Podcast: Four female leaders take center stage as BART celebrates Women's History Month

Transcript below:

HOST: March is Women’s History Month so on this edition of “Hidden Tracks: Stories from BART” we’re profiling four of the female leaders of the agency. We’ll hear their stories of growing up, hear about the trajectories of their careers, their triumphs, challenges, how they define good leadership, and more.

I’m speaking with BART Deputy Police Chief Angela Averiett, who joined the department in 2019 as a lieutenant. You quickly moved up to Deputy Police Chief so first of all congratulations on that.

ANGELA AVERIETT: Thank you.

HOST: And thank you for being here. You know we’re talking because you’re one of a growing number of female leaders in BART’s Police Department. So I wanted to start off asking, did you always plan to go into law enforcement?

AVERIETT: No, I didn’t actually. So when I was in high school I decided that I wanted to be a chemist. I thought I was going to find the cure for cancer because you know when you’re young, you think you can tackle the world so I went off to college and I quickly realized that I wasn’t quite smart enough (laughs) to do that so…

HOST: Oh, come on!

AVERIETT: Well, I didn’t do too well in school so I had to refocus and figure out what my next move was and so I decided then that I wanted to be a commercial airline pilot. I absolutely love flying, even to this day, you know being on airplanes. I’ve never flown a plane but I thought being a pilot would be a rewarding career. The only problem was I couldn’t afford to take flying lessons because the job I had at the time didn’t afford me that luxury. So my brother who is currently still a fireman in the city of Hayward told me about a job at the Hayward Police Department as a records clerk. I had never worked around law enforcement so I was a little nervous but the job paid well and I figured I could do that for a little while, go back to school and then get my pilots license. So I started working at the police department in 1996 as a records clerk and then I went on a ride-along a few months later and that changed my life. The ride-along was so exciting and I think back on it now and it’s actually comical because we went to like, a vacant building and there was an alarm call there and I remember I was shaking because it was so exciting and the officer made the ride-along so exciting and we were doing like the Scooby-Doo in the corner and tip-toeing and I was like, this is what I want to do. And that embarked me on a journey to where I am today.

HOST: That’s incredible, and did you grow up here in the Bay Area?

AVERIETT: I did, yes in Hayward.

HOST: Ok and then you ended up working there?

AVERIETT: I did yes, yes. Hayward is always a special place in my heart.

HOST: That’s great. And so, tell us how did your career evolve then in Hayward? Because you stayed there for quite a long time.

AVERIETT: I did, I stayed at Hayward for about 19 years. My first career goal was to be a detective. There’s something about investigating a crime and helping victims of that crime to a resolution. You can never make things right but maybe you can make things better by giving them justice. And so being a detective really appealed to me. Unfortunately, I never got to realize that goal. So once again I had to pivot and figure out, ok, what is my next move? I decided that I wanted to be in leadership because I realized that there weren’t many women and there were no women of color. And so I decided that I could be a trailblazer to inspire other people to maybe follow my path or at least to make the path a little easier for them. So I started progressing through the ranks. I held different assignments at every rank and it really helped me not only to grow as a professional police officer, but I really grew a lot as a person. And I say that because I got to do so much good work in the community. I got to bond with so many people in the community and it was very, very rewarding. But then I also realized that I could really effect change within the organization by continuing to climb higher. Effect change, not only institutional change, you know, as far as changing some of the things about police culture but also really strengthening that bond between law enforcement and the community.

HOST: So you were one a few women in the department. The only woman of color really getting into leadership. That must have come with some challenges. I mean, were there tough times?

AVERIETT: Oh there were very tough times. There were very tough and very dark times. So myself and 12 other women in the department decided to pursue a lawsuit against the department unfortunately. It had to happen, you know, because there were a lot of things going on that were unjust, let’s say. To give you an example, I was the only female on an all-male team and our work habits weren’t necessarily the same. I think we were not in a place of understanding and so I became ostracized. I was kind of singled out on that team. I was retaliated against by individuals on that team where let’s say I would do a traffic stop in the middle of the night and they never came to cover me. So I was out there by myself. I started getting bullets in my mailbox at work and that was a symbol and I knew what it meant. But all of that, it never stopped my resolve to continue in this profession. As a matter of fact, it made me want to try harder because I wanted to change that. I didn’t want any other female to have to go through those tough times and dark days that I went through.

HOST: And what was the outcome of that lawsuit against the Hayward Police Department?

AVERIETT: Well we decided that we didn’t want to take this to a trial because there was going to be collateral damage as a result of the lawsuit because some of the individuals that were named in the suit, their children were now employees of the Hayward Police Department. So we settled and we were awarded almost $5 million from that lawsuit. And also, there were changes that were made within the department as a result of the lawsuit.

HOST: And you ended up leaving after a long career at Hayward. What made you want to make the leap over to BART?

