The Mat-Su Borough recently hired two new departmental directors, Shaune O'Neil in public works and Christine Nelson in planning, to replace directors Keith Rountree

and Mark Mayo, both of whom retired this fall.

O'Neil is the borough's first female to lead the Public Works Department.

Nelson, a former planner and recently city manager in Oregon, faces a different attitude toward planning here.

Both women said they are looking forward to learning about their new community and their new place within it.

Below are excerpts from our interviews with O'Neil and Nelson.

Shaune O'Neil

Title: Mat-Su Borough Public Works Director

Age: 47

Education: Michigan Tech University, environmental engineering

Previous work

"I've done everything from accounting to project management and bridge construction." Most jobs were in Fairbanks and Prudhoe Bay, and at the missile defense site at Fort Greely. She previously owned GBC Inc., a general contracting company.

Projects you may have heard about: "I did quite a bit of work as a contractor on the missile defense site at Fort Greely. We remodeled the library in Fairbanks. My recent work was on Elmendorf with the F-22 projects -- I worked with Bristol (Environmental and Engineering Services Corp.) for a year on that."

Job duties at the borough

"I have three divisions: Solid waste, operations and maintenance and project management/engineering. Those three areas do very different things."

Projects she's excited about

"The new barge dock expansion (at Port MacKenzie) is out for bid. That one will be very exciting for me. And we have several more schools coming up. If we follow the prototype of the Machetanz (Elementary) building, it's going to be very fun to build."

On being a woman in a male-dominated field

"I have had to overcome things -- from one of my first engineering professors saying women don't belong in engineering. I have banged my head against the ceiling a lot to get where I am.

"One of the more inspirational bosses I had was at the Fairbanks North Star Borough, where I was a project manager. He was an old boy from Oklahoma. (While talking in his office once) he said 'I hired you because you're a woman.' I thought, 'Oh boy, here we go again.' He said 'No, you worked twice as hard to get to where you are today, and I expect you'll work twice as hard for me.' I did.

"I accept that I'm working in a male-dominated field. And despite my 'shortcomings' in that field -- I use that word facetiously -- I try not to buck the system but to work with the system."

Christine Nelson

Title: Mat-Su Borough Planning Director

Age: 49

Education: Bachelor's degree in sociology from Montana State University, regional planning degree from Eastern Washington University, master's in public administration from University of Washington

Previous work

"Most recently I worked for a brand new city, La Pine in central Oregon, south of Bend. They were in Deschutes County, which includes Bend. They tried to incorporate three or four times previously. They wanted local representation for their issues. Finally they drew the boundaries small enough that they were able to get an approval vote. It's about 1,600 in population now.

"I was their first city manager - they incorporated in 2007. I was also acting as planning manager and economic development director - there were only two staff. (Previous to that) I've been a land-use planner, a supervising planner and I managed a permit center."

Job duties at the borough

"I manage the planning department, which has three divisions: Platting and subdivisions; code compliance, which responds to citizen complaints and handles land-use activity; and there's also the planning department."

Projects she's excited about

"I went to the tower working group today - towers and view sheds are always controversial. (Towers refers to communications towers - for cell phones and emergency radios, for example. View sheds are panoramic views of the area, which people might say are disrupted by towers.) This is a working group of industry representatives and the borough and the public. They're trying to create an ordinance that meets everybody's needs.

"And gravel mining, we're looking at the environmental issues as well as resource availability issues. It's a big impact not only to the community but also to those people who use the resources. Rock is necessary for all the things we want to build.

"And the zoning and subdivision codes, those are critical to the function of land-use planning. Those are the foundation documents on which every community is built."

On her approach to zoning in Mat-Su, where residents tend to be reluctant to see new land-use rules

"Planning and zoning are meant to be a participatory process. The more people get involved, the better those documents suit them and their community. Growth pushes that - but it's the community that needs to be vocal about what they want and what they need.

"Eventually those people who don't want to be impacted by their neighbors come forth and say, 'We need help with this.' Hopefully here, we can work incrementally enough that we make the necessary changes (to make the process work best) along the way."