A Conversation with Renne Amilcar

Nadine Lee: Welcome to Mobility in Motion, a podcast from Dallas Area Rapid Transit. I'm your host Nadine Lee, CEO of DART, and today we are talking with Renee Amilcar, the General Manager of OC Transpo in Ottawa, Canada.

She is also the first female president of the UITP, the International Association of Public Transport, which is a global organization supporting public transportation.

We are so happy to have an opportunity to talk with Renée Amilcar.

And the first thing I asked her was what it means for women to participate in public transit at the global level.

Renée Amilcar: Sure. First and foremost, I would like to say that Mohamed Mezghani, who is UITP, is a huge advocate for women. And he has put in place a very, huge action plan to make sure that we can increase the number of females participating in every event.

And that works really because I remember in 2017 in Montreal, it was a huge summit. Most of the people were unfortunately male and since this event I have seen a lot of improvements and a lot of efforts to increase the presence of women.

Don't get me wrong, we need men as well. We need diversity, right? So we need that mix of people who can help us to build, the transit of tomorrow, I would say.

Nadine Lee: Yeah, I think that's true because, I think we often forget that, um, transportation system was largely conceived and built by men, historically, because that's just the way it was. But so many users, right —fifty percent at least of the users—are women. As users, women have different needs when they're traveling, right? Women are more likely to be traveling with children or with seniors, more likely to be carrying groceries or other things that they purchase.

And so making those accommodations is really a challenge for us if we're not thinking about them all the time.

Talk a little bit about where you've gotten your inspiration. Who has inspired you in the past? Men or women?

Renée Amilcar: Definitely Carl Desrosiers, he was the CEO of STM, Société de Transports de Montréal. And I was working at that time at the engineering department, and he saw me, he heard me, and he said, “Wow Renée you're very good.” And I was so shy you know the CEO was talking with me, the engineer. And when he said to me that one day I will have a seat on his board it was so crazy because I couldn't even think about that. For me it was not possible.

And I think this man who said, “Okay, I'm going to train you. I'm going to send you around the world. You will go to the UITP. You will learn. And I'm going to transfer your departments. So you will not like it, but it's for you.”

I remember once I was in charge of the maintenance department at STM, the bus maintenance. It's a tough job, a really tough job with a lot of unionized people.

And it's a job that normally, it's a man who is very old. So I was very young at the time and he said, “No, I see you there”

And I really enjoyed the job. A couple of years later, he sent me to another department and I hated this department.

It's like, why did you send me there? He said, it's for you. I go, I cried. I said, Oh, I hate this man.

And a year later he offered me the executive director role with 5,200 people. I was in charge of the 2000 buses in Montreal.

It was crazy!

(subtle music)

So this man, Carl Desrosiers, is .. I'm a fan of him. He's retired now, but he knows that every time that I have the opportunity, I talk about him.

Nadine Lee: That's terrific. So you talked about your mentors, and mentors are also often sponsors, right?

And so, it's really interesting because I also had a sponsor, Phil Washington was my sponsor. And he was the one who gave me opportunities and, you know, put me in roles that I would never have envisioned myself being in. And so the same thing, right?

What are the things that you do to sponsor young people, cultivating new leaders for the future.

What are the things that you try to do in your role?

Renée Amilcar: Yeah, so I'm trying to do the same thing that Carl Desrosiers has done with me because he gave me this opportunity. He named things, you know. He said, “You can, Renée. I'm going to help you.”

So I do that with a lot of women at OC Transpo and Alana Saikaly, she's my specialist.

And when I just met her, she was my assistant. And, I saw a lot on this. She's very young. She's 27 years. And I said, “Anna. I don't want you to be my assistant anymore. I want to promote you.”

But I'm going to penalize myself because she was so good. And I said, I have to think about you, not about me because you're too good.

It's seeing me, 10 years ago when Carly Desrosiers said that to me, so I'm just trying to do the same thing. And she's doing fantastic. She's so amazing. I can see her easily, in 20 years, maybe she could be the CEO of OC Transpo because she has this capacity. She can learn, and she's willing to as well. So this is why I think we have to continue to do that.

Nadine Lee: That's fantastic. So what advice would you have for women who are trying to grow their careers in public transport and trying to figure out how to

rationalize the feeling that they don't have the qualifications, but, you might recognize them as having the perfect qualifications, right?

Renée Amilcar: It's a great question. I think for us women, it's very hard to say, Oh, I would like to achieve this goal. I would like to get this position, you know.

