When Reese Brewer attended the Freight Academy in 2012, she was a Senior Transportation Planner for the Municipality of Anchorage, Alaska. She had been tasked with being the liaison between the Anchorage freight community and the municipality, but there was just one problem. She didn’t have much experience in freight.
“I thought, I need to solve this problem fast. I need to talk with industry professionals and learn as much as I can,” she said.
After researching ways in which she could acquire the necessary skills, she found the Freight Academy and learned that there were scholarships available to attend. She spoke about it to her boss, thinking she could convince him to send her if there was a scholarship, but he saw the benefit for to attend, and made it possible for her to go.
Although it was a bit overwhelming to be one of the only planners among so many Department of Transportation safety engineers, railroad experts, and transportation experts, the relationships that were formed as a result of her time in the Freight Academy remain with her still, over 10 years later.
As senior transportation planner, it had been her responsibility to create a freight plan that examined future growth, bottlenecks caused the port’s proximity to downtown, safety, the delivery of freight, and the like. She was given a capstone project to complete, in which she and her cohort worked through such problems and received a helpful evaluation that identified challenges and offered new ideas.
“We made a presentation as we would do for the decision makers in our own agencies, so it’s very ‘real life,’” she explained. “The experience prepared me for grant writing and making presentations. We had a very successful freight advisory committee in Anchorage. We were recognized often for our accomplishments, and our work was noted as a best practice All that builds on the work I did at the Freight Academy.”
Fast forward 10 years, Reese enrolled at the University of Denver and received her master’s degree in Multimodal Transportation, which focuses on freight, the supply chain, and how those work together nationwide. She became the Director of Frontier Metropolitan Planning Organization, which impacts western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma. She brought those useful Freight Academy connections with her, continuing to turn to them for guidance and advice.
With the experience she had, and with the help of the freight industry professionals she’d met, she gained a better understanding of how to write successful grants for freight. It required a deeper knowledge of the ways the freight industry partnered with government agencies, MPOs, and private sector agencies, and together, she and her team were able to write a grant to build a slack water harbor on the Arkansas River in Van Buren, Arkansas.
“We won an $18 million grant to complete our initiative,” she said. “Having those connections and relationships that I’d found in the Freight Academy, and having those people share templates and models for me to use was a huge part of the success of winning that grant.”
Reese’s initial problem had been that she didn’t have experience in freight and needed to learn more about how to speak to professionals such as industry shippers, truckers, and other freight carriers. Through her time at the Freight Academy, she was able to gain those skills, and it positioned her well for future accomplishments.
“It wouldn’t have been possible without the Freight Academy and (Freight Program Director) Marygrace Parker. This experience gave me the foundation to learn and create those relationships. It didn’t happen overnight, but one thing builds upon the others, and you can leverage your knowledge and relationships from that course,” she said. “Completing the Freight Academy had a lot to do with me getting my current position because it added credentials and qualifications on my resume.”
