Sales Director
Hometown/home base: Born in El Paso, TX; and moved around Texas (Sanderson, Del Rio, Austin, and Dallas-Ft. Worth) before settling in Golden, CO where I will never leave. I live in a beautiful home west of Denver in the foothills with bears, mountain lions, a herd of about 200 elk, porcupines, deer, coyotes, and other critters as neighbors.
Years at Weston: 4 years
Education: Graduated from University of TX at Arlington with a BA in Communication and minor in English. I started at Southwest TX Junior College and University of TX at Austin while working and interning with multiple newspapers to pursue journalism.
Current role and experience: Currently I serve as Sales Director, which means that I am responsible for the Capture Team and capture processes for Weston – federal, state, local, and commercial. Capture is the phase of business development that begins when we have identified a specific project opportunity. The Capture Manager leads a team that helps determine if we can win the work and then build a delivery team and strategy to best position us for the win (prior to the client issuing a request for proposal). I was brought in initially to support capture and help formalize processes. As Weston has grown, we now have four Capture Managers and me.
Prior to joining Weston, I learned about the AE business development world from the bottom up. At Radian International, I started editing reports and proposals and eventually built their Denver proposal team. Then I moved to CH2M HILL in Denver as a Proposal Coordinator at a time when the firm was formalizing their proposal processes, procedures, and training. I worked my way up through Proposal Manager, Portfolio Manager for the Navy environmental function, and then Capture Manager.
At CH2M HILL, I helped establish the first Women’s Network and served its co-chair of the marketing committee for 2 years. I brought that experience to Weston and am now serving my second year on the WWN Council.
Why Weston: I have always been passionate about the environment and wanted to help in some way. Business development gives me an avenue to make a difference without being an engineer or scientist (if I had figured out how to use my passion earlier, I might have gone into geology). I thrive knowing a little bit about a whole lot, constant learning and improvement, variety, and relatively short deadlines. I have also found that employee-owned companies have a much more nurturing, caring environment for their people and their work. I found all of this in my work with Weston.
Working in an employee-owned firm for 20 years (CH2M HILL) and 6 years in various publicly held companies left no doubt that employee ownership provided me the kind of environment in which I thrive. Employee ownership attracts people who care about their coworkers, their company, and their clients. Our work is not transactional; it’s meaningful. Each of us is part of an interconnected web: what we do affects us, our friends and coworkers, our company, and our clients. You touch any part of this, and you affect it all. In a publicly held firm, that sense of connection just isn’t there. It’s all about the shareholders at the cost of the workers and often even the company. That environment doesn’t nurture quality, care, and high performance. People come and go but the company continues to churn through whatever it takes to satisfy shareholders.
Career Highlights: My dream since I could speak was to be a reporter/journalist. I did that. Then I had to decide what was next in life. I stumbled upon my current career via doing temporary work. I bring together an unusual skill set: I can write, organize, manage, and think strategically, and I enjoy all of these things. And I like to win.
I’ve had many amazing experiences in my career. Two international experiences made an indelible impression on me. I worked for 4 months in the UK on a multi-billion-dollar opportunity for the UK Ministry of Defense to outsource all of the kit (i.e., gear) the Ministry used – from toothbrushes to submarines. I also supported an international telecom consortium applying for wireless licensing in each region of Germany. That endeavor required work for about 20 hours/day until the applications were submitted. The complexity, stress, and demands of these endeavors and the collaboration with multiple international partners made me more flexible and confident, and open to wider experiences in life.
I also learned my limits and expanded my skills working on three multi-billion-dollar Department of Energy cleanup and closure proposals with large joint ventures and proposal teams comprised of well over 100 collocated experts.
While at Weston, I supported the firm in capturing a suite of indefinite delivery environmental remediation contracts and we won 89% of the dollar capacity that we pursued, including contracts that would break us into the USACE Sacramento, Albuquerque, and Los Angeles Districts as well as continuing our work in Omaha District and the Huntsville Center. That collaboration with Weston resources to win those contracts satisfied my itch to win big. Now we need to make sure we capitalize on having the contracts and win task orders completed under these contracts.
