There are few journeys in public services as remarkable as that of Eileen M Vélez-Vega, Secretary of the Puerto Rico Department of Transportation and Public Works.
Raised in Sabana Grande, Puerto Rico, she moved as a student to the contiguous United States to achieve her dream of becoming a civil engineer. It was at this point that her career began, with two exciting opportunities.
“I worked at Walt Disney World as a college student, and that actually got me my next internship at NASA at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama,” Vélez-Vega tells The CEO Magazine.
Upon graduation, she served a two-year stint in the United States Army Corps of Engineers, before taking up a role in the private sector as a civil engineer with a focus on aviation. But four years into this role, in 2010, her life was turned upside down.
Pivotal moments
When she was five months pregnant, Vélez-Vega was diagnosed with Stage 4 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. She endured three chemotherapy treatments before giving birth to a healthy daughter, Anna Isabelle. Having beaten cancer, she decided to return to Puerto Rico in 2014 to help develop the airport and transportation infrastructure in her homeland.
“I worked in all the airports on the island, but also the highways and the roads and land development,” she says. “I was here when Hurricane Maria happened in 2017, so I worked in the recovery efforts, as well as in telecommunications.”
“We are going into construction for 157 projects for recovery, and investing about US$600 million around the whole island.”
On the eve of Thanksgiving in 2020, Vélez-Vega received a surprise call, asking her to apply for a high-ranking government role.
“When I was much younger, I told my mom, ‘If I ever work for the government, I would love to be the Secretary of the Department of Transportation,’” she remembers.
“When I was sick in 2012, going through my stem cell transplant, I said to my mother, ‘Remember I told you that I wanted to do this? Well, someday I think I’m going to do it.’”
After a whirlwind interview process, the dream became a reality.
“On 7 December 2020, when the press conference was official, Governor Pedro R Pierluisi announced me as the first woman to ever lead the Department,” Vélez-Vega says, proudly. “It’s a privilege and an honor.”
In at the deep end
Upon resuming the role, Vélez-Vega’s ability to overcome challenges was once again put to the test.
“When we got here, there was a lot of work to be done with recovery,” she says. “We’d had the hurricane and as well as the 2020 earthquakes, and there was a lot of funding available for the Department to invest in recovery.”
Despite the US$600 million of funding available to repair infrastructure damage, the Department didn’t have the structures in place to convert these federal grants into material changes for Puerto Ricans.
“So I created a federal grants office within the Department, which helped us obligate about 90 percent of those federal funds,” Vélez-Vega says.
“Now we are going into construction for 157 projects for recovery, and investing about US$600 million around the whole island.”
It includes permanent work such as improving signage, landslide and roadway repairs and the renovation of government buildings. “It’s the biggest undertaking that the Department has ever had,” Vélez-Vega acknowledges.
The previously neglected 7,500 kilometers of state roads were another immediate priority, but also faced a lack of funding.
“We pretty much rebuilt that program into having our own funding from the Law 22 traffic fines, with police officers enable to electronically fine drivers who are speeding, running red lights or drunk driving,” Vélez-Vega says.
“We now get 70 percent of these funds for the maintenance of roads, which is about US$120 million a year.
“We have now been able to rehabilitate roads, buy protective gear for our employees and install solar-powered traffic lights. It’s been transformative for our Department.”
Public servants
A priority for Vélez-Vega is to ensure that the Department continues to attract the best employees. Her strategy for this is to ensure its pay packet is reflective of the essential services that its people provide.
“I always tell everybody that asphalt and the equipment don’t move themselves. We need to have a healthy and strong workforce to be able to do all this,” she says.
“Salaries in the government were too low and they’re still too low. So we had to be a competitive employer so that folks come back and work for the government. That’s being done right now.”
“Asphalt and the equipment don’t move themselves. We need to have a healthy and strong workforce.”
Thanks to her team of dedicated public servants, and her incredible capacity to persevere through hardships, Vélez-Vega will continue to serve the people of Puerto Rico.
“Our job is to make sure that there’s road safety and that people have an efficient transportation system,” she says. “It’s not to make their lives any harder, it’s to make their lives better.”
