Paul Hamilton
Paul Hamilton got into public transit on purpose – but it wasn’t planned. 改变他职业生涯方向的时刻发生在他20岁的时候, when the Indiana University, Bloomington sophomore roamed the field house to register for the next term, 再多找一门选修课，这样就能提供足够的学分来保留他的学生贷款. 汉密尔顿发现自己排在商学院的队伍里，在周一和周三下午的会议上，他面临着一个选择:T300——交通概论. He signed up.
“I was totally open to whatever the class brought forward,” Hamilton said. “I wasn’t in it begrudgingly. And that was the class I had the most love for.”
The charismatic professor leading Hamilton’s first transportation class, George Smerk, was a respected leader in the field and a nationally known scholar, 写了一些最早的关于城市公共交通管理局的书, which later became the Federal Transit Administration. Smerk also became Hamilton’s mentor, 他说:“我的脑子里有一个想法，公共交通是我一生中可能想做的事情,” Hamilton said.
After three semesters studying transportation, Hamilton thought to himself, “there’s no way I’m going anywhere other than this industry. I like this.”
Hamilton, RTD’s senior manager of paratransit services, 他说自己是一个兴趣广泛的人，“有一些事情真正让我感兴趣。.” He speaks to going to a flea market with a friend and being told, “Paul, you bring too much stuff home. And as a farmer who has a barn and too many places to store it, I can tell you that my wife suggested long ago, pick one or two things that you really care about, and collect just those.” Hamilton thinks that’s sage advice.
Professionally, 他的兴趣包括运输(他在20世纪80年代中期进入这个行业)和食品服务. As a younger man, 汉密尔顿曾在两家大型杂货店工作，喜欢在品尝农产品时与顾客互动, a paring knife in hand. He says he would happily return to such a job in retirement.
Outside of work, 汉密尔顿一直对大幅面摄影感兴趣，并拍摄过现场音乐表演, including at South by Southwest, 国际知名的会议和节日，他志愿服务多年. He also enjoys bicycling long distances. When he arrives home, he said, “那天我脑子里没有一件不好的事情是在自行车旅行中没有解决的.”
汉密尔顿在肯塔基州长大，从小就喜欢到处旅行, with a father in the Navy who was often out at sea. Being that his parents were on a military income, he said, 他们没有很多钱可以花，但他们可以负担得起汽油和便宜的汽车旅馆. Vacations took his family on road trips all around the country, including to the Rocky Mountains and Estes Park. As a child, he said, “我不知道人们没有看到这个国家的很多地方是多么的刻板印象.”
汉密尔顿童年最美好的回忆包括在母亲准备晚餐时就各种话题与她辩论, switching sides for sport, 看着他的祖父和陌生人交谈，好像他们是亲密的朋友.
汉密尔顿说，生活经验已经证实，“我们的相似之处多于不同之处”. “如果你和人们交谈的时间足够长，你可能会发现一些你们都同意的事情. And if you can focus on those things as you converse with people, you’re always going to get along with them better.”
汉密尔顿在大学毕业后就开始了他的运输事业，当时他和妻子搬到了亚利桑那州的纳瓦霍保留地，接受了一个学生教学的任命, 作为一个成年人，他第一次带汉密尔顿来到西部，并向他展示了这个地区是多么美丽偏远. When her internship ended and they returned to Indiana, Hamilton went to work at Mayflower Transit, which moves freight all over the United States. 运送物品而不是运送人员的物流工作方式或多或少与运输公司试图建立一个固定路线的公共汽车网络，为其服务区域内的人们提供服务的方式相同, Hamilton observes.
He loved talking with the company’s drivers, one of whom tried to test the relatively new employee with “what if” questions. Hamilton turned the conversation back to the driver, asking what he would do. “And he said, ‘You know what, in all the years I’ve been moving freight, nobody’s ever asked me that,’” Hamilton recalled. “He had a great answer. 这就是重点:对他来说，有人花时间倾听是很重要的. 从我的角度来看，如果你倾听，你可能会学到比你说话更多的东西.”
汉密尔顿认为这个轶事的相关性适用于与交通机构合作的倡导团体. “We can’t solve every problem, we can’t make everybody happy all the time, but if we listen, 我们可以通过看到它们暗示的东西并实现它们来找到指向成功的机会, we can do it, and two, it will make our system better,” he said. “Three, we should probably do it.”
After working for Mayflower, Hamilton received what became a life-changing phone call from another mentor, Peter Schauer, who had led post-graduate workshops Hamilton had taken. Schauer引用了两人的一次谈话，其中汉密尔顿谈到了他对西部的热爱，并问汉密尔顿是否真的有兴趣回到这个地区. “Absolutely,” Hamilton told Schauer. “He then pushed a job description to me to go out to the Wind River reservation, which was just starting a transit system in Wyoming.” Hamilton stayed there for seven years.
Hamilton calls the work he did on the reservation the thing he is most proud of, having arrived with a draft service plan – and no buses, drivers or routes. “It was fun not only to get it up and running,” he said, “but it’s fun because I know that system survived, and it still exists there today.”
From there, Hamilton headed to Texas, where he worked for a rural transit provider surrounding Austin, 监督位于圣马科斯的德克萨斯州立大学的班车系统，管理奥斯汀首都地铁的辅助交通服务. He joined RTD in 2018 as senior manager of paratransit services, overseeing options that include Access-a-Ride, 为无法使用港铁固定路线巴士和轻轨服务的人士提供的共乘公共交通服务.
In speaking to the satisfaction he experiences doing this work, Hamilton said, “The service has always been about more than transit. 我认识的所有人，包括我自己，都在与人的日常联系中看到了这一点. We are often our customer's social lifeline as well as their transit provider.”
他认为辅助交通不仅仅是一种公民权利，他认为这是一种“涉及人的运输解决方案”.“大流行期间为Access-a-Ride客户提供杂货配送就是一个例子. 另一个是最近宣布的与优步合作的按需服务试点.
汉密尔顿说:“如果我们能为乘客提供更好的服务，我们的乘客就会更快乐。. “They’re going to love us more, they’re going to use us when they need to, 我们会更经常地帮助他们，因为我们有更多的钱来做更多的事情.”
汉密尔顿说，他的生活和工作经历表明，他是一个适应力强、善于解决问题的人. 他指出，挑战会让你变得足智多谋，并在必要时自学成才. 他曾与濒临破产的小型运输机构合作，并成功地获得了维持系统运行的资金. When the organization can stand on its own, he said, it’s satisfying: “You can point to that and say, we all helped make that happen.”
汉密尔顿指出，他的职业世界并没有走到一起——除了他注意到的一种方式. In both the transit and food service industries, he said, he has observed people playing down certain positions. “There is no such thing as ‘just a driver,’” Hamilton emphasized. “It might be the entry point, but for some smaller transit systems like the one I came from, one day you might be the manager, the next day you might be the dispatcher, the driver, the assistant mechanic.
“You do whatever is needed, because that’s what you do.”