A very happy and hopeful 2021 to you all! I am so excited to begin my time as your WTS Sacramento Chapter President. It seems like just yesterday I was at the 2009 Annual Awards and Scholarship Dinner accepting a WTS Undergraduate Scholarship. Little did I know, this would be the beginning of many years serving this meaningful organization.
We have been busy as we closed out 2020 and kicked off 2021! In December we held our December Lunch Program featuring Melissa Wright, Senior Civil Engineer for Sacramento County and Kent Craney, Principal Engineer for Sacramento County Economic Development on the Metro Air Parkway Interchange. We also held a Winter Professional Development Workshop with Maisha Hagan, owner and head coach at Beauty & the Boss, who presented on the Art of Influence and Negotiation.
In January we held our Strategic Planning Meeting, in which the Board discussed new ideas and set our Chapter goals for the year. It’s never too late to join our Board, so please e-mail me if you’d like to get more involved. This month we also held our January Lunch Program entitled Get to Know WTS, where Kira Davis, Chapter Vice President and Senior Project Engineer for Mark Thomas, and I spoke all about WTS and what our local WTS Chapter does. In case you missed it or want to share with a friend, a recap and the recording is below.
January concluded with one of my favorite events, the 2020 Annual Awards and Scholarship Dinner where we awarded $20,000 in student scholarships and honored five transportation leaders and companies with well-deserved awards.
In addition, we are thrilled to announce the establishment of the Doris Matsui Diversity and Inclusion Scholarship, a new needs-based scholarship that will be awarded to a high school student beginning this Fall! Congresswomen Matsui represents the Sacramento community, is an advocate for diversity in infrastructure and transportation, and is a strong supporter for women’s issues, which is why this scholarship is in her name. We were so fortunate to have her speak about the new scholarship at the Annual Event. You can view Congresswomen Matsui’s video message here. I am so proud of our Diversity and Inclusion Committee for making this scholarship opportunity become a reality!
Lastly, we have some exciting events coming up! On February 18, Caltrans Director Toks Omishakin will speak to us about Transportation Equity. Then stay tuned for our upcoming Public Works Roundtable co-hosted with APWA in late March. If you’re not already a WTS member, and want to join, don’t forget to sign up before March 10 to be entered into our Membership March Madness competition!
Thank you everyone for your continued support of WTS Sacramento! I’m looking forward to the year ahead!