AVERIETT: Well, you know, I always say that sometimes you have to move out to move up and I realized that I had hit the ceiling at the Hayward Police Department. I realized that there wasn’t really any further upward movement that I could achieve and I met the then Chief Carlos Rojas back in 2018 at a class and I remember I was so inspired by his leadership. And this was just a short conversation at breakfast during this training class and I just remember thinking ‘Wow, well if BART has this police chief at the helm it must be a great place to work and I started talking to some of the people I knew that were employed at BART already and I saw the value in the organization. And I also saw the ability for me to fit in and continue my path. And I can tell you that since I’ve been here it’s been such a positive experience. I was welcomed with open arms from the day I walked in the door. And that’s really important because in law enforcement, you have to prove yourself. Even if you stay at the same department for 20 years, as you rise through the ranks, it’s almost like you’re a new employee. Every time you have to prove yourself, especially as a woman. You have to constantly prove yourself, prove your value, prove your worth and it was like I came in established already at BART. And it’s been incredible. I have grown so much since I’ve been here. I’ve made some great friends and I feel like I’ve had a positive impact on the organization as well.

HOST: And we’re speaking with BART’s Deputy Police Chief Angela Averiett who joined the department back in 2019 as we said. And also, you head the Progressive Policing Bureau for BART. First of all, tell us, what is progressive policing, what is the bureau, for people who don’t understand?

AVERIETT: So, progressive policing was realized as a result of the unfortunate events that unfolded within the summer of 2020. There was a lot of civil unrest. There was a lot of distrust of the police and rightfully so. We know what happened in May of 2020 with George Floyd and so we heard the calls from the community that we as law enforcement needed to change. We were not changing fast enough for our communities and so Chief Ed Alvarez started this bureau in August of 2020 as an answer to the community. And so in the bureau our goal is to be the most progressive police department in the country, to make sure our policies and procedures are equitable in that we are either meeting or exceeding industry standards as far as training. But also, really reengaging with the community and building back that trust that we lost. And so, one of the ways that we’ve done that is we started a new program called the Special Engagement Team. These teams are comprised of a Police Officer and two Crisis Intervention Specialists who have a background in social work. And these teams of three are out in our system and they respond to our quality of life calls for service. So, homelessness, people that may be in a mental illness crisis or people who are experiencing drug addiction. We launched the program in November of last year and it’s been very successful so far, even though we’re not fully staffed. And I think that co-responder model was a direct response to what our communities told us they wanted to see, what they told us they were interested in as far as police reform. Because you know, there were a lot of calls for defunding the police and all that. And honestly, I feel like a lot of people didn’t understand what that looked like or what that meant. And I’m proud to say that the BART organization really supported up during that time and really encouraged us to be creative and to come up with these new strategies in order to better serve our communities.

HOST: And we’re talking with you because it’s Women’s History Month so I wanted to ask you, are there women that you have looked up to throughout your life or now that you can tell us, what it was about them that helped bolster you?

AVERIETT: Absolutely and as corny as maybe this answer is going to sound or as canned as this may sound, I can honestly say that my mom was a huge inspiration because she had four kids, she worked really, really hard. She had this strong work ethic. Regardless of whatever curve balls life threw at her, she always rebounded. She always stood on two feet, she always was such a positive role model for me and for my brothers and my sister. I really, I don’t think I realized how inspired I was by her until I became a police officer. She was very nervous about me joining this profession and rightfully so, it can be very dangerous. But I think she started to soften a little bit when I would tell her some of the positive stories about the things I was doing in the community. I would save the stories about the robberies I responded to and all that because (laughs) that would have got her very nervous. But I think she started to see a different side to police work and I realized in that moment that if I could influence my own mother to have a different view of law enforcement, then I knew that I could influence others in the community as well. And so, my mom even to this day still is such a hard worker. She’s in her 70’s and she hasn’t stopped and so I can only pray that A. I look as good as her when I’m in my 70’s, but B. that I continue to work hard and be an inspiration for others like my mother was for me.

HOST: Aww, that’s so sweet. So you obviously looked up to your mom so much. And now you have so many not only females but just people looking up to you because you are a leader here at BART. So what qualities do you try to embody? And why are those important for you to display to people who are looking up to you?

AVERIETT: I’d actually like to tell a story. Really, hopefully quick.

HOST: No, take you time.

