Past President Award - Sara Pflaum, MnDOT

Member of the Year Award - Gloria Jeff, MnDOT

Woman of the Year Award - Charleen Zimmer, Zan Associates

Woman to Watch Award - Ayantu Gemeda, Metro Transit

Employer of the Year Award - Braun Intertec

Rosa Parks Diversity Leadership Award - Amina Wolf, Metro Transit

Innovative Transportation Solutions Award - Minnesota CAV Challenge, MnDOT

Honorable Ray LaHood Award - Brian Funk, Metro Transit

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Past President Award:  Sara Pflaum, mndot

Sara has been a member of WTS since 2010.  She has served as the Minnesota chapter Secretary, a TYOU mentor, Scholarship and Recognition Director, Programs Co-Director, and Vice President prior to being the chapter President in 2020.   Sara is currently the Past President and Central Region Council Representative.  She also attended the WTS Mid-Career Leadership Program in 2018.  Sara is a licensed engineer in MN and WA and has worked in many areas of transportation infrastructure – traffic, design, construction, project controls, project management, funding, design review, and is currently working on the development of large transit infrastructure projects in the St. Paul metro area.  Outside of the office Sara lives on a farm with her husband and two young children.

Member of the Year:  Gloria Jeff, MnDOT

I am thrilled and honored to be the WTS Minnesota Chapter Member of the Year. WTS is a unique organization formed to help female transportation professionals grow, develop skills and advance in their careers. I am proud to have participated in this endeavor since the 1980s.

The reach of the WTS activities embraces young professionals just beginning their careers, people advancing in management and leadership roles and those at the end of their work lives by providing a place where all can share their experiences, lessons learned and point out opportunities not yet realized.

This past year I actively worked with the chapter on the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, The Black History Month Celebration, and the Newsletter. This work has provided me the opportunity to get to know some new transportation professionals and learn more about transportation issues and achievers in Minnesota.

Thank you for this honor.

Woman of the Year: Charleen Zimmer, Zan Associates

I founded Zan Associates in 2001 as a consulting company that would specialize in a context and community sensitive approach to transportation planning and design.  The firm now has 12 fulltime and 4 parttime employees and, since the first of the year, has new owners.  I became a WTS member in the mid-80s, was the conference chair for the first national conference held in the Twin Cities, and subsequently served as the national WTS VP and president.  I have been an advocate for women in transportation my whole career and continue to mentor young women whenever I have the opportunity.  Over my career, I have worked on and helped build consensus on some of the largest and most controversial transportation projects in the Twin Cities, bringing a community perspective to design and construction decision-making.

Woman to Watch:  Ayantu Gemeda, Metro Transit

Ayantu (eye-yan-to) Gemeda (Ga-ma-da) is an Assistant Manager of Street Operations at Metro Transit. She oversees on-street bus operations with her team, works to maintain reliable service during planned and unplanned service disruptions, and manages all BRT lines in operation. Since starting her career at Metro Transit 6 years ago, Ayantu has worked on agency-wide initiatives that promote improved access to service and opportunities both internally and externally. Most notably, Ayantu leads an interdepartmental working group that oversees Metro Transit’s first fleet of electric buses and continues to finetune best practices as fleet electrification expands throughout the Region. Ayantu enjoys developing strategies to overcome operational challenges, providing support and guidance to frontline staff and spending time with family but most especially her two daughters wonderful daughters Ayana and Eden.

Employer of the Year:  Braun Intertec

Braun Intertec is an employee-owned firm with a rich history in transportation. Out team is focused on building trust-based relationships working with clients through every phase of the project lifecycle. We are focused on growing our diversity while also striving to provide a supportive environment for all our employees. Through this initiative, we created the Empower Women group which is dedicated to creating a community, attracting, developing, and retaining women leaders. We also encourage and support our employees to become active members in various external professional organizations, such as WTS Minnesota.

