Position: Project Manager
Employer: Wallace Montgomery
Age: 38
Lauren Good is a planner by profession, but when the coronavirus threw many conventional practices out the window she had to adapt to a new way of working.
As an urban planner and project manager for Wallace Montgomery, Good typically meets in person with local government staff, boards, commissions and members of the public. But the pandemic put such meetings on hold and forced Good to find alternatives that would allow important communication on projects to continue. So, she took several training courses on how to optimize outreach virtually, particularly with reaching underserved and environmental justice communities.
Good worked with her colleagues and Delaware Department of Transportation staff to apply for an Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA) grant from the United States Department of Transportation, which resulted in an award of approximately $57 million for the reconstruction of the Interstate 95/State Route 896 interchange in Newark to make it safer and to ease traffic congestion.
Good also worked for a period of time in Windsor, Conn., as the assistant town planner on a project for the fire marshal’s office, where she developed up-to-date maps of the town’s fire hydrants that were distributed to all emergency responders and the 9-1-1 call center. The town later awarded Good for her work after those maps were used to locate a hydrant that had been buried by a severe snowstorm. Fire officials were able to access that hydrant during a fire call and limit the damage that the fire would have caused to the property.
A native Delawarean, Good helped re-establish a Delaware chapter of WTS International, an organization that promotes the advancement of women in the transportation industry.
She also assists with homebuilding efforts through Habitat for Humanity in Delaware and Maryland, and she provided her grant writing services to small businesses after they suffered losses from a fire last year.