Kathleen Linehan
Respecting Diverse Voices in Design
Kathleen grew up as a middle child in a large family. The family was like its own community, with a full ski squad and two basketball teams. The Linehans were a strong presence in their small town in Central Vermont. Everyone was welcome in their house and after school it was the hang-out for neighbors. Her dad worked in HR for the Army Corps of Engineers while her mom volunteered for everything, ran the town newspaper and started a nonprofit to care for neighbors in need.
Growing up in a large family also meant she had to listen to, wrestle with and settle disagreements with other siblings. Every Linehan came with a different opinion and perspective. That knack for listening and respecting diversity would come in handy for Kathleen later in contentious public meetings.
All of the sporting competitions growing up shaped her worldview too. She won a basketball scholarship to St. Mary’s College and spent winters skiing like crazy. Winning in sports takes a lot of learning from failure. When she took her own kids to ski when they were little, she’d ask at the end of the day how many times they fell. Saying they didn’t fall wasn’t acceptable. It meant they weren’t trying hard enough. If they fell, it showed they were pushing themselves and trying new things.
But Kathleen walked away from her basketball college career, transferring to Marquette to focus on engineering. She wanted something more academic and tested well in math. She started in accounting, which was too much of bore. Engineering was far more enticing—you use critical thinking and creativity to get a solution.
Her first gig was at the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in the mid-1990s, which moved her around the country inspecting, designing and building bridges. In California, she worked on seismic retrofits after the 1989 earthquake, including the infamous Oakland Bay bridge that had collapsed. It was truly cutting-edge engineering. Then she did short FHWA tours in Alabama, Texas and Idaho (where she bunked in a hunting cabin) before settling in Denver for several years, helping to complete the rugged elevated Glenwood Canyon viaduct section of I-70.
Kathleen made her way to the District in 1998 as the bridge engineer for the FHWA DC Division Office. It was the tail end of the Mayor Barry years, just as the city was about to enter a period of reform. When Mayor Williams took over, Kathleen joined his forces at DDOT. He had a vision that would take 20 years of work to transform what is today Navy Yard and the South Capitol Riverfront under the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative. She was in charge of planning for the S. Capitol Street bridge, the 11th Street bridge and all the early transportation planning around what’s now the Wharf.
She had to bring her community outreach skills to bear. She and her team held years of public meetings with communities near where Nat’s Stadium would go and along MLK Avenue. There were times when meetings got contentious. It was a difficult dialogue because there was such a lack of trust between the local community and DDOT. It took patience and careful listening. Kathleen figured out that you had to fix the stop sign and speed bumps before anyone wanted to hear about a bridge. Many were excited about the idea of revitalization but suspected they’d be excluded from the upside.
As Chief Engineer, she left the DDOT in 2009 to move into the private sector to work on transportation projects all over the Mid-Atlantic.
She’s since moved onto to lead Alpha Corporation, where she’s President. Alpha may not lead as many mega projects, but it handles complex, sophisticated and interesting ones like modernizing the Washington Monument with a new elevator and security entrance or refurbishing the Wolf Trap amphitheater with a new skin. It’s also managed the construction of the new terminal at DCA.
Kathleen knows in painstaking detail the time and sweat it takes to revitalize public infrastructure within a closely knit community. Now at the peak of her career, she can look back and see the change she started turn into real-life, built things—and see how the community around them has benefited.
She remembers when Nat’s Stadium opened. Crowds of people were milling about in the streets, celebrating the neighborhood’s new monumental centerpiece. In the crowd were a couple of ANC Commissioners who had scoffed at the idea of the stadium in meeting after meeting. They could now see their community would benefit. They gave her a big appreciative hug.
