Earlier this month, OCTA hosted 20 students from the Transportation Academy sponsored by The Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS) of Orange County. Now in its sixth year, the academy is a two-week immersion into different facets of the transportation industry for undergraduate and graduate college students. Participants learn about management, finance, operations, planning, engineering, construction management and public outreach principals from various transportation agencies and consultants.
During OCTA's half-day program, students attended a roundtable with CEO Darrell Johnson and staff members Vicki Austin, Accounting & Financial Reporting Department Manager, Christina Byrne, Capital Project Outreach Manager, Adriann Cardoso, Capital Programming Manager, and Erin Rogers, Transit Assistant General Manager. Panel members discussed their roles, collaboration with different divisions, educational backgrounds and career paths, and motivation and mentors.
The students then boarded a bus and toured some of OCTA’s projects and properties, including two OC Bridges projects along the Burlington Northern Sante Fe (BNSF) corridor in Placentia and Anaheim, the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center (ARTIC), the OC Bikeway Loop, the Garden Grove bus operations base and the OC Streetcar alignment in Santa Ana and Garden Grove.
WTS Orange County is the local chapter of the national WTS, which has a national membership of more than 4,000 transportation professionals committed to fostering development of the careers of its members through the open exchange of ideas and experiences.