AVERIETT: Ok, when I was at the Hayward Police Department, I was a patrol sergeant. And I remember one night working swing shift, a female officer went to stop these two pedestrians for, I think it was jaywalking or something. It turned into a vicious fight with these two individuals. She was by herself. She ended up unfortunately shooting one of them. He survived. But it was a very, very scary incident for her and for the rest of us that heard what was happening as we were trying to respond to her location. I remember talking to her after the incident and I asked like, what, how, what were you thinking you know while you were being so savagely attacked by these two individuals? And she said ‘As a mama bear, all I kept thinking about were my children. And I kept thinking, I’m not going to give up. I’m never, ever, ever, ever going to give up. I’m going to stay in this fight as long as I can because I want to live’. And so, I was so inspired by and her resilience and her courage and her spirit that I carry that with me to this day. So I think as a leader, you know, I think courage is important especially as a female leader. We have to be courageous; we have to take calculated risks because if we don’t we’re holding ourselves back and we’re not, kind of, blazing that path for others to follow. But I think also, in addition to that, I look for and I try to be authentic. I think being genuine and being authentic really humanizes me as a police officer, as a female, as a woman of color. But it really helps to build rapport with other people. I spent over 10 years as a crisis or hostage negotiator, which was one of the best assignments I ever held, I absolutely loved it. And I got to talk to so many different people who were literally experiencing the worst day of their life and thank goodness, all of the incidents I was involved with were resolved peacefully. And I think that’s because I let the curtain down. I was honest. I was authentic. I was genuine and they saw me or heard me as a real person and that’s what I try to give to people every single day. I was hired this way for a reason, right. I’m not going to change who I am to fit somebody’s box. I’m going to be myself, my authentic self and it feels great. It gives me so much more confidence knowing that I walk in this world as Angela, you know. And so I hope that I bring that quality to work every single day and that others are inspired by that and that they can stand up and be ok with who they are and show the world, their human self.

HOST: Thank you so much for being here. This is BART’s Deputy Police Chief Angela Averiett. We appreciate your time.

AVERIETT: Thank you so much.

HOST: I’d like to welcome Asiann Chan-Velasco, the Assistant Chief Transportation Officer for BART’s Operations Control Center, which we like to describe as Mission Control or the heartbeat of BART. You are among four leaders at BART that we’re talking to as part of Women’s History Month. And you’ve been with BART, is it almost 25 years now, right?

CHAN-VELASCO: It’s 25 years now.

HOST: That’s incredible. So I just want to go back to the beginning. Like, where did you grow up and you know, talk to us about your upbringing.

CHAN-VELASCO: So I’m born and raised in San Francisco. I went to grammar school, middle school in San Francisco Chinatown. I lived in Nob Hill, took the bus everywhere, went to Lowell High School, City College of San Francisco and I started at BART at the age of 19. So it’s been a long time. I started at BART in 1996. I was a Station Agent and I was in the position for seven years and I wanted to do something else, something new and so I went into the Control Center. I was a communications specialist for about a year, and then sitting in the Control Center, just in the room, I just knew the Train Controller position was the one for me. And so, I transitioned to Train Controller and I was there for 10 years and in that 10 year period, I was the training supervisor for two years so I was able to a lot of the training within the Control Center for all the different positions. And then from there I became the Central Manager and during the time I was the Central Manager I became the Administrative Manager to the Assistant Chief for the Control Center. And then, that’s when I transitioned to Assistant Chief for the lines. And I went out to the lines, to the ALS line and that was mine.

HOST: And what’s ALS just for…

CHAN-VELASCO: So that is the area from Lake Merritt to Dublin and it was only down to Fremont so I was able to be part of the opening for Warm Springs so that was fun. And right after that, we did a Transportation re-org which changed the Assistant Chief, you know, our areas of responsibility and I ended up getting Rail Operations for the entire system. That made me in charge of all the terminal zones, all the yards, basically all the Train Operators and the Foreworkers that worked in the towers and the terminal zones.

HOST: You’ve basically held every job at BART (laughs)

CHAN-VELASCO: Yeah, in Transportation. Yes.

HOST: That’s incredible. And I find it incredible that you started when you were still a teenager. Like, did you have any idea that you would end up spending you career here back then?

CHAN-VELASCO: No. I mean I came through BART at the perfect time. It was growing. I mean when I came in Colma had just opened and then I was there for Pittsburg/BayPoint, Warm Springs, the W Line. By the time we were on the W Line, I was in the Control Center watching them doing all of the testing for the trains. And then, you know, it’s just the expansions. I was able to be a part of almost all of it. BART has given me a lot of opportunities. I’ve been enabled to visit other transit internationally; Hong Kong, Madrid, Copenhagen, Milan and just to see other people’s, you know the way they run service, you know, what type of equipment they have. And so BART’s let me do a lot of that so I don’t think that I’ve ever missed out on anything by you know, not leaving the Bay Area or continuing school to do something else or trying a different job. I’ve done a lot of great things at BART.

HOST: And tell us more about your role, you know, as head of the Operations Control Center like how would you describe what the Operations Control Center is to people who don’t necessarily know the inner workings of BART?