It has also been satisfying to lead and develop high-performing proposal and capture teams. For Weston, this has meant building the capture team. I enjoy sharing my knowledge to help them be their best, and I learn from them as well. My goal is to create a capable team who can seamlessly transition into my position.
Leadership: I lead in many ways, as do most of us at Weston. Leadership takes many forms. The obvious ones are my role as Sales Director with my team of Capture Managers. I pride myself in working with that team to be high-functioning contributors to the company and to support each other.
I am also a leader on the Weston Women’s Council where I’ve been able to bring forward ideas and lessons I learned over the years. This has been particularly beneficial at this time in supporting the Weston Women’s Network development and launch of our own mentorship program this year. I actively engage in informal mentoring people around me and conversely, I have mentors that have supported me for many years. I enjoy the mutual support and growth that mentorship provides.
Another area of leadership involves demonstrating that you can shape your career as long as you know what you want and work toward that in obvious and subtle ways. Don’t assume that others know what you want; you have to share that with the right people, demonstrate your capability, and learn the lingo and behaviors of the desired position. You must believe it’s yours, have confidence, and “act as if.” Almost every job I have had was earned through my clarity on what I wanted to do next, taking on the work of that job, and then getting it. Someone told me recently that I had shown them that there is a career path they never considered possible from where they were. That made me so happy.
Finally, a key aspect of leadership was growing into someone who isn’t afraid of sharing ideas, asking questions, and having discussions with the right person, whether they are a department leader, subject matter expert, client account manager, or on the executive leadership team. It’s especially true in an employee-owned company – we all are employee owners, regardless of our title.
Proudest achievement at Weston: I am proud of being on the Women’s Council and working to roll out a mentorship program firmwide. We have done our beta testing and by the end of 2023, we hope to have the fully operational program shared across Weston. Weston women (and a lot of our men) have shown that they want to grow, and we have provided them various trainings, networking opportunities, and now the avenue of targeted mentoring. This program will help make the participants feel supported and ready for their next challenge.
Advice on encountering bias in the industry: Don’t let them get into your head. One of my mentors has repeatedly told me that although she wasn’t an engineer or a male in this environmental services industry, she succeeded. If she could, I can. And she was right.
Another bit of advice: learn to speak up if you’re interested in a job, even if you don’t check 100% of the boxes. You can learn that 10% you are missing on the job. If you don’t speak up, someone else will (often a male) and they will get the job or assignment. That was a hard lesson I learned early in my career. Not speaking up for myself in a specific opportunity set my career back years and haunted me emotionally for decades.
Lastly, learn to work with a full breadth of personalities. Exposure to and working with people with all kinds of temperaments and biases helps melt away bias; it’s hard to be prejudiced against someone you know. Try not to take bias personally, and if it gets to be too much, find a new work environment that is more nurturing of your career.
On diversity and inclusion and professional life: I grew up in an environment that lacked a lot of diversity: I was the very pale minority in a Latino community on the Texas border. Looking back, I loved that immersion, and it helped me value other cultures and ways of being that I may not have embraced had I not been in this environment. Traveling around the world has shown me that each culture brings so much value to me personally and to humanity. I am so grateful to have people in my life who don’t look like me, think like me, worship like me, or love exactly like me. We are beautiful colorful shards that make up a stunning stained-glass mosaic. Diversity strengthens us all. It gives our company a wider perspective and pool of knowledge.
On creating real change around diversity issues on a larger scale: Actions speak the loudest. For Weston, we have begun to take a stand for diversity with things like blind resume reviews in hiring, having a Diversity & Inclusion and Women’s Network group to raise ideas for improvement, and having awareness training across the company.
In my personal community, my husband and I demonstrated our commitment to supporting our neighbors, even those who thought we were too different to approach. We brought food for a neighbor in hospice, enabling her family to be at her bedside rather than spend precious time cooking. Small actions like that have brought the community together in ways I hadn’t foreseen. You cannot easily hate someone once you get to know them and understand what’s driving their behavior. I think we all must reach out and be there for each other without judgement or conditions. That’s what will change minds; not rigid discourse, violence, or separation.