Lona Hankins and Kelder Summers

[00:02] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: My name is Lona Edwards Hankins. I am 60 years old. Today is November 16, 2024, and we are located in New Orleans. And I am here with my colleague, Kelder Summers.

[00:18] KELDER SUMMERS: My name is Kelder Summers. I am 58 years old. Today is November 16, 2024, and we're located in New Orleans, Louisiana. And my relationship to Lona is she is Lona was my mentor, I'd like to think, but we're also colleagues. So Lona, tell us a little bit about Lona, the little girl, you know, and how, you know, where you went to school, where you were born.

[00:46] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Yeah. So I was born at Sarah Mayo Hospital in New Orleans. I am the middle child and the oldest girl. So my mother was a school teacher, and my dad was an entrepreneur. My mother taught predominantly high school. Her name, too, was Lona, and my father My father, Jules Edwards Jr., had his own shoe repair shop on Magazine Street. And he was one of the first blacks to own property on Magazine Street. He brought his first parcel in ####, the year I was born. So, my birth was his gift.

[01:22] KELDER SUMMERS: The first parcel, was it?

[01:24] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: The first parcel, yes. And so, I grew up uptown in the 13th Ward. Like I said, I'm the middle child. It's five of us. I went to elementary school at St. My older brother actually integrated St. Stephen's. By the time I got to St. Stephen's, it was well integrated and had a large Latino community because, I guess, that particular parish, because in the '70s there were lots of turmoil in Central and Latin America. And so it seemed like every year we were getting new Latin American students, which was, to me, so exciting. And then I went to Dominican. Which was an all-girls, predominantly white high school.

[02:09] KELDER SUMMERS: Catholic.

[02:09] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Catholic. Yep, my mother was Catholic, and so we made sure, both parents were Catholic, but they made sure we got that K through 12 Catholic experience. And then I became a renegade and went to Southern University, way in Baton Rouge, to try to get away from my mom and my big brother, Dow, because I had this rep, we were, He's about four years older than me. So everywhere I went, I was either her daughter or his little sister.

[02:38] KELDER SUMMERS: Get your own identity. Yeah. So you went to Southern and did you major in?

[02:44] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: So I majored in mechanical engineering.

[02:46] KELDER SUMMERS: Wow.

[02:47] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Which was again different. So I went from an all girls, predominantly white environment to a predominantly male, predominantly black, pretty much all black university. So my freshman year was just like, mouth open all the time, culture shock.

[03:03] KELDER SUMMERS: Why mechanical engineering?

[03:05] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Because it was the highest paying salary at the time. My mother said, do not depend on a man to provide a living for you. I looked in the book and said, oh, this one with a BS, I can make a lot of money.

[03:19] KELDER SUMMERS: Yes.

[03:19] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: I didn't particularly care for math, didn't particularly care for, for. I liked science, but it was more of the biologies, not necessarily the physics. And so I just. Gritted my way through mechanical engineering.

[03:34] KELDER SUMMERS: And so did you have a thought of becoming a CEO of a major transit agency when you were doing that?

[03:41] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: No. Actually, I spent the first 20 years of my career at an oil refinery. I do remember a kid, a young man, joking around our senior year, declaring what we were going to be next. And he was like, you,'re going to be a CEO. And I was like, boy, you tripping. I did not have that ambition. I didn't, you know, I just wanted to provide a good living for myself and my family.

[04:12] KELDER SUMMERS: Yeah, sounds great. And then, but you also did some school work. You worked in the school system.