CHAN-VELASCO: The Operations Control Center is open 24/7/365 and that’s basically my life (chuckles). Anything that happens in the Control Center I get a call for. I’m in the Control Center, my office is physically in the Control Center and my family knows that you know, if I get a call I’m gone. And my sons, they’ve grown up knowing that ok mom’s gone, she went and grabbed her bag. She’s gone but you know, it’s a tough job. You’re always on. The only time that you’re off is when you put in that vacation slip, and you put out your delegation and you’re like phew! You pass on the torch to someone else but otherwise you’re always on.

HOST: With that said is there a typical day at the Operations Control Center? I mean because you’re literally in charge of running the trains.

CHAN-VELASCO: Well and that’s the thing is that you have good days and you have bad days. Good days is when you have revenue service that runs the way it is supposed to, no emergencies, nothing out of the ordinary and a good commute day and then, a good maintenance evening.

HOST: So Asiann, you’ve been front and center in helping BART navigate the pandemic, something that of course no one could have predicted what happened, you know, worldwide. What’s that been like for someone in your position?

CHAN-VELASCO: It’s been really tough for Transportation. We have never stopped working. Since the pandemic started, Transportations/Operations has been to work every day. It went to where we were the ones purchasing and trying to locate different types of equipment for Covid cleaning. We were transporting everything that the field needed like gloves and masks and cleansers and everything. And so, it’s been a lot and you know, we were still able to keep up with regular service. I mean, we went down to reduced service, but we still kept the same levels, the same hours that we could, and we ran service. So, I’m really proud of our front line workers and of Transportation for sticking it out because literally, we’ve been at work the whole time.

HOST: And we’re talking to you as part of Women’s History Month. So I wanted to ask you, are there women throughout your career that have helped you, that you’ve looked up to, that you tried to embody? Just trying to figure out from your perspective, how women have helped you?

CHAN-VELASCO: Absolutely, at BART we have some really, really strong women. We have Assistant Chiefs right now. We have two female Assistant Chiefs. A year ago, we actually had four female Assistant Chiefs and it’s something to be proud of. These are difficult jobs. These days they’re balancing a family home life and work and to be 24 hours and 365 is totally difficult so we work with a whole bunch of strong women. And working Transportation, it’s a different type of atmosphere. It’s not a business type of atmosphere. You’re working with some tough people, your working in some tough situations and we have some ladies out there that are just awesome. And I was in BART when we had some of the original employees that started at BART, and they were awesome. They were some really, really strong women.

HOST: And has that always been the case? Or have you watched it change throughout your career here since you’ve been here?

CHAN-VELASCO: Well, I’ve been in Transportation the whole time I’ve been here at BART and I have to say that our department is the most diverse and so, I’ve never felt like, you know, as an Asian-American woman, that you know, there’s something that I couldn’t accomplish or that I couldn’t do at BART. It was just always, people that are very helpful. They were always pushing to say “hey you can do it, you can do it. It doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn't matter what your education is. BART will allow you to grow here’.

HOST: We’re speaking with Asiann Chan-Velasco, the Assistant Chief Transportation Officer for BART’s Operations Control Center, one of four women that we’re profiling for Women’s History Month on this podcast. I wanted to ask you also, what do you do when you’re not working? And I know you’re on 24/7 but what do you like to do for fun or in your off-time what do you do?

ASIANN CHAN-VELASCO: Well, I’m married to my husband. We’ve been together since high school. We’ve been married 22 years. We have two sons. I have a 15-year-old and a 10-year-old and so, I basically, I’m like the carpool shuttler, the sports mom. I’m very heavily involved in Boy Scouts for my sons. I’m the house cleaner, the grocery orderer, you know just, I’m Mom. When I’m not at work, I’m Mom.

HOST: And as a female leader here at BART, what are the qualities that you think are important for you to have and why?

CHAN-VELASCO: Being here at BART, my management style is really team-based. I find that every person that works for me, that works with me, is part of my BART family and I think it’s important to see it that way and that it’s not just a business because we go through a lot here in Transportation. We work with a lot of bad things. And we have to realize that we have to support the people around us.  And I find that being woman makes it where I can have empathy for people, where people know that I care about them, but they understand that I’m all about the rules too. Because that’s my number one thing for BART is to maintain our safety. But being a woman, a mom, I understand what it means to have home/family work balance and to also have that sympathy/empathy for people who have to deal with certain things. And I find that being a woman makes me able to do that.

HOST: And what advice would you give to somebody who is just starting out here, male or female. What would you give them about setting off on your career?

CHAN-VELASCO: Working with the public is always difficult, but you have to look at what was the job that you put in for? When you put in for this job, you were excited. You were happy to get that acceptance letter. You were telling everybody ‘Hey I got this job at BART’. And when you get the job, appreciate it. Do it. Do what you’re supposed to. Do what you were trained to do and you’ll have a long and safe career here at BART because that’s all BART asks you to do; is to be safe, do what you were hired to do, remember why you applied to BART in the first place and why you wanted this job.

