Speaking For the Sallies (and Others With No Voice)

Sometimes in professional life, stars align.  Your job becomes something that you absolutely adore.  Not for an eternity, but for much longer than a moment.  And these periods of time get you through the times when you just feel out of sync. 


9-11 had a specific effect on everyone.  For me, I did some major reevaluation of what I do during the majority of my life: work. 

I studied business at UT and graduated a few months before 9-11.  Many of my classmates were puzzled by my decision to study business because the private sector didn't appeal to me.  I wanted to be an entrepreneur in the nonprofit sector, and I knew that a strong business background would be a prerequisite.

But when I graduated, I found it difficult to find a job that suited me.  The dot com bust had happened, and I wasn't quite sure which direction to go.  I did know that all I wanted to do was to save up as much money as possible and see more of the world.  So I moved home and got a job at the headquarters of a department store and worked in trend development for women's clothes.  I told myself  It's only for a few months.  But I quickly realized that 90% of my coworkers were miserable, and I wasn't happy myself. 

9-11 happened, and I had a flight to Malaysia for two days later.  I was meeting a friend who was in Australia, and we were going to travel around Malaysia and India and then go trekking in Nepal for several months.  Of course, the trip was canceled.  Aside from the cancellations of international flights, there were riots in Kathmandu and typhoons in Malaysia.  So, we changed our plans.  She met me in San Francisco, and we saw as much as the western US as possible.  We visited a dozen national parks and drove through snow and desert heat.  And I had a lot of time to think about which direction I wanted my professional life to go once the trip was over.  I decided that even if I was saving up for something big in the future, it wasn't worth it to me to take a job (even temporarily) that didn't fit my needs.  I came to the conclusion that I really had three requirements for jobs.

1.  I must be constantly learning.  I'm absolutely miserable if I'm bored.
2.  I must be contributing to the greater good of the world.  Bash my bleeding heart, but I know from experience that this is an inescapable requirement for me.
3.  I must be working in the realm of education or environmental work, and my absolute sweet spot combines these two passions.

My dad and I had many heart-to-hearts while I was in college and after, and he brought up his valid  point of view that I don't have to save the world at work.  His thought was that many great people have ordinary jobs and spend their free time volunteering and helping others.  I came to realize that these people are awesome, and I really respect them, but they are different from me.  It comes down to the fact that I want to spend the majority of my waking hours making a difference and leaving the world just an inkling better.  And the reality is, I can still volunteer in my free time.  Nothing keeps me from that. 

So once I realized my personal requirements, my career path took a turn for the better.  I took jobs in Germany and Cape Cod, and then I joined Teach For America and moved to the US-Mexico border.  I got to see the world while I was working.  And while I've had utterly exhausting jobs, I can honestly say that I'm proud of the work I've done at each of them. 

Which brings me to why this topic has been on my mind so much lately.  My working days are numbered.  At least, my working-outside-the-home days are numbered.  While I'm not opposed to doing some contractual work here and there, I will not be working full-time outside the home for at least a few years.  I've dreamed of the day when my job will be to raise an amazing little child full time, and that time is finally here. (YAY!)

But that doesn't mean I won't miss my work.  I've been extremely fortunate at my current job because I have worked on a variety of projects that have kept me humbled by my lack of knowledge and the sheer brilliance around me.  Not only that, but the icing on the cake is that my work family is such a loving group of people that have supported my husband and I when times have been tough.

A few weeks ago, I spent the week downtown at a workshop between my employer and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  I was proud to be part of a team working to write a Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA) for a local threatened species, the Jollyville Plateau salamander.  Here's a photo one of my coworkers took of one of the little sallies.

These salamanders only live in northwest Austin, and while they are not on the endangered species list, they should be.  The reality is that too many species are becoming endangered for the Service to list them all in a timely manner, so my employer, the City, is taking a proactive measure to treat the salamander as an endangered species even though it is not. 

No city in this country has ever created a CCAA.  (They are usually done by environmental nonprofits.)  We will set an example for others to follow not only in our area, but all over the country.  As I sat in the workshop all week, I couldn't help but think how lucky I was to be a part of it.  I had a week of professional bliss.  A week when I honestly didn't feel the need to be paid because I was learning so much and was so eager to be a part of the team.  Weeks like that can carry me a long way.  Even though I'm back in the office doing the back end grunt work now, I'm still on Cloud 9.  It's probably a combination of really being professionally fulfilled right now and also knowing that I will miss this next year.  I'll be in a different line of work, but lucky for me, it will still fit my three requirements. 

The Special One

I've become The Special One at my office recently, mostly due to my new office best friend.

I've had a stability ball at home for years, but it isn't quite big enough to serve as a chair so I use it mostly for exercise.  Over the past month I've had back pains like an octogenarian from my crappy office chair, so I figured it was time to invest in a better ball. 

