Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/473041
t m c » p u l s e | m a r c h 2 0 1 5 23 how to run this new petroleum software program. I was the only one who knew how to do it. Two years later, I was recruited away by another oil company that needed someone with that particular skill. I spent 20 years riding the tech wave in the oil industry, com- pletely accidentally. Always volunteering. I'm willing to go learn that new software program. I ended up doing reservoir mapping, project economics, building spread- sheets on foreign fiscal tax regimes…for over 20 years. That's important: volunteer to learn something new. Q | Tell us about your mentors. A | Toby Turner, the woman I just mentioned, she was in information services. In the mid-'70s women were either in HR or information services. She helped me professionally, but she also helped me with some personal things. I left that position for a job at Robert Mosbacher's Mosbacher Energy Company. I spent the next 18 years there. While I didn't work directly for Mr. Mosbacher, he had a huge influence on how I approach my current job. It was his company, he knew everybody, he knew their names, he was a walk-around manager. And it was not unhelpful for me, when I ran for public office, to be a Democrat who worked closely for a very famous Republican in Houston. And accidentally, too. So he was not a direct mentor, but a huge influence. Q | What is different about the corporate environment early in your career compared to today? A | As I mentioned, there was a real lack of women in management roles across most industries and cer- tainly very, very few at the C suite level. I really didn't know any. I think it is better today. There is a lot more outreach. I get regular requests to address diversity groups and women's groups in major corporations. That was completely nonexistent when my career began. I am now in my 18th year in public life, and it is still one of the most male-dominated professions that exists today. The best elected bodies in the United States are about 20 percent women. As for governors and big city mayors, I think it's about eight percent right now. There have only been ten women who have been mayors of major American cities with over a mil- lion population—two here in Houston. That's a feat. Q | Do you remember the exact moment when you decided to run for mayor? A | I do. There is a lot of research out there indicating that one of the challenges for women in politics is that we wait to be asked. In the private sector, I was asked if I wanted to learn that software program. I was asked to run for city council. And I ran against an incumbent, and got absolutely crushed in the election. But I did something that most women don't do when they run for office and lose, and that is I ran again. And I lost. And then, even rarer, I ran a third time and won. Now I have ran and won nine citywide races in Houston. I have read a lot of research about that. As it turns out, a lot of the women who persevere in politics have been in sports. That is true for me. I was a jock, I was in track in high school and I played varsity softball in college. I still enjoy sports to this day. Of course, I am a big Rice baseball fan. I like all sports, but most of what I enjoy is attending Rice baseball games. Reckling Park is one of the best places to watch baseball, and Rice has one of the top teams in the country, so it's good baseball, too. Q | Congratulations on recently being named as one of the best mayors in the world! Looking back on your career, what are some of the most significant accomplishments? A | I was a very active community volunteer for the 20 years before I decided to enter politics. I was a pres- ident of this and an officer of that. My evenings were filled with meetings. I helped found a civic association, and I realized I was going to work every day to support my volunteer habits. By becoming a council member, I got to do things every day that I was passionate about. I had a good job, but it wasn't changing the world. It wasn't fulfilling. When I became a councilmember, the Mosbacher company offered me a consulting contract, that lasted three months, going back and forth. Being a council member is technically a part time job but I took a full time approach. Because I entered public service after having been a civic club president and a neighborhood activist, I had a whole list of things that I wanted to work on. My agenda included everything from the pooper scooper ordinance that requires owners to pick up after their pets to regulating ownership of exotic pets. Believe it or not, it used to be legal to own a tiger in Houston. There was no law against it until my ordinance passed. I also authored the ordinance that we use today to regulate density of development in inner-city neighborhoods. My tenure as city controller was focused on bringing the city of Houston into the modern era. I'm not a techie at all, but I rode the tech wave, so I had an understanding of the power of technology and how rapidly it was changing. When I became a council member in the early 2000s, the city's financial systems were still housed on a mainframe computer, held together with duct tape and bailing wire. I was able to lead the city's massive migration to SAP Business systems. In fact, SAP contacted me after we were done and said it was the most successful municipal migra- tion that they had ever worked with. As mayor, I have been all about infrastructure. Oddly enough, what I'm most criticized for today is potholes, potholes and potholes. But what people don't realize is that we had spent 30 years not investing in our infrastructure. We created a new revenue source via the voter approved Rebuild Houston drainage fee. We are now putting more money into infrastructure than ever before, but you cannot recover from thirty years of deferred maintenance overnight. The drought of 2011 didn't help. Houston has 6,000 lane miles of road, but if each lane is considered separately, the total is 16,000 miles of road. Utilizing vans equipped with special radar that can detect voids under the road surface, we mapped the entire city. We finished and rolled out the data in June of 2011, just before the drought hit. The lack of rain caused so much shifting we had to start all over again the next year. Rebuild Houston includes a very good government aspect that I could shoot myself for agreeing to. It is financed on a 'pay as you go' basis so there is no more debt financing for any of our street and drainage proj- ects. And yet, here we are today in the cheapest money environment in decades, and I am not allowed to bor- row money to do street repair. The new fee gives me $100 million of additional money a year—more than we have ever spent. As we pay down old debt, more money becomes available. However, I am prohibited from leveraging it. The voter-approved City Charter provision won't allow it. So we kind of outsmarted ourselves on that. This commitment to rebuilding our infrastructure is what I am most proud of. We are overhauling the water sewer system. We are overhauling the street and drainage system. Two years from now, the new mayor is going to look like a genius because there will be so much work going on. I am also proud of the Bayou Greenways initiative. I am just thrilled to pieces about the new hike and bike trails this project is adding along our bayous. It's a five to seven year plan. Again, we have made a lot of progress, but it will really be about two years after I am out of the mayor's office before you will really see the impact. It's more than just trails. My goal is to eliminate chronic homelessness in Houston by the end of 2015. I don't know if we will get there by then, but I am optimistic that we will be close to having no one on the streets of Houston simply because there is not a bed or social service resource available.