[04:16] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Yeah, I had an aha moment. So, like I said, I worked at the refinery for 20 years. Hurricane Katrina happened in 2005 and devastated our city. And I had, what I call a self-diagnosed case of survivor's guilt. I'm from a big family in New Orleans. My dad has six brothers. Probably at the time Katrina hit, my extended family probably owned about 30 properties. Earned or was buying 30 properties. And of that number of properties, only three was inhabitable after. And my house was one of those ones that was inhabitable. I worked for a great corporation, so I still had a job. My family made it out alive, right, and was able to evacuate before the storm. Nobody was trapped. So I recall having this reflection about, if you remember in 2005, what our city was like the summer before. You had corruptions in our police force. You had the school board corruption in the central office. I had three kids, two of which were in public school at the time. And I was an outspoken public school critic. I'd go to school board meetings and point my fingers and say, you, should do da-da-da-da-da. So my aha moment was a commitment to myself that once I got the refinery back up and running, because it was devastated, it's in Plaquemines Parish, south of here. So it was devastated. Once it was back up and running, that I would then commit to rebuilding the city and hopefully go rebuild either schools or hospitals. I didn't know which one. But I knew I had great project management skills and skills that I learned in the private sector that I wanted to be a part of the solution and not just sitting on the sidelines complaining.

[06:20] KELDER SUMMERS: And so you went into the schools and you worked on what what exactly did you work on when you were in schools?

[06:27] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: So I worked for the Recovery School District for then state superintendent, Pastor Pastorek because there was a whole school reform takeover. And so I didn't work for the local school board. I worked for the state at the time and literally helped negotiate and proof with the amount of storm damage with FEMA. So we negotiated the largest single settlement and the largest PW ever written until that moment, $2 billion, project worksheet, and then managed all of the construction for and renovation of the buildings. So it was about 70 buildings that were under our control, of which we decided to build 40 of them new or completely renovated, and all but three. I think I started the three. I just didn't finish the last three because I decided to move on. So I worked for the schools from 2007 I went to the private sector. So I dipped out. At the same time, we had a transition in our city leadership. And the city had also just settled and gotten a relatively large project worksheet with FEMA to do road construction work. So the private sector was planning on going after it, creating, forming a team Engineering firm was planning on forming a team to do program management for the city to rebuild the roads. So I was heavily recruited because who else had $2 billion worth of construction experience in the city? So I was recruited to do that. And then the city strategically decided not to hire a program manager and self do it within by government staff. So I was working for this firm for about 18 months to two years. And I started looking around going to sewage and water board meetings and also RTA meetings to try to figure out where this firm could get plugged in locally. The office was out of Baton Rouge. They had mainly did highway construction and street designs. But nationally, they did transportation. Nationally, they did waterworks. So, like, how could they do this work here? At the same time, my mother was getting ill. And so, I happened to go to a breakfast where the then CEO of the Regional Transit Authority said, I need a professional engineer to help me manage my capital projects. I'm not a PE and I just built all these buildings like, no, that's not really what you need. What you need is somebody who knows how to ask all the right questions. So I gave him some free advice. He called me later and then the rest is history. So I started with the Regional Transit Authority in 2019, December of 2019, and worked as their chief and eventually became the deputy CEO for infrastructure. Had construction maintenance, facility maintenance and IT under my responsibility. And then in December of 2022, that CEO decided to retire. And the board looked around and appointed me interim and became permanent in December, in March of 2023. So permanent CEO in March.

[10:19] KELDER SUMMERS: So you're just over a year in this Officially, just over a year. And so you had a vision when you started, right, with the RTA. How has that vision changed? I mean, you came in and then you kind of immediately moved up. But how did your vision change? Or did it have a chance to change?

