Alumni Spotlight - Mirta Reyes-Chapman

When Mirta Reyes-Chapman landed her first engineering job in the 1980s, manufacturers didn’t make steel-toed work boots in women’s sizes – and her presence on construction sites raised plenty of eyebrows among her male counterparts.

“People never saw women in the field at that time. When I said I was the construction inspector, they didn’t believe me,” she remembers with a smile. “It was new, unheard of, but I was just a person trying to do my job.”

Then a single mother and non-traditional student, Reyes-Chapman was determined to make a good living for herself and her son. She completed her BSAS degree in Civil Engineering in 1992 and has continued to blaze trails for women and Latinos over her successful, 28-year career.

Starting off as the first Hispanic female to major in Civil Engineering and minor in Mathematics at YSU, she was still a student when she became the first Hispanic female hired by the Trumbull County Sanitary Engineer’s Office in 1986. Later, she was the first Hispanic female hired by her current employer, the Eastgate Regional Council of Governments in Youngstown, and the first Hispanic female in the Northeastern states appointed an associate staff member of the Transportation Safety Institute.

Occasionally, she has encountered prejudice or bias related to her gender or ethnic background, but Reyes-Chapman has her own way of handling it. “I might be very nice to people, and sometimes kindness is seen as a sign of weakness,” she said. “But I speak up when I need to. I don’t let people step on me.”

Now, as Transit Program Manager for Eastgate, a planning agency for local governments in Mahoning, Trumbull and Ashtabula counties, she plays an essential role in improving transportation services and accessibility across the region. “Mobility is a big issue, especially for seniors and people with disabilities,” she said. “I have a passion to see that they have dependable transportation.”

Her work has even touched her alma mater – the YSU Penguin Shuttle, a campus bus service, was a project she was involved in.

Last October, Gov. John Kasich named Reyes-Chapman a Distinguished Hispanic Ohioan, recognizing her life of community service on behalf of women, Hispanics and people with disabilities. The YSU alumna was selected for the award by the Ohio Latino Affairs Commission and the Ohio State University Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

Winning such a prestigious, statewide honor was a crowning achievement for Reyes-Chapman, a daughter of Puerto Rican parents who settled and raised their family in Youngstown’s ethnic Briar Hill neighborhood. She and her three siblings met daily in the kitchen to learn English from their steelworker father, a man who valued the importance of education. “He used to tell me, ‘Open your eyes, girl, there’s a whole big world out there,’” she said.

Reyes-Chapman remembers growing up with Italian, Hungarian and Polish friends, and she learned to appreciate their foods and cultures. “I loved to watch my friends’ grandmas in the kitchen, and I learned to cook goulash, pierogies, pizzelles and pasta sauce from scratch,” she remembers. “It was an exciting time, growing up in our neighborhood, and I have so many happy memories. If you went to visit a neighbor, there was always something delicious on the stove, and you never left hungry.”

Reyes-Chapman lives in Youngstown with her husband, Ronald, also a YSU graduate, and their daughter Sierra, a student at Ursuline High School. Her son, Angelo, is a pharmacist living in Columbus.

Profile by Cynthia Hixenbaugh