The Port’s first female engineering director brings a personable touch to project management.

Growing up, Thais Howard wanted to be a TV anchorwoman.

Thanks to Mr. Humbert, a chemistry and physics teacher at Bennettsville High School in South Carolina, she is now the Port of Tacoma’s first female director of engineering, responsible for leading the design and construction of road, rail and terminal improvements.

Humbert suggested she attend a summer career workshop aimed at minority students at Clemson University. She chose the engineering workshop and found the sheer variety of career opportunities available with an engineering degree appealing.

“For me, it was all about opportunity,” Howard said.

After two summers at the Clemson workshop, she decided to attend college there and earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. She is a licensed professional engineer in Washington, Florida and Tennessee.

Howard has worked at the Port of Tacoma for seven years, beginning her tenure as a project manager. She was promoted to engineering director in fall 2013.

The path, as a female in a male-dominated industry, wasn’t always easy.

“I’d look around my classes and realize, ‘Hey, there’s no one like me here,’” she said. “I felt like I had to work harder and be better than everyone else to prove myself.”

But her work ethic was instilled at a young age from her grandmother.

“Growing up, what I saw in my grandmother—she was a hard worker,” Howard said. “It taught me that if you work hard, you can achieve whatever you want.”

Before joining the Port, Howard worked for GLE Associates and The Walter Fedy Group in Florida, Williams-Sonoma in Tennessee and Westinghouse Electric Company in Utah. Those professional experiences were helpful in shaping her technical expertise.

She has also refined skills in listening, collaborating, being inclusive and working with teams of people.

“I especially like the Port because I get to manage people, lead a group and also be involved in managing projects,” Howard said.

One of her biggest and most rewarding Port projects to date was to manage upgrades related to the Transportation Workers Identification Credential (TWIC) program, which requires a federal ID card to access secure marine terminals. The $13.2 million project included upgrading and replacing security cameras, installing the supporting fiber infrastructure and installing an access control system to comply with the federal Department of Homeland Security program.

These days, the list of projects her seven-member team of engineers is managing runs several pages long, including improvements to piers 3 and 4 at Husky Terminal, rail connections, site grading and habitat construction.

“We’re a government agency, but we’re fast paced,” she said. “We have to be dynamic in meeting customer needs. It’s always evolving, being tied to what’s going on in the industry. To me, that keeps it interesting.”

All about Thais

Born: Bennettsville, South Carolina

Now lives: University Place, Washington

Family life: Married, with 15-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son

Hobby: Reads Christian fiction, watches her kids play basketball and football

Name origin: Thais (pronounced tie-ESE) is the name of an opera—but that’s not how Howard got her name. Her mom knew someone growing up in Brooklyn, New York, with that name and decided if she ever had a daughter that would be her name, too.