Terry Gerton Well, you have a great story and I want to just offer some questions that I’ll prompt you to tell it. You have spent your career at the intersection of engineering and public health. What inspired you to join public service and focus on public health that way?
Lt. Cmdr. Melissa de Vera Well, I would say it was something that I kind of fell into. I am a tribal member. I’m an enrolled member of the Rocky Boy Chippewa Cree tribe. But I didn’t grow up on my tribe. And so when I had decided to go to college and I was looking at the different degrees and I fell into engineering, I found that I was really drawn to working with Indian Health Service because, even though I didn’t grow up with my tribe and on my reservation, I really wanted to feel a sense of connectedness and be able to give back by utilizing my education. So that’s what kind of started it.
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Terry Gerton Well, tell us about the kind of work you’re doing now. You’re at this intersection of Indian Health Services and engineering, especially in the Division of Sanitation Facilities Construction.
Lt. Cmdr. Melissa de Vera Yeah, so my role is, well, my initial role was as an environmental engineer. So what that means, if you’re not familiar, is we basically work with drinking water, waste water, and solid waste systems. So I started my career out in the field as a junior engineer, and I’m currently working out of our headquarters office, still with the same division, but right now, not only do I get to kind of do some of that work, I also get to focus on recruiting, which has quickly developed into a favorite duty of mine.
Terry Gerton So what are you recruiting for? My guess is that it has to do with the bipartisan infrastructure law, which promised a significant amount of funding to improve environmental facilities on tribal lands.
Lt. Cmdr. Melissa de Vera With the bipartisan infrastructure law, our division was allocated $3.5 billion to provide sanitation facilities or sanitation infrastructure to tribes. So we faced a significant shortage of engineers to deliver billions of dollars in sanitation projects for our tribal nations. My job was really, when coming into this position was to build partnerships, so I built partnerships with the Department of Energy to utilize their STEM workforce development asset, ORISE, also the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, and the U.S. Public Health Service Commission Core. So, by taking these partnerships and leveraging them together, we were able to bring in our first ever ORISE interns to the Indian Health Service. And we tripled our engineering and also our environmental health intern pipeline. So that’s kind of what I’ve been working on in the last year.
Terry Gerton That’s exciting. And how has bringing all of that additional human capacity to the organization helped you move forward on the actual construction projects?
Lt. Cmdr. Melissa de Vera Well, our division had been facing chronic staff shortages. Across the agency, we were looking at vacancy rates that were exceeding 30% in our more rural areas, that those vacancy rate were higher. So historically, our division has always relied on internship programs to bring in engineers. We relied primarily on the USPHS internships to bring in kind of junior officers as interns and introduce them to engineering and also engineering with that public health mindset, which is a very unique or niche combination. That pipeline had a little bit collapsed on us. So rebuilding that pipeline of interns is going to start feeding more entry-level engineers into into our positions so that these construction projects can actually move forward and get completed.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Lieutenant Commander Melissa de Vera. She is the assistant director of management operations for the Indian Health Services Division of Sanitation Facilities and Construction. Melissa, I love that you’re building the talent pipeline. I also want to understand a little bit about the building of these projects. What impact do they have on the local communities on tribal lands when you can deliver clean water and sanitation services?
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Lt. Cmdr. Melissa de Vera When we can deliver safe drinking water, for me, I’m definitely a drinking water person. I think that safe drinking water, I think aesthetically pleasing drinking water is also important. I think that when we’re able to deliver those services, especially to homes that actually never had those types of services, I think that it brings a sense of relief and dignity for families. I strongly believe that when people don’t have to think about, where am I going to get water? When am I going to get water, or is my water going to be clean enough? I think when you take that away, that gives people the chance to focus on other things, like improving themselves, which could include, maybe education, working, spending more time with your family. So I think when we remove some of those barriers to access to safe drinking water, clean drinking water, that we’re really freeing up people’s time, which is precious.
Terry Gerton I love that, absolutely. And I want to ask, you’re at this very interesting intersection of technology and impact, and as a tribal member yourself, what kind of leadership lessons have you learned from managing these kinds of projects, being in this situation, bringing in and recruiting folks, even cross-boundary, building those cross-boundary partnerships that you mentioned earlier? What’s sticking with you?
Lt. Cmdr. Melissa de Vera What’s sticking with me about this particular experience with recruiting is that leadership is about partnerships. And then when I look back on my career in the field, that applies as well. So we have partnerships with our students, or with our intern students we have partnerships. They create a partnership kind of with their mentors. We have partnerships with the agencies that we’re collaborating with to try to bring in interns, and we definitely have partnerships with the tribal nations, with our tribal partners. And I think that what I’ve kind of learned is that leadership is really about humility and trust also. So I think for this particular initiative, the difference really came from us, one, having really great agency partners, and two, having really good mentors within the Indian Health Service. And we also had some mentors that were actually outside of the Indian Health Service and the National Park Service. But having those mentors work with our students one-on-one, that actually made me learn that my role is really just to kind of connect people, clear barriers, and then kind of step back so that all of those relationships can kind of flourish and go in the direction that they need to go. So I think I didn’t feel like I was truly, really leading anything until maybe the second summer when interns were returning for another internship. So I feel like that was like a quiet win, but it also just kind of showed me that we found some students that were interested in engineering, interested in public health, and that our work resonated with them as much as it does with us. And so hopefully we get to see them return as entry-level engineers and start their career in their own journeys.
Terry Gerton Well, you’ve just received the Arthur S. Flemming Award, recognizing your cross-boundary leadership. Congratulations for that. What’s next for you and your work?
Lt. Cmdr. Melissa de Vera So, for me, I think what’s next is I really want to sustain these partnerships beyond the bipartisan infrastructure law funding. I want this to grow beyond that. And I maybe see this as building not just infrastructure, but also this work contributing to a long-term workforce. And a workforce that we’ve had chronic vacancies for many years, and I know that our current staff have just felt that for so long. So I think that that really is my priority, is really kind of establishing this as permanent infrastructure, I guess, as an engineer. That’s what I would say.
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