[10:41] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: I don't think my vision has changed, right? My original reason for going to the RTA really was that it just built all these beautiful buildings for our kids to improve their learning environments and their outcomes, and realized going to those meetings that mom is stuck on the bus, so she can't read to her baby. And so for me, it's about how do we improve the reliability. And there was also at that time when I was going to the meetings learning about the RTA, people were complaining about a lack of physical infrastructure. No shelters, no buildings that they can come in and get in out of the element. And our transit system has existed for 40 years. And so it's like basic human dignity was not there. And so having just built all that beautiful infrastructure is like, oh, we should do this at the RTA. Luckily, they had already had a strategic mobility plan, right? That was adopted before I got there. And it really lays out the roadmap. And so my role as chief before I became CEO was how do we go get the resources to be able to start executing? So learned about the federal grant program and got to writing and applying for grants. And I'm pretty proud that since 2019, we have been able to garner close to 170 million in competitive grants. And the people that have worked at that agency said, I remember this clearly, someone said, Wow, this is the first time we've gotten that much money. And then in the next breath it was, Wow, this is the first time we've applied for this much money. So, you know, leaving resources, it felt like, again, New Orleans was a critical area where we deserve, our community deserves more than what we have been asking for or demanding. And so as the CEO, I I see building great infrastructure, but also being reliable. If I tell you the bus is going to be there at three, it better be there at three.

[12:51] KELDER SUMMERS: And it has repercussions throughout the community and all the way into the homes and houses.

[12:57] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Yeah, I mean, I do this thing about mom in 15 minutes. And people who know me, they roll their eyes when I get started. But middle class people can buy 15 minutes, right? We can buy, Childcare sometimes, we can buy food, take out, but that mom who's struggling, I think that 15 minutes makes a lot. So, you know, she can be on time, seen as a reliable employer, and either keep her job or get a raise, right? She can take a cowgirl bath and just have a moment, right? The one that got me was, I don't know if you remember, when those kids stepped out and made the worst mistake of their lives by carjacking.

[13:49] KELDER SUMMERS: Yes, yes, I remember that.

[13:51] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: And I keep thinking, you know, I remember everybody was saying, Where's Mom? Right? Where are the parents? And for me, it was like, oh, she might have been stuck on that bus.

[14:01] KELDER SUMMERS: Wow. Wow.

[14:04] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Or she was working three jobs because it cost $20 per hour to pay for her housing. And so rather than pointing the finger just at Mom, I had to really look at me and say, How can I make Mom's life better?

[14:18] KELDER SUMMERS: Right.

[14:18] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: And so Mom could literally be home on time to catch a kid before that kid whose frontal lobe isn't closed yet, decision skills aren't there, makes the worst mistake of their life. Because I think we, the community, the interconnectivity of all of us really plays an important role in rebuilding the New Orleans that you and I grew up in.

[14:40] KELDER SUMMERS: That's right. And as kids, we were happy to get on the bus. I feel like we weren't doing all that crazy stuff out in the streets because we were like, oh, we're gonna get on the bus with our friends and have fun and going home. So it was a great experience riding the bus. Now, you said you and your team were able to raise all of these monies. I'm sure with all of that money, There came some difficult decisions that you may have had to make, you know, different allocations, maybe switching and swapping things. Can you tell us a little bit some of something about some of one of the challenging decisions that you've had to make and how you came to this decision?

[15:20] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Yeah, the hardest decision I had to make was back in 2023, the fall of 2023. We had just changed all of our services in 2022, system-wide redesign, and I kept hearing about delays. And what we realized was we had an aging fleet, and so we had overcommitted what we could actually deliver. And so I got the team together and had them start to look at the data to realize Our maintenance team could only, because of the age of our fleet, could only deliver about 70 buses, but we were planning for 90 buses. And so we had to make that hard decision to cut back and only plan to what we could deliver on the streets to be more reliable. And while the community didn't like it, I think they now understand the benefit of that because my schedule is now more reliable. And we dipped into some of our COVID relief money and bought 20 new vehicles plus some other money. So we wound up getting 29 vehicles. So today, a year later, all 29 vehicles are now on the street. So our service is much more reliable. And then the plan in January is to start to restore service to what it might have been before.

[16:56] KELDER SUMMERS: And so what did that teach you, that whole challenge there?

[17:00] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: It taught me a couple of things about our agency, and it taught me how to break down silos. It taught me to empower our team to look at data. But it also taught me not to be afraid to make a tough call when it needs to be made in order to improve people's lives.