HOST: And Asiann, have you had challenges being a female minority leader here at BART?

CHAN-VELASCO: I have, but I think it’s like that everywhere. Being as Asian female, I’m looked at as a quiet person, you know, I don’t really speak up and I’m kind of glazed over a lot during meetings, but, if I have something to say I’m going to say it. I’m going to make my statement and you’ll know it so I understand my role, so I don’t really have challenges. I try to push through them

HOST. Asiann Chan-Velasco thank you so much for being here. I appreciate your time.

CHAN-VELASCO: Thanks for having me.

HOST: I am now speaking with Pam Herhold, BART’s Assistant General Manager Performance and Budget and I want to thank you first of all for being here as one of the four women we’re profiling at BART for Women’s History Month, being as that you are a leader here at BART. So I basically like to start at the beginning and have you tell us about where you grew up and what that was like.

PAM HERHOLD: I actually am from the Bay Area so I was born out here. When I was little my parents did a brief stint in Chicago and then they landed in Florida. So they bought a full-service marina, so from elementary school through high school I lived and worked at the marina. I did everything from washing boats to manning the ship store to working in the parts department. So it was a fun way to grow up; hard work but a lot of fun.

HOST: So how did you end up back here in the Bay Area and at BART?

HERHOLD: Well, you know, we as a family came to California quite a bit to visit relatives. I still have many relatives in the Bay Area and I went to college in Florida but I always knew that I wanted to live in a more progressive or more urban environment. And it is funny. I moved back to California in 1993 during the recession without a job, and had this vision of me taking the train to work. I never thought I would actually be working for the train. But I found an internship opportunity and one thing lead to another.

HOST: And that was your beginning at BART?

HERHOLD: Yeah, I had a connection with a professor at Berkeley. He connected me with the Marketing Department and Aaron Weinstein. Some of the folks listening might remember Aaron who had a need for an intern doing geocoding on the 1993 Station Profile Study. So that was my first opportunity to work at BART and that led to other positions.

HOST: And can I just ask what’s geocoding?

HERHOLD: So my graduate degree is in urban and regional planning and with a specialization in geographic information systems. So geocoding is the process of lining up somebody’s address with a physical place on the map, so just cleaning up the data.

HOST: Very cool. Pam, you’ve been the longest serving BART employee that we’ve interviewed out of the four female leaders here at BART for this podcast. I just wanted to know, what’s kept you here for that long?

HERHOLD: Well, I’ve always been challenged. I’ve always had a great team of people to work with. The work is very exciting. We have a good product. You know I very much believe in public transit. I believe in the good we’re doing for the Bay Area. Really, what’s kept me here is that it’s been something new, something interesting, something exciting every day. That’s not to say that there are moments where things feel very overwhelming and very challenging but, generally it’s something new every day. It’s something challenging every day. We have a great product. We have a great team.

HOST: You are the boss when it comes to BART’s Performance and Budget Department and it’s changed drastically and dramatically in the past two years with the pandemic. So I just want to know how you navigated that? What you learned from it, what we learned about BART from this?

HERHOLD: You know, the pandemic, no one would’ve seen this coming. I think back to the board workshop that we had in February 2020. The pandemic was out there in other countries but we really didn’t think about how it would hit BART. And it’s really taken everything that we know about public transit and basically just shook it up and tossed it out. It’s been quite daunting to think about the role my team plays in calculating BART’s revenue losses, in articulating those revenue losses, in identifying solutions to those revenue losses. I don’t know if everybody knows but we are down about $300-400 million a year in fare revenue. That’s a tremendous gap to try to fill and the federal government has allocated to BART $1.6 billion to help us weather the next few years and that’s amazing. And I think it’s amazing because it shows the good work that our team and BART as a whole has done in articulating BART’s financial needs. And also it’s really amazing because it shows that the federal government and here in the region, here in the Bay Area, BART is valued and they know that they need to help keep BART afloat. We are hard at work using the $1.6 billion to extend our runway. You’ll hear that phrase a lot if you listen to our board meetings. We’re trying to extend our runway out a few years financially so that we can identify what our next step is. You know, where are we going to obtain a secure funding source to help us maintain and shore up our rail service?

HOST: And so, is there a positive in the past two years that you see in terms of showing that the way it’s been working is not sustainable?

HERHOLD: There are a lot of silver linings actually and it’s so nice that we can kind of sit back and reflect on the silver linings of the pandemic. I can think of two specific, positive outcomes. One is that the pandemic really has brought all the general managers and all the staff of public transit agencies together in a way that we really didn’t work before the pandemic. We coordinate on a weekly basis. Offline we talk quite a bit. We strategize together. We’re still individual transit operators. We still are trying to solve our own problems first and foremost but we really are taking a very genuine look at regional problems and how can we solve them together so that’s very much a positive. We really came together in quite a good way there. And the second positive is that it has highlighted I think for many people, the importance of transit funding. So it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be easy for BART to identify a funding source but it really has highlighted the fact that transit needs something more than just passenger fares to sustain the service.