I bounce to music.  I keep my feet off the ground and balance.  I rock from side to side.  I close my office door and have my own private yoga/core session during lunch.  It rocks, it rolls, it makes my day fun again.  And I go home with much more energy.  Who cares that my coworkers compare me to that special kid in elementary school - I'll take it!  When one spends over two hours a day commuting, she'll find any way she can to buy back time by fitting in some exercise during the day. 

Kudos for the City of Austin

Heard some good press about my employer, the City of Austin, today. The League of American Bicyclists has given the City a 2009 "Bike Friendly Business" award based on its efforts to encourage and support bicycle commuting. What's significant about this honor is that we were the only city given the award (yep, we actually beat Portland at something!). In fact, the only other government entity to earn the award was DC-based National Parks Service. Most award recipients were environmentally focused or active-minded businesses.

Austin's own Bicycle Sport Shop earned the highest level award (no surprises there).

I still long for the day when I can transfer downtown and take advantage of the bike perks and PE/health program as a whole. Pilates, spin, swimming, and marathon training classes, farm to work goodies delivered to your office, discounted Austin Java downstairs, and Lady Bird Lake across the street. I could hang. :)

Trust and Deceit

After undergrad, I got a job at the headquarters of a national department store. My first position was filling in for an employee away on medical leave due to cancer. I grew to know this particular employee very well as she would come in some days between chemo treatments and we would work side by side. She was a sweet woman who seemed to be getting the short end of the stick when it came to life. Her husband had died, leaving her with five children. Shortly after she became sick with cancer. She was a low wage employee and had a hard time making ends meet.

Luckily, everyone at the company looked out for her. They would take turns making dinners for her to take home to her children. They frequently collected cash donations to help her cover the cost of her husband's funeral, her medical bills, and her children's needs. After some time, she met a new man and got married, and employees raised plenty of money to help pay for her small wedding. One of the dress designers even made her a one of a kind wedding dress.

Although I am generally not happy working in the private sector and this job definitely wasn't fulfilling for me, I really appreciated the generosity and sense of family that employees felt for each other. Even though the massive office housed almost 2,000 employees, we all still felt an important part of our own teams.

Which is why discovering the truth of this employee's story was so devastating for us.

No dead husband.
No new husband.
No cancer.
No children.

The first crack in her story came out when another employee received a strange call from the woman during a day she was supposed to be at work. Another call, then another, but no truth - just strange hangups. Finally, she admitted that she was in jail and begged the other employee not to tell anyone. She had been mistaken for someone else and needed money to get out.

The county we worked in kept all inmate records online, and this employee was smart enough to do some searching. It turned out our lady had been a first class con artist and had a rap sheet as long as Mike Tyson's. She had been in trouble for forging checks, grand theft auto, identity theft, and plenty of other major crimes. And somehow, while working at our company, she again had tricked the insurance company into thinking she had cancer and was collecting insurance money while also being paid normally while out on "medical leave."

Finding out this woman had betrayed all of our collective trust was absolutely overwhelming. Not only because everyone had given this woman significant amounts of money, but because we trusted and loved her. We felt sympathy for her hard knocks and those of her children. And we had special places in our hearts for her; we considered her one of those people we wanted to protect in life.

Although these unfortunate events took place in 2001, I've been going over and over them in my mind the past few days. On Monday morning, one of my coworkers was placed on "indefinite administrative leave" and went home immediately. We have no further information, but all I can think about is how genuinely sweet she is and how it will be so devastating to hear of her being capable any kind of deceit or wrongdoing in her professional role. The news should come tomorrow, and I find myself unable to fall asleep tonight. I so hope I am overreacting. I need her to be an honest person! Let's hope there is some explanation and I'm worried about nothing.

A WONDERFUL Day for Austin

Austin just made history today thanks to my bosses at City Hall. 200 Smart cars are coming to our City as a part of the Smart car2go program!

I interned at Austin CarShare in 2007 and wrote a few reports on challenges and deficiencies it encounters as a small non-profit. The organization is definitely trying to serve a need in our community, but the cards have been stacked against it for a while. As a non-profit, its costs are high and pockets shallow. Aside from that, ZipCar has had its eyes on Austin for a while, and there is no way for Austin CarShare to compete sustainably. ZipCar is an international corportation with tremendously lower rates, thousands more vehicles, and dozens of successful markets.

I hadn't heard anything about ZipCar in Austin recently and was blown away when I heard this great news about cars2go, which was not even on my radar. Their policies are so much more intuitive than Austin CarShare's, and even ZipCar's.