But having more women maybe that will facilitate that. And I have a very good example.

I'm looking for a Chief Safety Officer in Ottawa. And I saw people, and one of the ladies that I saw during the process, I said to myself, “Wow, she's good. And I said, hey, she's similar to someone who's working for me.” And I went to see this person who was working for me. I said, “I would like to see you, because I'm looking for a Chief Safety Officer,” and she sent me a resume. I was amazed. I didn't know her like that.

When I read her resume, I read it again and again, “I said, oh my gosh, she has a lot of experience, and I didn't know.” She's working for me, and I don't know her. So that's why I think it's important to give this opportunity to people, to say, hey, maybe you can.

But I saw her—boots on the ground—she was so good, but I didn't know her background. I didn't know she was so perfect on paper, you know what I mean? And she didn't raise her hand either.

I was going to hire maybe someone external, and I have this diamond here, you know? So it's, it's, it's amazing.

Nadine Lee: Yeah, you never know sometimes because women aren't out there talking about all their accomplishments, right?

Renée Amilcar: It's true.

The more bright people that I can have on my team, the better it is for me as well. So it's give and take, right? It's not only one side.

Nadine Lee: For sure. I mean, having good people working with you, I like to say that I want to be the dumbest one in the room. So I want to hire people who are way better than me.

Renée Amilcar: 100%. I'm with you on that one because when you can do that, it's because you're a leader. Because, you know, if you have people less strong than you, you will work more, right? I'm a lazy person. I don't like to work a lot.

Nadine Lee: I don’t either.

Renée Amilcar: I work a lot now because I want to be lazy later.

Nadine Lee: What, what kind of roles would you like to see more women in?

Renée Amilcar: All of them, seriously. not only head of, you know, transit or, department. All of them. I think we need this diversity and, we need, a lot of women everywhere.

Nadine Lee: Then there's, to me, a huge responsibility on the part of leaders and managers to make sure that women have everything that they need: child care, time to balance the demands of your work and your personal life. So what kinds of things do you think about when you're trying to clear paths for women?

Renée Amilcar: I'm a mom myself, my daughter, she's 22 now, so she's an adult. But my husband was very He was there for me, and it was a collaboration when we raised our daughter. It's important to have this balance and it's important to have a partner that will help you because it's a tough job.

Today, I work 90 hours per week and it's not a joke. But I love what I'm doing for sure because I'm very involved on the UITP and I'm doing that with my extra time that I don't have, really.

But that brings a lot of joy for me because every single day I say, Hey, I do something for someone. I took a decision that will impact positively someone. So it's, it's amazing, you know. And so I think the reality and women need to know that as well, is it's not a nine to five job.

If you want to be this leader, if you want to be the head of transit, if you want to be involved everywhere, so you will be, uh, very, very updated on everything, you need to put that effort in and you need to put time.

Sometimes, you know, I miss my friends because I have a lot of friends but I don't have time for them.

And, I used to say to my husband, when we go on vacation, you know, people come easily and exchange numbers.

I said, I don't want to do that anymore because I don't even have time to take care of my friends. I don't want to augment my, you know, uh, the number of friends that I have because ..

So this is a reality and women need to know that. And maybe it's easier for men. And we have to continue to take care of our house, take care of our partner, take care of our family, et cetera. So, it's a tough job.

But, uh, if the woman has this passion, if they want to do something to change the world, to impact people daily, this is a very, very, very good job and I don't want to be anything else.

Nadine Lee: Yeah, I'm the same way. It's so funny because people who are in transit are really into transit, right? We're all total geeks. I feel lucky to be in an industry where people are so passionate about what they do.

Renée Amilcar: Yes. And we need to accept, sometimes they will say, no, it's not for me. I really accept that. I'm sad when I see that, but it's okay.

First and foremost, we need to make sure that we open that discussion, and we need to tell them the truth. As I said, it's not all women who can work 90 hours per week, you know.

And my own daughter, she said to me once, when she was a little girl, she said, I will never be an engineer because I don't want to work like that, like you, mom. I

said, it's not all engineers who will work like that. And today she studies cell biology. It's a crazy field.

I could not do her job for sure, but this is a brain and I think I inspired her even if she didn't want to be me. So that made me sad at the time, but I think we have to tell the truth. We have to say, okay, if you want to be me tomorrow, there is some sacrifice that you have to do.

And I think it's just, it's respectful to tell the truth and to respect when it's the right moment.