HOST: Interesting. I’m speaking with Pam Herhold, BART’s Assistant General Manager Performance and Budget. I wanted to ask you now, being a female leader that people here look up to, tell us about some of the women you’ve looked to and why and how they’ve helped shape your life.

HERHOLD: Oh good question. There’s been a number of women that I’ve wanted to emulate. Grace Crunican, our former general manager, she was quite a force of nature. With Grace, you know, she always had a vision and a lot of times I think the folks in the room might have felt like they were a couple steps behind where she was heading. It took us a little bit to catch up but once you look back you realize, she really knew what she was doing there. It was great to work with her. I do find Grace to be, very quick on her feet and just a good leader for BART and for the region.

HOST: Is there anything about your position that you think would surprise people, maybe people who aren’t in BART because I’ve heard you say that like, budget is actually exciting. Explain why you think that.

HERHOLD: Actually, initially when I started at BART in a permanent role, I was in an area called Service Planning. So it was kind of a hybrid between what you may know now as Operations Planning and Financial Planning and so I wasn’t at all in the budget department. A couple of reorganizations later, I landed in the Budget Department, my team and I, and it turned out to be the best move for my career and for my professional development. It really put a spotlight on the fact that your plans are not sustainable, they’re not real plans unless you have the funding to go along with them. Believe it or not, there’s still a lot of people out there that don’t actually think that way. And so I really appreciated having that grounding in a financial reality. Budgets are actually very interesting. We don’t put out service. We don’t move forward each fiscal year without a budget. We don’t get paid without a budget so there’s nothing more satisfying than having, you know, getting your budget adopted, getting it approved by the board, articulating what your vision is for the next year, and then executing that vision over the next year. Making sure that you an bring your expenses in on budget, targeting your revenue projections and in bringing in that ridership and that sales tax right in, close to budget, it’s quite gratifying to be able to ensure that the District has the funding that it needs in order to put out the revenue service,

HOST: And seeing as how you’ve been here the longest of the four females that we’re profiling, how have you seen BART evolve, change, particularly when it comes to female leadership? Have you seen a change?

HERHOLD: Yes. Back when I first started and that was in the mid-90’s, there were not that many female leaders. We had, some of you may remember, Dorothy Dugger. She was quite a force herself as a leader at BART. But you know, generally, most of the executive positions were held by men. And so the pendulum has swung. A few years ago, we had Kerry Hamill, we had Grace Crunican, we had me and Tamar and Rose Poblete. That was a huge number of female leaders. It really shows that transit is a place for a woman, public service is a place for a woman and the value that female leaders add to an organization.

HOST: And what are the leadership qualities that you try to bring to your position and why?

HERHOLD: Honesty. Everything that I try to do, I try to make sure that I can be as candid and honest with my team and with the people that I work with and the people that I work for. I also try to be very transparent. I try to make sure that I’m approachable. I want people to know that they can talk to me. And that’s an interesting thing too because I’ve been here quite a long time, as you’ve pointed out. And a lot of the folks, I’ve worked over the years with a lot of folks at all levels of the organization and I think that everybody that I’ve worked with in the past knows that I’m still me, I’m still Pam. They can talk to me. They can approach me and that I haven’t changed so I try to be myself.

HOST: And I like to ask this question, what advice would you give to somebody just coming in, maybe on the same trajectory as you had or kind of like the question is, if you knew then what you know now, what would the advice be for someone?

HERHOLD: Can I preface my response by saying I’m continuously blown away that I learn something new every day. I really do and I think the day that I stop learning new things will be the day that I leave BART. But, the advice that I would offer to somebody who is just starting at BART or wanting to advice their career is roll up your sleeves and just do the job. Don’t complain. Don’t ask yourself ‘Is this the job I should be doing?’. Roll up your sleeves and do the best job you can and that will be recognized and that will be valued and you will be noticed.

HOST: And I always like to ask what do you do outside of work? What do you do when you’re not here that helps bring you some peace or some balance to your day?

HERHOLD: Hmm, good question. So I meditate while I swim. I’m a big swimmer. In fact, it’s fun to compare notes with Bob Powers. You might know this, he’s a big swimmer. He’s fast, I swim farther. That’s my opportunity to kind of unwind, kind of solve problems in my head as I’m doing my laps. It’s very therapeutic so I get out and I swim quite a bit. I do a lot of things with my family. We get out and do a lot of hiking in the Bay Area. Anything outdoors so I do as much outdoors as I can.

HOST: Because you’ve seen BART evolve and change since you’ve been here, where do you see it going in the future? I mean, we’re talking about Link 21, there’s so much on the horizon.