Here's the lowdown from Wired:

Whenever a car is needed, it can be rented on the spot, or it can be pre-booked via mobile phone or the internet. A Smart car2go can be used for as long as needed, and can be returned to any unoccupied public parking space within the area of operation. So think of it as a car-sharing program run directly by a car manufacturer. And the costs are reasonable too: 19 euro cents per minute, and that covers everything, taxes, insurance, mileage and even fuel. They also rent by the hour and day, if needed, 9.90 euros per hour or 49 euros per day. All you have to do is register (for free) and have a valid driver's license. Once you're registered, you can open any car2go by means of a card reader placed behind the windshield.

Renting by mobile phone is the way to go, and free registration is absolutely fantastic. I love that one can see an available car, text their information to rent the car, and go! People decide when and where they return the cars giving an even greater amount of freedom.

The first phase of the Smart car2go program in Austin will be fleet replacement for the City. 200 cars (using only 100 spaces) will be available to employees this fall. The following year the program will open to the public. And if we succeed in Austin, other American cities will follow. This timeline is brilliant in my humble opinion. Get the cars here, peak interest, and create loyalty and word of mouth among the thousands of City employees, leading to a significant beginning customer base for Phase 2.

The program first kicked off in Ulm, Germany, a city significantly smaller than Austin. How'd it go?

Robert Henrich, responsible project manager at Daimler AG, sums up: “The success of the first pilot phase surprised even us and shows how much importance already is attached to forward-looking mobility concepts today. In just two weeks more than 500 customers had registered with car2go – a number we had not anticipated. Sometimes I could see from my office window how employees sprinted to the parking lot after work to get a car2go before they were all gone.” Their enthusiasm and the interest of the people of Ulm persist. In peak periods the entire fleet of 50 smart fortwo was being used to full capacity and could have been greatly expanded based on the user demand. Since the start, 8,000 rentals have been registered, and per day as many as eight customers have used one and the same vehicle. (from egmcartech.com)

The writer for Wired, undoubtedly one who has not visited Austin, also had this to say:

Smart is looking to bring on-demand use of its cars to Austin. You know, in Texas. Yes, the same Texas with all the steers, BBQ, cowboys, Bush family members and general vehicle xenophobia.

Sure, he may be right about the BBQs and Bushes, but here's our chance to prove him wrong about the vehicle xenophobia. I'm positive that a visit to Austin would do the trick.

Central Park was Not Always a Park

I had the pleasure of attending the Texas Trails Network conference last month in Waco as a City of Austin representative. I love getting paid to do things I would have liked to do anyway :) The conference had a little more focus on urban (read: paved) trails than my co-worker and I were hoping, but still, I learned a lot and had a great day.

Some of the things I scribbled down and thought others would also find interesting:

• Americans work 163 hours more each month than they did twenty years ago. That's four additional weeks of work each year!
• The Lady Bird Lake Trail is now the number one tourism destination in Austin (surpassing the Capitol)! 3,000 to 15,000 people use it every day.

The keynote address was given by Enrique Penalosa, the former mayor of Bogota, Colombia.
Penalosa was a radical and controversial mayor. Here are some of the things he accomplished in his three years as mayor:

• Reduced murder rate by 2/3
• Created a BRT system (bus rapid transit)
  
• Planted over 100,000 trees
• Created/refurbished over 12,000 parks
• Built 50 new schools
• Increased children's enrollment in school by 34%
• Built over 300 kms of bike paths and greenways
• Created a referendum (passed by the public) that created a yearly car free day and decided that from the year 2015 onwards, there would be no cars in Bogota during rush hours (6 AM to 9 AM and 4:30 PM to 7:30 PM).

Penalosa is very focused on equity and the notion that cities should maximize happiness for ALL of their citizens. In the context of our conference, Penalosa talked about parks and greenways. Here is one of this thoughts on parks:

Higher income groups always have access to nature at beach houses, lake cabins, mountain chalets, on vacations - or in urban settings at golf courses or large gardens. Parks allow the rest of society that contact as well.

He spoke of his experience building bike lanes that connected poorer areas of the city to downtown areas where many people worked. One point that resonated with me and I'm still ruminating on is the concept of sidewalks/pedestrian crossings at intersections. Think about a major intersection with many pedestrians. Pedestrians must enter the space of the cars by stepping down as they enter the intersection. Penalosa spoke of a different model - so simple, but quite a new one to me at least. Cars must enter the space of the pedestrians. How is that done? It's simple. The sidewalk simply continues at its same height through the intersection. In effect, this makes a speed bump for the cars and forces them to enter the pedestrian space. I wish I could find a picture of this. Imagine what a change this would be for handicapped people, children, bikers.

The only example I have found in the Austin area is in the South Park Meadows shopping center, which unfortunately is EXTREMELY car-dominated. However, the pedestrian crossings are made in this way, so that is a start.

Penalosa really is inspirational and motivating. He did things in his city that no one has been able to accomplish in America in such a short time, let alone Latin America. Here's a short excerpt of an interview with Penalosa talking about possibilities in NYC: