally archived permanent public records to secure and protect them from potential data loss or ransomware threats so they are safe for the next 100 years;
- Implemented two pilot programs for County IT;
- Overhauled the marriage officiant application process and implemented a mandatory training program to ensure officiants understood their rights and responsibilities to the state;
- Streamlined the marriage certificate filing process saving hundreds of hours of staff time;
- Reorganized the Clerk's Office management team and created a new system for employee review and training;
- Created an online scheduler for civil marriage ceremony and passport acceptance appointments;
- Implemented a secure online and in-person credit card processing service to reduce cash intake and allow the department to collect online order requests 24/7.
In-Process Initiatives
- Digitized county permanent public records that date back to 1909 and am now working on a seamless public search tool to make government records more transparent and available;
- Developing a strategy to balance privacy of personal information with public access to information;
- Creating an ESRI geocoded Story Map with over 1-million data points of marriage certificates with a data hub that will be available to researchers who want more in-depth information on who is getting married;
- Creating a Celebrity Timeline with nearly 400 celebrities from 1920’s John Gilbert to Joe Jonas;
- Finalizing informational customer service portal where couples can access all things wedding;
- Five Million Love Stories promotion and activations through 2022;
- Bringing 2022 CFOA Conference to Clark County.
Platform
"Clark County Clerk Lynn Goya deserves a ton of credit for seeking to digitalize all of her office’s records to make it easier for members of the public to find them online."
Las Vegas Review Journal
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
ONGOING PROJECTS
- Implementing a new Automatic Call Distribution system. On track to be completed by end of December, 2017.
- Piloted a new system to replace the current records management system. Migration to the new system, Opentext, kicked off earlier this year.
- Records management team has digitized more than twenty filing cabinets of BCC records as part of the Clerk's Office efforts to migrate from paper to electronic form.
COMPLETED PROJECTS
- Provided one stop customer service for wedding tourists unfamiliar with our government processes by partnering with Recorder's Office.
- Improved customer service for Marriage related businesses. Implemented audit controls to insure officiant are adhering to filing statutes & improving minister turnaround on filing.
- Streamlined certificate filing process- Modified the Marriage License and Marriage Certificate processes to operate more efficiently.
Installed three Marriage Certificate and Abstracts sales kiosks.
- Located at Marriage Bureau, Government Center, and Tenaya branch Office
- Improve customer service and reduce congestion at the clerks counter.
Policy revisions and adoptions (e.g., Cash Handling and Supervisor Performance Expectations).
- Standardized cash handling policies to make them more consistent, accountable and safer for employees.
- Standardized marriage commission ceremonies to improve customer service and satisfaction.
- Supports the addition of marriage certificate processes, improves workflow, increases employee flexibility, clarifies chain of command and improves employee morale, while insuring proper checks and balances are maintained.
- Check lists and job aids improve standardization in processes.
- Implemented a formal training program for new hires including an individualized notebook with policies, procedures, job aids and check lists for each required service provided by the Clerk's Office to reduce the cost of hiring and training replacements.
Implemented escrow accounts to provide our bulk customers with more efficient service
- Modification of all of the Clerk's processes allowed us to look closely at all of our processes and training material to standardize the functions.
Implemented a credit card system for face to face and online transactions.
- Credit cards allow us to operate a 24/7 marriage certificate sales website which provides best in practice customer service for our worldwide customers.
- Reduced our cash intake by half in the Clerk's Office.
- Ended cash transactions in the Marriage Commission to improve safety for our employees and eliminate the Loomis currier route.
- Created a simple and direct uri address, MLIC.VEGAS, to make it easy for customers to purchase a marriage license or certificate. Created a QR code that we provide to chapels and wedding venues to place on their printed material. The QR code provides a direct link to our marriage web page.
- Created a responsive designed online marriage application form to allow customers to apply for a marriage license. Customers can apply using the smartphones, tablets and laptops. Approximately 80% of our customers use the online application, reducing our paper costs by 1,200 lbs/year & a minimum savings of 1,334 hours.
- Allows Office to better manage workload while still providing approximately 500 more passports filing than previous year.