HERHOLD: I think that BART has nowhere to go but up. Look at what’s happening with climate. Look at what’s happening, and this might be a temporary blip, but look at what’s happening with gas prices. We’ve taken a bit of a step back in population right now with the pandemic, but the Bay Area will survive and it will thrive. And BART is a five-county service. We really connect the region and we have nowhere to go but to increase ridership and to be here to serve the agency, serve the region. I’m also really kind of looking forward to any kind of technology improvements that we can roll out for our riders. You know, we are pretty much now contactless payment with our Clipper SMART card. We’ve got a lot of great things going on with our fellow transit operators. The world of fare integration and so I think we have a lot of new, surprising things to offer our riders as people come back to the system.

HOST: Thank you so much for being here. Pam Herhold, BART’s Assistant General Manager Performance and Budget.

HERHOLD: Thank you for having me.

HOST: I’m talking now with Sylvia Lamb, BART’s Acting Chief Maintenance and Engineering Officer. You are one of four women being profiled for Women’s History Month on this podcast for being a leader at BART. So first of all, thank you.

SYLVIA LAMB: Thank you.

HOST: And you have quite a title. How would you describe what you do in layman’s terms?

LAMB: Well, I’m responsible for the Maintenance and Engineering Department. We’re about 1,700 employees and the way that we describe it most of the time is we’re responsible for all the assets at BART, with the exception of the rail cars so our team takes care of the tracks, the stations, all the power, train control, the engineering and we also some training and quality.

HOST: Ok I want to get back to that because that is a lot to handle. But I want to get back to your beginning because it’s so interesting. Tell us about where you grew up and what that was like.

LAMB: I grew up in a very small town in Price, Utah. We were the county seat, I like to say this all the time, of Carbon County. And that’s really important because our local radio station was KOAL, which was coal because we were in the middle of coal country and all the area around me was coal industry. My dad was a coal miner and everybody I knew were coal miners. So when I was a, I think a junior in high school, I started working at the coal mine in summers with the engineering department. And I got to do a lot of surveying and drafting at the coal mine. And so that’s really where I grew up and so I did that every summer and actually, I would work for the coal mine during the school year. They would do geotechnical borings where they’d drill into the mountain, usually straight down, and then they would send me the logs of that information and I had a makeshift drafting table at my house in my back bedroom. And I would draw those up and then send them back to the mine so I kept working with the mine until later and then I went into surveying and engineering.

HOST: And what was like working in the coal mine? I can’t imagine there were many other women there.

LAMB: There were very few women (laughs). There were probably, maybe, were two women at the most, if that, other than the receptionist and the admin type folks. But on the technical side there were no women and so I stood out everywhere I went. They actually had a women’s restroom and shower but very few people in there, so anywhere I went in the coal mine, there was a little bit of a stir of who I was and what was I doing there. But all the men that I worked with were just super supportive and they were so eager to teach me and help me learn and it was just an amazing experience. But yeah, very few people, all the women in the office I remember, they were always watching out for me. They were always worried that, you know, just making sure that I was taken care of and nobody was treating me poorly. But I never had that experience at all. Everybody treated me with the greatest respect. And again, they were all just teaching me. I learned so much in those few years at the coal mine that I still do today and I think I was telling you before, that I had a unique experience where I worked with two men primarily in the engineering department. And one was a surveyor and a really, really good surveyor. And he taught me how to do coordinate geometry calculations, and how to do it on like a little calculator. Not even like on a computer. And he was very analytical and technical. And then on the other side I worked with a gentleman that was the head of the drafting department and he took that to an artform. You know if you look at drawings today, CAD drawings for instance, we maybe use three different weights of lines. He would use, he had on his desk 15 pens that went from four-aught all the way up to number four pen and he used almost every one of them on every drawing. And he would take this technical information and draw it, not just for the information itself, but he made it beautiful and he took a lot of pride in it. One of the first things he told me is I had to design my own north arrow because that needed to be my signature, that what my north arrow was. And he would even go so far that when we would draw the tunnels, the edges of the tunnels for the mines, he would make me draw them first with a blue mylar pencil and then trace over it by hand. Because he said it wasn’t that straight in the field (laughs). But it was an awesome kind of left brain, right brain experience that I had and so I got to see this, how do you take this technical information and make it really easy for someone to want to look at it first of all. But also to quickly understand what it is and where to look on the drawing for the right information. I was just very, really, just fortunate and really lucky.

HOST: I’m talking with BART’s Acting Chief Maintenance and Engineering Officer Sylvia Lamb. And want to talk to you, you have such a large past career before you came to BART in 2017. What made you want to, after 32 years at your company, make that switch and was that a daunting transition for you?