Rosa Parks Diversity Leadership Award: Amina Wolf, Metro Transit

I have been in many roles in the transportation industry for 25 years; a school bus driver, flight attendant, transit bus operator, light rail operator, light rail supervisor, bus transportation assistant manager and currently transportation garage manger. I have been with Metro Transit for 15 years. In addition, I am currently in my 2nd year as the Chair of Metro Transit's first Employee Resource Group - Advancing Women in Transit. While in all of my roles at Metro Transit and elsewhere I have always understood the importance of leading by example, creating a safe space for people of all backgrounds, doing everything I could do to uplift, encourage, and create opportunities for women and people of color. This has been a passion of mine throughout my career. In one of my first projects I did this by assisting to establish community connections directly through our operators. These connections helped us better reach our underrepresented communities during our operator shortage and strong hiring campaign. Our operators participated in our recruitment directly in their communities, churches, local radio station interviews, community-based job fairs and more. Our operators are our frontline employees and the face of Metro Transit. They led the discussions about what the job is and helped solve our difficult workforce challenges by providing potential candidates with information directly from someone doing the job. This not only helped the organization and the potential candidates, but it also helped the operators build confidence and pride in their job and gain additional marketable skills/ experience they can use when applying for other positions in the organization.

Since that time, I have continued to stay actively engaged in ways to uplift, educate, and create opportunities for women and people of color on a broad and one-on-one level. After the murder of George Floyd in the neighborhood I grew up in, and the subsequent riots/ turmoil across the globe, there was a need for myself and my coworkers to have a safe space to share our experiences and feelings with our peers. Recognizing this need, our AWT leadership team (Carri Sampson – Vice-chair, Jennifer Kochaver – Coordinator, and myself - Chair) quickly organized with the assistance from Rachel Dungca and Sarah Berres that safe space for our transit organization. We organized a webex conference call, titled Roundtable Discussion - Racism and the Death of George Floyd. We discussed the sensitive subject of racism, riots, fear, George Floyd’s Murder, what we can do to help our community, what can we do to help improve our organization. Our first meeting just hit the tip of the iceberg. One meeting turned into a series of meetings promoted to the entire organization with guest speakers and facilitators. These roundtable discussions were the first of its kind at Transit and helped spark change in our organization by bringing to light some areas we can improve personally and as an organization. In addition, it created a space to find opportunities for community service and connecting with community nonprofit organizations to help the neighborhoods that were hit hard by the riots beyond providing transportation. As a public serving transportation organization, we should not just be known as that company who drives busses & trains through our neighborhoods or provides mutual aide to the police department. We should be known as an organization who values our diverse riding public, diverse employee population and demonstrate our commitment to the communities we serve through our daily decisions.

We are more successful at doing so when we have these challenging conversations regularly. With recent verdict and next month marking one year since the George Floyd tragedy we will be revisiting this discussion to check in on our healing and growth individually and organizationally.

Innovative Transportation Solutions: MN CAV Challenge

The Minnesota CAV Challenge is an award-winning partnership program that identifies unique Minnesota transportation challenges that can be solved with connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technologies. With CAV technology rapidly advancing, the CAV Challenge program is an open, rolling opportunity for ideas from communities, industry, researchers, governments, nonprofits, and others who are interested in testing and deploying CAV technologies to meet unique Minnesota transportation needs. This creative and innovative RFP program launched in 2018 and has solicited over 100 unique industry and community ideas. Anyone may request a “Stage 1” meeting, allowing teams to confidentially share ideas with MnDOT. If ideas meet the program’s goals, proposed project teams then meet with technical experts in a workshop setting to address questions, understand risks and benefits, determine eligibility for trunk highway funding and refine ideas for a full proposal. Proposals are reviewed by an interdisciplinary panel who makes recommendations to MnDOT’s top leadership.

Honorable Ray LaHood Award - Brian Funk, Metro Transit

I'm so humbled and proud to have been nominated and awarded the Honorable Ray LaHood award this year. I have been helped by so many people in my career, I try my best to help support others to the best of my ability, especially women in the public transit industry. Thank you to my colleagues who nominated me and thank you to WTS for sponsoring the award.