So you have an annoying boss? If you only have one, maybe you’re lucky.
David Guillory, who is, as best as anyone can reckon, the youngest assistant public works director in Baton Rouge history has quite a few bosses: DPW head Pete Newkirk, Mayor Kip Holden and his top staff members and a dozen Metro Council members—not to mention more than 400,000 parish residents.
“We get blamed for anything,” Guillory says. “Somebody calls at noon and says ‘My garbage hasn’t been picked up yet today,’ I can’t call that person crazy.”
As a student, Guillory initially aspired to be a geologist. But he also had an interest in environmental issues, dating to when his attorney mother worked for the Department of Environmental Quality in the 1980s, which in turn led to an interest in civil engineering.
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“Of course, she did say, ‘There’s jobs in engineering, and you’re going to want a job one day,’” he says. “I took that to heart, too.”
One summer, he landed a last-minute internship with an engineering firm in Dallas, and he worked with a division that was working on a sewer-lift station.
“When I got back, public works was in my head,” he says.
As for all of the rumors about an impending reorganization at DPW, Guillory says they’re just rumors to him, too. But he also says that he’s always reorganizing, always looking for ways to make things better.
“I’m keeping the city of Baton Rouge moving,” he says. “It’s kind of a pie-in-the-sky way to look at it, but you have to, because you’ll never get all this stuff done. It’s impossible for me to be finished.”
He says he wants to run his operation like The Shaw Group or any other top company in the private sector.
“I like working for the city,” he says. “Some people have a misconception about city workers that they’re all lazy and watching the clock. I’d like to try and change that.”
Age: 32
If you could have any job other than your own, what would it be? “I’d like to be a jazz piano player, and not just a wannabe.”
Click here for the complete list of 2009's Forty Under 40 winners.
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Posted by huskybee on November 18, 2009 at 2:32 p.m.
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