Tina McDermott

I attribute my success to hard work and dedication, but honestly, my daughters really drove me to do better. I wanted better for them, and I wanted them to be able to have the things that I didn't have, or have the opportunities I didn't have, so I wanted to find a way that I could help them with that. For example, my daughter just graduated college last year and decided she wanted to pursue theater, and I'm able to support that. She can stay with me, she can pursue theater - she's working in the theater and also working another job - but I just wanted her to not have to stress out about it. I wanted her to be able to go and do something she loved and not have to give that up because she had to get a job right away. Being a single mom really shaped me. It was this constant question of how can I improve, improve, improve for my daughters? So I was always looking for ways to grow and build.

You gotta be ready for that hard work, because when you start on the railroad, if you don't come in at management, that hard work pays off in the end. Learning everything from the bottom up pays off, because once you get into management, you can relate to your people, and you can really lead by example and be very hands-on. I would say hard work and dedication, and take every opportunity that comes your way. Learn everything that you can about the system you're working on, because it just pays off in the end, and you're able to have that knowledge at the top and mentor your people better.

I would say being female can be difficult sometimes, because it's very male-dominated, though not as much here at NCTD as it was at Amtrak. The biggest challenges at this moment are, as an agency, our funding. Working for a public agency, you have a lot less to work with. Sometimes I have less resources than I did at Amtrak, but it really gives me opportunity to be creative with what I have. On the opportunities side, I think what's beautiful is that people are starting to realize the importance of transit, probably more in big cities like New York and Chicago, and even LA now where they're extending their subway lines for the Olympics. I think people are just realizing the importance of that, so there's a lot of opportunity for us as a country to grow and build our transit industry. Especially in California, we're always trying to reduce our footprint, so the more people get interested in it and the more availability there is, the better we're gonna be for our environment. I love that part about public transit. I just hope that we can continue to build and grow, and keep building systems like they have in Europe and in Japan that are high speed, efficient, and well-used.

I'm really big on loyalty and integrity - those are my two big ones. I feel like you have to own everything that you do, and that is in life and in work.