Eva Reid \u201996, senior IT data manager and agency data officer for DC Health, the District of Columbia\u2019s health department, describes her role as both strategic and practical. With millions of labs coming in each day on reportable diseases, Reid\u2019s team ensures that the data can be properly submitted and maintained, analyzed, and then shared with epidemiologists and others for public outreach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But there is much more to Reid. After Macalester, she earned a master\u2019s of public administration from Arizona State University, and she has thirty years of experience in geospatial technology and data management. Prior to her current role, the entrepreneurial geography major was a senior GIS analyst with the Office of the Chief Technology Officer in DC for fourteen years. (Geographic information systems are computer-based tools used to store, visualize, analyze, and interpret geographic data.) She\u2019s also owner and CEO of Eva Reid Consulting, LLC\u2014which provides professional development workshops and career coaching for women in tech and other fields where women are underrepresented\u2014as well as a keynote speaker, a writer, a certified yoga instructor, and an avid kayaker. Here Reid draws on lessons learned from all spheres of her life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier in my career I knew there were other women doing technology work, but I wasn\u2019t seeing them because they weren\u2019t in my office, or they were on another floor, or in another agency. I started hosting happy hours for women in tech to meet. I already had a side business doing wellness support for women, and a lot of my clients were women in fields where women are underrepresented. That ended up morphing into what my consulting business is now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I just finished reading, for the second time, a book called Brag Better: Master the Art of Fearless Self-Promotion <\/i>by Meredith Fineman. I\u2019ve had to train myself to put myself forward and tell people why they should care what I have to say. In my previous job I managed a big citywide project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the final report was released, there was no mention of my name. Two things could have happened. Former Eva would\u2019ve said, \u201cOkay, whatever,\u201d and been mad about it, but just let it go. More recent Eva decided that I had to say something. I took the report to my boss, and I said, \u201cThis is not okay.\u201d Speak up for yourself, number one. Number two: do a better job of not necessarily bragging\u2014but bragging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have this tagline and hashtag that I use on LinkedIn a lot called Building Community That Matters. It\u2019s the name of a workshop that I did, but it\u2019s also a philosophy. I\u2019m not just connecting so that I can get the next greatest thing or the next greatest job. I\u2019m building a network because that is my community. I\u2019m extremely passionate about creating that network and using it for good. I don\u2019t see how as human beings we can do our business without it. It\u2019s all the same, whether you\u2019re looking for an electrician or looking for data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wasn\u2019t good at kayaking right away. I really enjoy it, but there are some things I\u2019m not great at. I wasn\u2019t the best in my class, and I wasn\u2019t the success that I can see in other parts of my life. It was very humbling. In kayaking and in yoga, you learn from that space of not being great at something, and you just have to sit with it. I think learning humility is good for all of us at times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Saying \u201cI\u2019m good at this\u201d is not making waves. When someone says, \u201cYou\u2019re making waves,\u201d or \u201cYou\u2019re intimidating\u201d\u2014because I\u2019ve gotten that before, too\u2014that\u2019s not about me. That\u2019s them feeling uncomfortable with women speaking up for themselves. Doing that self-advocacy helps us do better in our careers because no one else is going to do it for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mac has been a very good model in a lot of ways for my own personal beliefs about community and how we build our networks. I think we have a lot in common despite our extremely different backgrounds and interests. There\u2019s this Macalester ecosystem that I cannot explain. It\u2019s been really interesting interacting with other people from my class through Facebook. I\u2019ve connected with so many people that I knew at Mac, but didn\u2019t really know at Mac.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eva Reid \u201996 is a senior IT data manager and agency data officer for DC Health, the District of Columbia\u2019s health department.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":391,"featured_media":21251,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/391"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21249"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29939,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21249\/revisions\/29939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}