At Wednesday, July 12’s public meeting of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, the MGC said goodbye to Executive Director Karen Wells, who is departing from the Commission after 10 years of service.

Wells, who has been with the Commission since 2013, has been the MGC’s Executive Director since September 2020 following two stints as Interim Executive Director. She helped lead the MGC and its staff through the COVID-19 pandemic and helped oversee the orderly suspension of gaming in the Commonwealth during that time, as well as the subsequent safe re-opening of casinos in July 2020. Wells also served as the Director of the Investigations and Enforcement Bureau (IEB).

With the IEB, Ms. Wells led the regulatory enforcement of the Expanded Gaming Act in order to protect the public interest and ensure the integrity of legal gaming in Massachusetts. She also was responsible for facilitating law enforcement activity on behalf of the Commission involving the Massachusetts State Police, the Alcohol Beverage Control Commission, the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office and other local, state and federal law enforcement partners.

Before her time with the MGC, Ms. Wells served as the Undersecretary for Law Enforcement at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety. In 2008, Ms. Wells functioned as the commonwealth’s Senior Counsel for Law Enforcement and Fire Services,  and, in 2007, was the Deputy Chief of the Public Protection, Anti-Terrorism, Corruption and Technology Unit at the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office, where she prosecuted high-level narcotics and white-collar crimes. She’s also served as Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Bureau of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office assigned to the Special Investigations and Narcotics Division.

A graduate of Boston University School of Law in 1994, Wells began her career that same year as an Assistant District Attorney with the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office. She’s received multiple commendations and distinguished service awards, including the Massachusetts State Police Superintendent’s Commendation for her contribution to a wiretap investigation of a major state narcotics investigation. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in English in 1991 from Colgate University.

In Wells’ stead, the Commission has tapped General Counsel Todd Grossman to serve as the MGC’s Interim Executive Director. Mr. Grossman is an 11-year veteran of the MGC, joining the Commission in 2012 near the inception of the agency. In his time as General Counsel, Mr. Grossman has overseen the legal department, which offers counsel to the commissioners and staff on a wide variety of matters relating to the oversight and administration of the agency, gaming, and racing in the Commonwealth.

Mr. Grossman has contributed to the development and implementation of new regulations and policies governing the process by which gaming licenses were awarded, related municipal issues addressed, and ultimately how the casinos are regulated, as well as being involved in the development of an enhanced code of ethics for commissioners and staff of the Commission.

Prior to his role at the Commission, Mr. Grossman served as one of the inaugural commissioners of the Massachusetts State Athletic Commission, which is charged with the regulation of mixed martial arts and boxing events in the Commonwealth. Mr. Grossman began his career as an Assistant District Attorney in the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office prosecuting a wide variety of criminal matters in the district and superior courts of the Commonwealth. He is a graduate of Brandeis University and holds a law degree from New England Law Boston