[17:19] KELDER SUMMERS: And so I'm going to pivot a little bit. You are a woman in this, you said it earlier, this male dominated area, and I'm sure making some of those decisions and executing them may have been difficult. Being in the male dominated industry, what are some of the moments that you've how did you feel you had to prove yourself? And how did you navigate those situations?

[17:46] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: I have been proving myself since I.

[17:49] KELDER SUMMERS: Was-- well, since Big Brother.

[17:51] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Since I was a little girl playing football in the street with the boys. Right, right, right. So I guess for me, what is wearing is the constant reproving. Like every time I move to a different level, It's like, Reset. Reset. I remember the first time I walked into the refinery and I was the first black female engineer that they had hired, the first female mechanical engineer that they had hired. This was 1988, not 1950, not 1975, 1988. And so, I was hazed there, but because I grew up with the brothers that I grew up in, in the neighborhood I grew up, like words didn't bother me. My father gave us a statement, what you think about me is none of my business.

[18:46] KELDER SUMMERS: Hello. Right?

[18:48] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: And so it also taught me, every time it taught me to pay attention to the details, and it is still taught me to double down and go back to the fundamentals of one, how you communicate with people, move with integrity and honesty and move in purpose. And one of the other things that I learned with building schools when I was challenged at all different levels was what was my community saying? I remember arguing with someone because they wanted to navigate the buildings to go towards the educators or charter school leaders because, you know, New Orleans had this big rub charter versus traditional. And they said, well, Mary Landrieu, our state senator, who, I mean, our federal senator who helped us get the money, they said, well, the money came here for EdReform, and my response was, no. The money came here because communities were destroyed. And we have an obligation to rebuild our communities. So while taking the heat from communities, because of who I represented and what we were doing at the time, like tearing down their neighborhood school was not an easy feat. When it was time to rebuild and rebuild with their voice, it was almost like, because I go to the grocery store and people would say, When you rebuilding, you know, book of tea, when you rebuilding back 35. And knowing that the little ladies in the grocery store had my back, right? That I could face any opposition because I felt like I was their voice at the table. And I feel like that even today as the CEO, I am the voice of not only New Orleans, but also of our workers, right? Our operators. Who are on the front line and face a lot of the ills that society has. And how do I make sure that I'm protecting them in every room that I'm in as well?

[20:57] KELDER SUMMERS: Yeah, and that kind of goes into this next question. I mean, RTA has historically been connecting neighborhoods and has been a significant part of the culture and the community here in New Orleans. How do you approach community engagement.

[21:16] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Or.

[21:17] KELDER SUMMERS: Balance the diverse needs of the different neighborhoods, because there are so many, and you can get on one bus and traverse three or four different cultures in different neighborhoods.

[21:27] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Yeah. I had a great mentor who helped me navigate community. Like I said, I worked at a refinery, and my only community working at the refinery was the cows in the field next door, right? But when I first started at the recovery school district, Bill Rouselle

[21:48] KELDER SUMMERS: Hi.

[21:48] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: He is a lot, was a long, he's recently passed, but he was a long time known as the, the voice of the community. And he helped me get over my fear. I'm an outspoken introvert. So he would put me in front of the mic and made sure he would tell me, sugar, you got to let people know who you are. You have a long history in this city. You got to Tell people who your mom and them is. And so I started deflating the anger by saying, what school you from? You know my mama taught you. Or, you know, my daddy probably fixed your shoes. My daddy and your grandma.

[22:31] KELDER SUMMERS: Right, making the connections.

[22:33] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Making the connections. And so that's something that I've learned to try to deflect in my own way. And reach people where they are. I may not know many of the operators' names, but I remember their conversations. And the same thing with our community leaders. So how do we, your original question, recognizing that New Orleans is unique and the 13th Ward is different than the 9th Ward, but they still need services, right? They still need the, the dignity that the 13th Ward may have because of its affluence, the 9th Ward still needs. And so how do we make sure that we are balancing, I feel like I have to be honest with the people, tell them where our constraints are, and tell them what I can and cannot do upfront. Because, you know, these federal grants, procurement laws, all the rules that we have to comply with, but if I can give them a win, I'm gonna do that.