Nadine Lee: Tell me about your, How you got to this career. You're an engineer, which I am too, which is really exciting because we don't often see that many engineers who are at the CEO level.

Did you ride public transit as a child? And, um, what kind of memories do you have of that?

Renée Amilcar: So, I used to take buses to go to school and to go to see my friends. But for me at that time, public transport was a bus with a bus driver. That's it.

I didn't know all the logistics behind that. And then I became an engineer. So I worked in telecommunications for Nortel Networks and before it was for Pratt & Whitney, Canada. So when I gave birth, I decided to do my masters. And at that time I said, “Okay. What I want to do because now I'm a mom?” I felt myself more responsible and I said what I can do to help people, what I can do to give back what the society gave me? And this is where I landed at STM as an engineer because my daughter was six months old at that time.

I had a lot of experience in managing but I said I don't want to manage because I know me. I'm going to do a lot of hours and I don't want to and I want to be with my daughter and so I accepted this role in the engineering department but six months later I was a manager because you know … So I started my career at transit like that, and I rose ranks very quickly, and now it's here I am, General Manager of OC Transpo in Ottawa, which is the capital.

It's very significant, you know, because we have a lot of tourists and we have to be perfect. But we're not perfect, unfortunately, but we're working on being perfect.

Nadine Lee: Yeah. I love to ask people what they love about their own transit system. And as a general manager, there must be something that you're super proud of with the Ottawa system. So what would you say about your transit system that you would want everybody to know?

Renée Amilcar: Moving people from point A to B. Can you imagine moving people? I'm in charge of that. I'm so proud of that.

And uh, I'm a fan of customer experience. So I listen to them a lot and I'm trying daily to do better because they need that, they want that, and they deserve that. So I'm so proud to say daily I can make a difference in their life and facilitate their movement.

Nadine Lee: Yeah, that's wonderful. As the president of UITP, you have a very extensive reach in the whole public transport industry now. So what are the top things that you would want to change about public transport or fix about public transport in the global industry?

Renée Amilcar: It's another good question at the end because the funding it's one of the things that we absolutely need to have better funding. I'm sad because I'm in charge of transit in Ottawa. I'm the president of the UATB But I had to cut services.

So, I would love to be able to find a way. That said, we have to do our job as well, as leaders on transit. We have to be able to review how we do things.

We have to, to try to do more with less by being efficient. We don't want to burn out people, but we can be better. And one of my employees came and say, Yeah, Renée, we need more people to do something. I always say, Okay, have you tried to do something differently so you don't need more people?

So I think it's important. And we need to advocate more. You know, Nadine, that I had this opportunity this April to go to the UN and talk about transit. We need to talk about transit.

The more we can talk about transit, the better it is. That will become something so common. It's like breathing, you know, you don't need to think about breathing.

You just breathe. So that will become this cool thing that we don't need necessarily to fight for. Yeah.

Nadine Lee: Yeah, that's so true. I can't even add on to that really, but just ditto.

My last question is, you're now the general manager at, in Ottawa and you're the president of UITP, so you're already at this very high level in your career. Where do you hope to go next?

What do you hope to achieve, in your next step someday?

Renée Amilcar: Oh my gosh. This is a great question again.

Seriously, I don't know. But if I can continue to work in that sector, I would be I will be very happy.

I think we can continue to improve things in Ottawa. And if it's not in Ottawa that can be somewhere else for sure.

But I miss my family. I want to spend a lot of time with my husband, Patrick. He's fantastic, he's so patient with me. I don't want to get divorced.

I want to spend my time as well with my daughter because now she's 22. She has a boyfriend, you know.

I have an apartment in Ottawa, and during the weekdays I'm there, and during the weekend I'm in Montreal with them, and I can see that her transforming. I want to witness that. So, maybe, in a couple of years, I would like to slow down a little bit.

If I can do 60 hours instead of 95, I would appreciate that.

Nadine Lee: Yeah. Well, Renée Amilcar, thank you so much for joining us on Mobility in Motion. It's really been such a pleasure to talk to you and get to know you better. And I'm looking forward to continuing our work together for UITP.

Renée Amilcar: Thank you, Nadine, for having me. It was a great session.

Nadine Lee: Thank you. That was Renee Amilcar, the General Manager of OC Transpo in Ottawa, Canada and president of the UITP, the International Association of Public Transport

You’re listening to Mobility in Motion, I’m your host Nadine Lee. We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected].

This episode was produced by The Glue and Neille Ilel, edited by Jim Gates with music by B.C. Campbell.

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