Laura Fillault was elected to Position 7 on The Woodlands board of directors in November. She has lived in The Woodlands since 2012 and took part in community activism before joining the board. Fillault grew up in Lake Jackson and earned her industrial engineering degree from Texas A&M University. She went to work as a business process design consultant for Perot Systems and Anderson Consulting. After traveling for most of her career, Fillault moved to Paris after getting married, where she lived for three years before returning to the Greater Houston area.

How did you get involved in politics?

I realized how important it was when none of the friends I was making knew [candidate] names or what they did. I became obsessed with the idea that everyone needed to become involved locally, so I did. I got to know Steve Toth, and he tapped me in early 2014 and said, ‘You’re going to be my campaign manager for my [state] Senate campaign.’ I did that and learned so much about state-level politics and the issues we have going on, and I met more people and learned how a campaign runs.

At the beginning of 2015 when the county bond list came out, [township director] Gordy Bunch brought it to our attention to understand why the [Woodlands Parkway] extension in particular, wasn’t going to be a good deal for The Woodlands. I treated it like a project: learned as much as I could, studied the studies, got involved with forums and talked to people. I had been paying attention to township politics, and I had gone to Commissioners Court asking them to take the extension off and said we would give them the rest of the bond—we meaning me as a citizen saying I will lobby [for the bond] if you give us this—and they didn’t. So I went to the next township meeting and told them the same thing, because in our board mission statement one of the lines essentially says [directors] are the local representatives for our constituents. I wanted to see the board come out publicly against the bond, which was detrimental to our community. I got frustrated, and I’m one of those people who says, ‘Someone should do something and you are somebody,’ so I decided I would consider running.

I got counsel from people to see if it was a fool’s errand and to make sure I was not being rash. I wanted to approach it in a logical, reasonable manner. Then we had the campaign, which was much like every campaign that has probably ever existed. I would hear at forums that myself, John [McMullan] and Matthew [Burton] ran as a slate, but we didn’t. We had met a couple times to talk about how we were running our campaigns, but there wasn’t this massive coordination effort. The fact that the Texas Patriots PAC and the Montgomery County Tea Party chose us was their choice. It could have very easily gone a different way.

What is your main priority now that you are in office?

My main priority is to encourage people to get involved in what’s going on with the board. It doesn’t have to be in-depth knowledge, but when I say, ‘cultural arts center,’ they know that’s even being discussed. I want [residents] to be engaged enough to contact us, the directors, and ask questions. I would love to have that happen before the meetings. If people are paying attention at all, usually they’re reading about it in our local media after it gets passed or happens. I want to try and get people to pay attention to what happens before we vote on things. I would like to see more public input.

How have you handled coming on to what many have referred to as a divided board?

My hope would be that because of the nature of our board—since we’re nonpartisan and we’re at large positions—every director comes in with a mindset to represent all of The Woodlands. I think in the past there has been the perception—and sometimes it has been justified—that certain groups or certain people and their interests were represented ahead of the whole Woodlands.

How should the township manage growth in the coming years?

We’re not a city, so we’re going to be behind the curve. The developers will continue to develop, and we have to manage the impact of that development. I think our biggest challenge is going to be helping people adapt to changes in traffic patterns. I’m sure when people moved here 20 years ago traffic now is nothing like it was back then. This is why I’m still very against any kind of Woodlands Parkway extension—you can’t build your way out of traffic. It’s called induced demand. When you build a road, at first people don’t take it and then more and more people find it and come. Part of the reason people pay more to live [in The Woodlands] is because we have a fairly high standard of living. That is why it’s important for property taxes to be spent wisely and on things that benefit 100 percent of the community.

What else would you like people to know about you?

I welcome their feedback. If I’m going to represent people, I have to be willing to be yelled at nicely. Sometimes I see people get frustrated with their elected officials and rather than approaching them, they write a letter to the editor. That’s one way, but call me first if you have a problem with something going on in the township. I’ll talk to you. You might not like the answer, but that’s what we’re here for. Ninety percent of my job should be hearing what our residents want and seeing if and how we can make that happen.