Christine Hanna

I attribute my success to being motivated by safety and keeping life going so people can enjoy it. I want to avoid people losing their lives for anything that can be avoided. I think people take things for granted - they say, oh, it's just fine, the roadway has been like this forever - but I say no, that's not okay, don't take this for granted. Things that have been taken for granted for a very long time, in my opinion, that's ignorance and a negative attitude. We have to investigate why, we have to look into ways to fix it. My passion for safety is great because I have families, I have kids, I have friends. One of them lost her girl because she was riding her bike and there was no bike lane and she got hit by a car that was speeding. So adding bike lanes on the roadway was part of my passion to push this within the Wisconsin DOT. Let's be positive and let's try to be contributing to fixing situations or things that are causing hazards out there.

Follow your passion. I tell this to my girls - if you don't know what you want to do, try to go into that field that you feel you're gonna contribute to yourself and to the society. Empower yourself to go and follow your career and fight for it. Be strong. If you fail once, good - learn from that failure. That failure is a lesson learned, it's not just failure. Once you learn from that, share it with others. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Keep going and be strong. If someone tries to make you fail, guess what? That means that you are successful, because they are trying to take from what you are successful at. So keep going. Don't ever compare yourself to others. Just focus on yourself and what you can contribute to your life and to others' careers that matter. Don't let men's attitude, because we see this a lot in our field - don't let the men, especially the strong men in my transportation field where there is not a lot of women, impact you. Just go there with a strong mind and keep going. Have a strong presence. Take a lot of education classes. When you are educated and you know what you're talking about, they cannot impact you, they cannot influence or scare you or push you away from whatever you want to succeed at. Education is key. If you're not educated, you cannot move forward, and education cannot stop at high school. We have to keep moving forward more. If you don't have the financial resource, trust me, there is more out there. Keep working under different jobs that provide scholarships. There is always a way. If you don't think there is a way, then I'm sorry, you have lack of knowledge. There is always a way. Keep fighting. Don't stop. Don't let someone influence your goals. Have a goal and have the goal clear, set it up, have a path, have a plan. And if the plan changes throughout your career, keep growing, keep at it. Don't ever give up. Take care of yourself first - not because of selfishness, but because if you don't take care of yourself and you have the willingness and the strength to help yourself, you're gonna be weak to help others. You have to take care of yourself first, and then you can help others.

I think the challenge right now is how society is reacting to the challenges we're going through from the political standpoint, the lack of opportunities for good work environment, and the lack of - what's the word - inflation of that market. A lot of families are facing that challenge and it's reacting negatively at work, so there's a lot of stress that I see from the public and co-workers as well. In this work, we just have to take a lot of stress relief courses and how to deal with it, how to create positive impact and communication environment. I'm trying to use those stress relief matters that I learned to share with my cohort.

The values most important to me are being positive, having dignity, and being politically correct. I believe in avoiding taking advantage of a situation for personal gain - avoiding personal gain over public good. Being honest and trustworthy is essential. I value being positive at work, in life in general, and with friends. Gaining public trust creates a lot of good life for themselves and others that they would enjoy. Life will be less stressful and we can avoid any health issues that can come up from that.