LAMB: Oh, it was a really daunting transition and as a matter of fact, I remember through the whole process, I would visualize myself like a horse with blinders on, like I had to keep on just moving. But it was really hard. I had always wanted to retire at the company I had started with because I loved it, I loved the company, I loved the energy and I was doing a lot. I was very energized by the work I was doing. But I found, I’d heard about what was happening at BART and what we wanted to do here and I thought about that and it got me really excited to hear about what needed to be done here especially with RR starting up. And I realized in that moment that I hadn’t felt that feeling for a long time. And you know, I’m at a stage in my career where I’m starting to think about the end of my career honestly. And so I thought to myself, I wanted to end my career with the same enthusiasm that I started it. It was a big leap and so I kept talking to folks here and interviewed and came over and I was just like, ooh shiny! Or like that movie Up where it’s “squirrel!”. Everything that went on I wanted to learn about and it’s been the best decision I ever made. It’s the hardest decision I ever made but it was the best decision I ever made.

HOST: And you talked about Measure RR. That’s the $3.5 billion infrastructure bond passed in 2016. I mean what’s it like being in charge of implementing something of that massive scale?

LAMB: It’s fabulous.

HOST: Really?

LAMB: Oh my gosh, yes, it’s amazing because there’s so much to be done. And if you think about if you can see now the difference between the way we do things at BART now versus when we started, RR was really the catalyst. It was the catalyst forcing us to be more methodical about how we manage projects, to think more about how we have processes and procedures to actually coordinate better between all the departments. It’s one of the first programs I think, at least since I was here, we had to coordinate with DNC and the other departments at BART, and the budget and finance and there was a regular meeting where we’re all together. It’s an amazing thing because we’re all in this together, all the way. And we’re about 34% through right now so that’s the other thing is it’s a huge, huge program. So it’s incredible, the amount of people that are working on it, the amount of progress that we’re making, and for me, part of the progress that I love is seeing the maintenance folks and what we’re doing. And how the unions have helped us as far as getting the right staff in the right positions and doing the work and working with us to keep this progress moving. Because there is a lot of, I won’t say pressure, but there’s a lot of push to keep this program moving because of the commitments we’ve made.

HOST: And we’re talking to you of course for Women’s History Month so I want to ask you as a female leader that so many people, you know men and women, look up to here at BART. What do you strive to bring to the table as a leader and why?

LAMB: What I strive to bring to the table is a knowledge for everybody that I’m here to help everybody succeed. I’m here to empower, whether you’re a man or a woman or, just to help you be better. Because if I can help 10 people be better then, that’s 10 times more than what I can ever contribute myself. And the other thing that I want to get across to everybody is you can do anything. You seriously can do anything here. All you have to do is speak up, have an idea, say it to somebody and have a plan on how to implement it and I say this all the time and people look at me like oh yeah. But I came from a coal mine in Price, Utah and now I’m the Acting Chief Maintenance and Engineering Officer of one of the largest transit agencies in the US with 1,700 employees. So I’m here to tell you, you can do anything here. And I love the leadership here. I love working with Bob Powers, Michael Jones and Shane Edwards. They’re amazing. They’re thought-provoking. They’re supportive and again, the relationships with the unions and the maintenance folks. It’s just all the way around, I’m trying to bring this acknowledgment that we can all work together and we can succeed and we can do great things if we would just speak up, and all of us get in it together.

HOST: And if you could go back, talk to that teenage girl in Utah right now, knowing what you know now, what would you tell your younger self about the journey that’s coming and how to navigate that?

LAMB: I think I’d tell myself the same thing I just told you about switching from my previous career to BART. Don’t be distracted. Keep your blinders on and keep one foot in front of the other because you have no idea where that’s going to lead and it is going to lead somewhere fabulous. And if you don’t get distracted and wander off here, you’re going to get there faster and you’re going to get there with more enthusiasm and more energy (laughs). You won’t be as tired but I think that’s what I would say, is just keep going. Keep going, you have no idea where this is going to go. Every time you have a concern or an apprehension or you feel insecure, let it go and keep going.

HOST: What do you do for fun or how do you let off steam? Is there a hobby or practice that you look forward to to help you unwind?

LAMB: Love to travel. My sisters and I actually had a women’s empowerment travel business, which we were very much engaged in so I was doing that for a while. I love to hike. I have two dogs that I just, any chance I can get, be out in the mountains. That’s one thing I really miss about Utah. I miss the mountains and being in the woods so that’s it primarily. I actually crochet. I do all sorts of different things but I love to travel probably the most.

HOST: Sylvia Lamb, BART’s Acting Chief Maintenance and Engineering Officer, thank you so much for being here.

LAMB: Thank you for having me. This has been amazing. I appreciate it.

HOST: Thank you to all of our special guests for this Women’s History Month edition of “Hidden Tracks: Stories from BART.” You can listen to our podcasts on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and of course at our website BART.gov/podcasts.