[23:37] KELDER SUMMERS: Great. And I mentioned earlier about culture, so RTA, the bus, catching the bus, that's a part of our culture, it really is. You know, we watch the bus routes when Mardi Gras comes, 'cause we know they're gonna be changing, and we're making our plans around that. We have second lines that bust out in the neighborhoods that'll affect some of those lanes. You know, even you, you are, You know, a culture bearer of sorts, as the warrior queen of a masking Indian tribe. How do you explain and how do you build that culture of New Orleans into the strategic plan of RTA?

[24:22] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: So, yes, I am the warrior queen of the Timbuktu Warriors. My brother started his own black masking gang in 2020. And so, I've been masking that Now, since off and on, I don't do it regularly, 'cause it takes me a minute.

[24:41] KELDER SUMMERS: You have, I mean, this involves, so it takes, doing the costume.

[24:44] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Typically, it takes a year to make a suit. But because of my life, it takes me, I say it takes me three years to get pretty. So, I've only masked a couple of times, but I support my brother and his gang in their masking efforts. But how do I bring the culture of New Orleans to the RTA. Well, that's easy because everybody's from here, right? But in things that we do. So when I first became CEO, I was hearing about the mental health and stress issues. So I had Mama Sonny Patterson do a pause, breathe moment. She came into our office and recorded it. And it was just a 15-second moment that plays on repeat. On our buses, the first time it played was on a Sunday and an operator called this supervisor and was like, I don't know about this. I don't know why that lady keep talking. On Monday, when his riders showed up and this particular route served a lot of elderly, the whole bus said Amen. Oh, wow.

[25:58] KELDER SUMMERS: After.

[26:00] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: So, I knew I was on to something. And then on our shelters, we have that beautiful Magnolia, which is a kind of a symbol of New Orleans sometimes, right? And it just gives us a daily reminder to pause and breathe. I love what we've done with our campaign, this Is How We Roll, where not only we were able to get chefs and local musicians, but our second line crews and our culture bearers, The King Zulu, Adonis Exposé, and our big queen, Mika, who's on our staff, to be able to showcase who they are, right? New Orleans is one of those places that culture is just kind of, they say we drop more art on the ground. Right?

[26:58] KELDER SUMMERS: That's true.

[27:00] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: We leave it there as trash that other people don't even know what to do with. It comes in how we greet each other. We were talking about some of the sayings that my brother might have used when he was younger. And, you know, LafaLi and, and, and, and, and, right. So it just kind of, how your.

[27:24] KELDER SUMMERS: Mom and, yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And, and, you know, I know that RTA employs a lot of, well, mostly New Orleanians in, in, in operator positions and all of the and it's important that they are resonating, I guess, with the folks that get on the bus, right?

[27:46] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Yeah, our operators really care about our community. I've heard on numerous occasions how an operator has either handled an elderly person or handled a young person who might be riding the bus to make sure they get to school or even grab a group of young people who may be boisterous after school and say, My baby, that's not how you conduct yourself around a young lady. Right?

[28:12] KELDER SUMMERS: Yes, yes, yes. And I know we that work there, I know it's important for us internally that we do public outreach and that sort of thing. But public service is also a big part of what RTA does and community engagement. How has that sort of changed, improved, lessened over the past few years?

[28:34] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Yeah, so in my history in almost 20 years of doing public service, I've seen the community become really educated and know what they're asking for. So it's not like you can just fake community engagement. The days of just holding a community meeting to say, I've checked that box, are over for, I think, most governments throughout the country, but particularly here in New Orleans. And I think it started with Katrina because they were paid lip service on a lot of things. There was a lot of distrust, even before Katrina, around what the government, we're here to help, say they were going to build things or said they were going to do things, but never really delivered. And so one of the things that I've cautioned our team over these last few years and last few months is if you say you're gonna do it publicly, we better make sure we can deliver it. That's right. It's something about credibility that goes a long way so that when we do mess up, 'cause we're gonna mess up, the community gives us grace.

