WTS Iowa Member Spotlight
Name: Sreyoshi Chakraborty
Title: Senior Planner
Company: Des Moines Area Metropolitan Planning Organization
Years of WTS Membership: 1.5 years
What is the favorite part of your job? The best part about my job has been to be able to be a resource to the communities within our metro who want and are actively working towards providing sustainable, safe, healthy, and affordable transportation choices and alternatives to driving to their constituents.
As you look ahead in the next few years, what’s something you’d like to accomplish (personally or professionally)? Professionally, I would like to start thinking about ways in which my projects can address pressing issues of climate change and social and environmental justice issues and their intersection with transportation. Historically, planners and engineers have not been proactive, and our efforts have focused a lot on mitigation. My goal is to work on changing that whenever I can. Personally, I want to be able to spend more time with my family and travel a lot more than what I have done in the past decade due to focus on studying and building my career.
Why did you join WTS? I wanted to be a part of WTS to be able to get to know and work with other professionals in the field of transportation who are trying to lift and support women in their professional aspirations and career goals. Women who are trying to advance and rise in leadership roles, often face systemic and cultural barriers and having an avenue to support and connect with other women through WTS was something I was immediately drawn to.
What piece of advice do you wish you had received when you just started your career? I wish that I had been advised to not take rejection and disappointments as failures and something to fear but to embrace them as an opportunity to learn and grow. Because without those early failures, I am not sure if I could be where I am today. And now, I continue to keep growing and learning every time I fail and accept it as a process.
If you could travel anywhere in the world where would you go and why? I would love to travel to New Zealand as I have never been to the Southern Hemisphere and I know it is beautiful.