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COVERAGE OF THE 2016 APTA ANNUAL MEETING

Women Leaders Tell Their Stories

Wednesday’s Wake Up Breakfast: “Boots on the Ground, Flats in the Boardroom” featured a career advice discussion led by women leaders featured in a book by the same title.

The group spoke candidly about how they succeeded in predominantly male-dominated fields, the challenges they faced and sacrifices they made while balancing family and career.

Book author Grace Crunican, general manager, San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, moderated the session.

Co-author Elizabeth Levin, president, Liz Levin & Company, Boston, talked about “risk being the other side of opportunity. If you want the opportunity, you should know the risk is part of getting there.” She added that she looks at failure “not as failure but as a step in the right direction.”

One of the things she learned in her career, Levin said, is that the “biggest gift is to be able to have informal power, which doesn’t depend on your title. For me, it was always being able to speak up and offer a viewpoint. If you do that on a regular basis, people do begin to listen to you. It does distinguish you from other people who just accept what’s happening.”

Dana Hook, vice president, CDM Smith, Carlsbad, CA, said after working her way up to become a professional engineer, she joined a county flood control department. At the first staff meeting, she knew she’d made a mistake.

“They needed someone to take notes and a man volunteered,” she explained. “But the supervisor said, I think it should be a woman. I took the notes but I pulled him aside later and said that’s the last time you’re going to call me out as the note-taker because I’m a woman.” Hook found another job soon after.

Shirley DeLibero, Milton, MA, a past APTA chair, said a career in transportation was the farthest thing from her mind but, at the age of 39 and with two sons, her mother gave her an ultimatum: “Get a job in the city where you’re home more with your sons.” With persistence she got a job at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority as a project manager to refurbish old Green Line streetcars. Although she had no experience, she convinced the manager she could do the job.

“When I started, I had a really thick wooden door,” she said. “Every morning I came in there were obscenities carved into it.” She had to literally shave them off the door. By the time she left the job, she said, the door was very thin.

DeLibero also said she took many risks throughout her career and that included moving. “When I mentor people now, I tell them I don’t think I could have had the career I’ve had if I didn’t move around.”

Mary Peters, board member, HDR Inc.; principal, Mary E. Peters Consulting Group, LLC, Peoria, AZ; and former U.S. secretary of transportation, stressed that women today stand up for themselves. “Don’t be afraid to push those boundaries,” she said.

Citing advice from her father, Peters said, “You can do whatever you want to do. He used to compare life to a merry-go-round, saying that you have to grab a ring every time you go around because you never know which one is going to be the gold ring.”

She said that, when she had career failures, they served her well and gave her opportunities she never would have had if she had not tried: “You can do it all; you just can’t do it all at once.” Balance at home and at work are critical, she said.

Crunican told the audience that “in each job you take, there is an opportunity to grow. Take unpopular assignments,” she advised.

Parsons Corporation sponsored the session.

 

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