Lana Filice

I've definitely been very lucky and grateful for the experiences I've had, just working my way up into this organization and developing really cool relationships with our staff. I started pretty young and have just kind of worked my way up into our department by keeping my ears open and absorbing things as much as I can. I've been at the right place at the right time, and I've stayed with the same city through all 16 years, getting promotions and learning along the way. Our new director who came in about 5 years ago has been very instrumental in wanting us to continue to develop our skills, go to trainings, and be involved in different park and rec communities, so we have networking opportunities to see what other cities and municipalities do. She's been very instrumental in our whole department growing and learning and being more knowledgeable in our field, which is really cool. I just try to keep my eyes and ears open and absorb things as much as I can so I can help shape the future of where our department's gonna go.

I think it's very important to share stories with other young women who want to be in this field or even just strive to work hard and want to see where the doors open for themselves. In recreation, you see a lot of men in the higher positions, so it can be male-dominated, but it is exciting to see women in high executive leadership positions. Our director is a woman, and she's one of the only directors in our organization who was a female. I think seeing women in high executive leadership positions is really exciting for young women to strive for and know that I can do this, and I just need to work hard. Sometimes you just have to be patient, and sometimes you gotta deal with working with men or deal with working with women and just figure it out along the way. I'm such a women-positive supporter. I love supporting women and especially moms as well, like young moms. I want to tell them about my experience and how you're gonna get through this. It's difficult and it's challenging, but you can do this. You can do anything. I truly believe that. Women are just amazing.

We have a very old facility that I'm at. It was built in the 60s, so we are coming up to a lot of challenges of old infrastructure and old building that needs to get repaired. We're dealing with a lot of situations where we need to have the funding and try to implement repairs, but it's not really like everyone wants to see an electrical panel get redone. They want to see new things out in the gym or on the tennis courts. So we're trying to kind of tell people why these things are important and why we need them for the future and to keep things running and not having any downtime. That's gonna be exciting to learn about that process of doing bids and getting contractors out here and learning about things that I haven't ever really been a part of as I've grown up into this department.

The one thing that's been wonderful about working in community services is not only just working with the community, which is very rewarding, but the staff that we've built over the years is just very connected. We all really enjoy being with each other, and we all work really hard and work very well together. It's been cool over the years to see, as I've worked up into the system and have hired part-time staff, to see them now transition into full-time positions. That's very rewarding as well, to see their growth and how they have started and now how they are doing the same thing that I was able to do, training new staff and seeing how they continue to grow into the system. I'm such a women-positive supporter. I love supporting women and especially moms. I truly believe that women are just amazing and can do anything.