[29:44] KELDER SUMMERS: And they hold you accountable.

[29:45] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Yes.

[29:47] KELDER SUMMERS: That's the big thing, they hold you accountable. So what do you think is Or what would you hope that people understand about public transit that might not be obvious to them?

[30:01] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: That it's not just for poor people. That I believe public transit can be the great liberator. If you think about financial mobility, it costs almost $15,000 a year to own a car. In New Orleans. A year bus pass costs $700. Think about that young couple just starting out, what they could do with that $15,000. So if we can create a system that is so great they can navigate on one car, right? That's a huge game changer for our community. Environmental sustainability in this city, right, where we have coastal erosion, right? If we can reduce our emissions by hopping on the bus, we can save our coastline. If we can just, congestion while we're not as, we're such a car-centric community, right? And if we can get back to the we on many things instead of me, I think our community can just progress so much better and the bus might be the vehicle to make that happen.

[31:15] KELDER SUMMERS: Now, some, a little bit further in that how has the transit industry or the bus system, how has it changed? And what are like some of the forward thinking things that we're doing to, you know, to meet the needs of the community?

[31:33] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Yeah, I think the amount of federal funds that have come down for infrastructure has made change possible, right? So I mentioned the buses that we just ordered. We ordered Almost 30 buses, of which 15 are diesel hybrids.

[31:49] KELDER SUMMERS: Wow, okay.

[31:50] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: We got a grant that, two grants that will allow us to buy 23 all-electric vehicles, right? So when you're thinking about reduction in emissions, not only does it improve our environment, but it improves the physical health of our community, less asthma rates, right? And so that's some of the forward thinking we're thinking about, how can the bus be and our transit system provide more services, be somebody faster, quicker. And even social services. Can I put social workers on the bus that can, you know, help people fill out their forms or whatever it is.

[32:30] KELDER SUMMERS: Paratransit or, you know, help de-escalate any issues.

[32:33] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Correct.

[32:34] KELDER SUMMERS: I love that. I love that. And that's, so you see that as an integral part of the community and moving forward. Is there any idea as far as mass, like rapid transit as far as-- Yes. So rails and all of that.

[32:48] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: So rails is pretty expensive throughout the country and the government has really been pushing bus rapid transit because it's cheaper.

[32:55] KELDER SUMMERS: And what is that?

[32:56] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: So bus rapid transit, if you think light rail with dedicated lanes, similar can happen with bus rapid transit. So the stops are every mile, but you have a dedicated lanes, so you're not building the rail that's required. It's just improving the street infrastructure that you might do normally, but create a dedicated lane such that the bus is not stuck in traffic and it moves quickly. And that will then allow commuters to move from New Orleans East to downtown in 30 minutes instead of an hour.

[33:31] KELDER SUMMERS: That would be fantastic.

[33:32] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Yeah, and think about that. You can read and study while you're on the bus.

[33:35] KELDER SUMMERS: Take the bus and not pay all that money for gas. I love that. It's a requirement for those of us that work at RCA to take the bus. And I recently took the streetcar, which is always such a nostalgic and fabulous ride.

[33:50] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Oh my God, doesn't it?

[33:51] KELDER SUMMERS: I didn't mention the streetcar.

[33:52] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: So we have the oldest operating streetcar network in the country. I believe the first streetcar system started in like 1835. But we just recently celebrated the 100th anniversary of our current cars that are still operating on the St. Charles line. They're called the Pearly Thomas cars. The red streetcars, you see, are replicas of it. And some of them have air conditioning and ADA compliance. But, you know, we are pretty proud of the streetcars. And we have a whole facility that is a, I call it a preservation manufacturing facility, because they do things in the old way.

