Jones said she began working for the city of Tomball in 2016. Previously, she worked as a licensed home inspector, lived abroad in Dubai, taught engineering courses at Tarleton State University, and served as environmental compliance officer and director of wastewater for the city of New Iberia, Louisiana.
As public works director, Jones said she oversees a group of about 50 employees.
Jones also has two children, Jacob and Juliet, who were born in Dubai.
“The big picture is I love the people here and the work that I do,” Jones said. “That’s a big deal because not everybody has that. I consider myself very fortunate.”
How did you get to Tomball?
My background is civil engineering. I came to Houston when I went to Rice [University], and kind of lived all over the South generally after that. After I graduated, I got my master’s [degree] at night and worked in engineering consulting. Then my husband and I moved to Louisiana for his job, and that’s where I started working for municipal government. The town of New Iberia is where Tabasco [sauce] is made, and sure enough I ended up working for New Iberia. … I was their environmental compliance officer and then their director of wastewater, and it was a neat experience. … When we moved back [from Dubai a few years later], we always knew we were coming back to Houston.
I always knew that I wanted to be back in municipal government. I had the royal sampler of different jobs, all engineering-related but very different. I knew that I liked government. I knew that generally it’s better hours, but I like what you do when you work for a government. I feel the impact of what I’m doing—that I truly feel like I’m helping and I’m making a difference. A do-gooder at heart, I always wanted to put together a job that I was paid to do good and to make a difference, and I knew that in government, I could. I kind of just started browsing to see what was out there, and sure enough, what falls into my lap is the city engineer position here at Tomball.
What drew you to engineering?
I always knew what I wanted to do. I was very good at math and science, and my dad’s an engineer, which statistically speaking, most women who go into engineering have a male family member who is an engineer. … I was a Girl Scout, so I did a lot of environmental projects [and] camping. … I wanted to focus on environmental engineering, so when I went to Rice, I started off in chemical engineering. … It was really hard because I knew where I wanted to end up—I knew that I wanted to do environmental engineering, and I had been exposed enough to it that I really did have an honest idea of what it was. But I didn’t know how to get there. … So I ended up doing it through civil [engineering].
What attracted you to public works?
As city engineer, I was able to work with public works a lot, even though city engineering in general is through community development, but it’s citywide engineering. You’re supporting the city with engineering, so a lot of it is private development and plan review, but public works has a lot of engineering support needs. ... I was able to work with public works and with David [Esquivel] and kind of get a good view of it. I already knew generally what happened because of my [former] role as director of wastewater, but every city does it differently, and it was neat to get that view before being in the trenches.
You see how [the work] applies, and the interest is there for me. Do I necessarily want to design highways? No … but I like the day-to-day maintenance, operations [and] overall master planning. That’s the stuff that I really enjoy and coming up with a plan. It’s amazing how much kind of fits into public works. The big ones—streets and drainage, parks and utilities—you just think of that as public works. Well, guess what? It’s also our garage, fleet maintenance, facility maintenance and kind of those ‘other duties as assigned,’ [like] capital improvement projects. It’s a whole bunch wrapped into just public works.
What does a typical day look like as director of public works?
I see my role as truly a facilitator. The guys out in the field are doing the day-to-day tasks of public works, and my role is to help them get it done and to remove any roadblocks in the way, whether that is budgeting, funding, staffing [or] doing master plans to help come up with the big picture ... and examining why we do things, how we do things, [how we] can we do it better, [how we] can we do it more efficiently, and [how we can] provide a better product to the city. Some days I feel like it’s high-level thinking, and some days it’s down-in-the-trenches stuff.
What is ahead for the public works department in Tomball?
I think constant innovation. That’s definitely a goal. But overall, we’re going to really be looking at our parks to update them, to improve them and have a plan. It’s awful hard to meet expectations when you don’t know what expectations are. It’s hard to budget for things if you’re always putting out fires … we have a water master plan, we have a wastewater master plan, [and] we need a facilities master plan. … If you have these plans, especially with facilities and parks, you can [budget better]. There’s potentially big, big purchases, but when you know that, you can plan for it. You don’t have to fund it all in one year.
What is your favorite part of the job?
I love being able to encounter so many people, and it’s funny that I say that, because I’m a natural introvert, as most engineers are. But it’s an opportunity to meet so many amazing people. … People in Tomball are truly kind and generous, and if we slow down long enough, we get to see that. So getting out of the office and going to check out jobs and striking up a conversation with the homeowner or business owner who’s close by, it’s nice. I wouldn’t think that would be my answer, because I do love data and calculations, but for me, evolving into this role has been nice. It’s kind of been an opportunity for me to stretch my legs. I definitely feel challenged by leadership to be the best I can be. I consider myself very fortunate for this opportunity.