[34:36] KELDER SUMMERS: That's right.

[34:36] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: And only our operators, we might buy something off the shelf, but then we have to customize it.

[34:42] KELDER SUMMERS: Retrofit it.

[34:42] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: And retrofit it to meet our needs.

[34:44] KELDER SUMMERS: And that St. Charles Streetcar is a moving-- It's a moving monument.

[34:51] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: It's a moving-- It's the only moving thing on the historical register.

[34:55] KELDER SUMMERS: Isn't that cool?

[34:56] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: I think it's the only moving thing. It's on our historical register. It's a national landmark, but it's a moving national landmark.

[35:03] KELDER SUMMERS: Take that, San Francisco. So let's move into just going to wrap things up a little bit. What or who has been your greatest inspiration or mentor throughout your career? Especially as a woman in transit.

[35:21] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: So, I would say my mom for sure, right? She's just one of those fierce Black women who every time I would cry, she'd say, oh no, you can do everything your brothers can do. You can do everything a man can do. So she just kind of fortified me with that. But as I've moved into more government, reading more about Shirley Chisholm, there are two stalwarts in the transit industry, Black females who just wrapped their arms around me, Nuria Fernandez, former FTA administrator, and Inez Avans, former CEO of Indigo. When I was promoted to interim CEO, everybody said, Call Inez. So Inez took Friday night, and we had happy hour on a virtual happy hour, and she told me all the things I needed to think about in negotiating my contract. Gave me a copy of her contract and said, 'Cause the boys do this.

[36:21] KELDER SUMMERS: Hello.

[36:22] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: So we should be doing it, too. And so literally anytime, if I picked up the phone right now, I could call either one of them and they would answer if I had a question or a need. When I had some challenges earlier this year, there were several CEOs and several other community members in New Orleans who just kind of wrapped their arms around me and said, We got you.

[36:48] KELDER SUMMERS: That's right.

[36:48] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: So I don't have one particular one, but I know that the black women in this community, right, if I picked up the phone and called them whether or not I knew them or not, they would respond.

[37:02] KELDER SUMMERS: And so we'll move into this last question. Looking back at your career, what advice would you give to young women considering a career in leadership within these male-dominated fields?

[37:17] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: You deserve to be there. Master your craft, because once you master it, no one can take that away from you. And it's only in the doing that you gain the confidence. So you have to do, you have to fail, you have to put yourself out there, and then you know you can do it. You are your worst critic. So imposter syndrome is real because we put it there. Not that anybody else typically tells us we can't. I've had some great male mentors, right, who bolstered me, but I've also had a lot of male critics.

[37:59] KELDER SUMMERS: Hello.

[37:59] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Right? A lot of critics who did not believe in me. But again, I grew up with brothers. And trying to play ball with them. Put up or shut up. Let's go. You wanna talk smack? We can talk smack.

[38:15] KELDER SUMMERS: Hello, put up or shut up.

[38:16] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: Yeah.

[38:16] KELDER SUMMERS: Lona, thank you so much. This has been fantastic. As a person who considers you a mentor, I know that your legacy is going to be one of excellence. You are very, you demand that, you expect that, and you provide people the tools to be able to do that. So, you know, what legacy do you hope that you're leaving? Besides that, that you would be leaving.

[38:43] LONA EDWARDS HANKINS: I hope people realize that I've led with love in everything that I've done. It's out of a love for the community, a love for myself, a love for my family, and wanting to make my daddy and my mom proud. When we were rebuilding one building, I kept hearing his head and so saying, why would that girl take every brick off the building just to put more brick back on the building? So. So when I was asking the tough questions, right, y'all got to prove to me, because I don't want my daddy asking me this crazy question. I got to be able to answer it. So in everything that I've done, it's like, what would my dad say? What would my mom say in every professional decision that I've made? Because I'm a representative of them.