Gutierrez, Sally
Sally Gutierrez
Sally Gutierrez has returned to the Office of Research and Development as Senior Advisor to the Director of the Center for Environmental Solutions and Emergency Response. In her recent role as Acting Director of Water Permits Division at USEPA, she led the largest environmental permitting program, covering over 800,000 wastewater facilities in the U.S. Prior to this, Gutierrez directed the Environmental Technology Innovation Cluster Development and Support Program, fostering partnerships for environmental protection and economic development. With a background in hydrology, she has served in various leadership roles at EPA for over 20 years, including as the Director of the National Risk Management Research Laboratory. Gutierrez made history in 2000 as the first Hispanic woman career Senior Executive Service member hired by EPA.
“This is some of the most rewarding work… In this work, you can exercise so much creativity. People need you, and it doesn’t matter what aspect of the field you work in.” Sally Gutierrez, 2005.
Lin, N., Servetas, S., Jackson, S., Lippa, K., Parratt, K., Mattson, P., … & Wright, S. 2022. Report on the DHS/NIST Workshop on Standards for an Enduring Capability in Wastewater Surveillance for Public Health (SWWS Workshop). In NIST Special Publication. National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Wood, A. R., Harten, T., & Gutierrez, S. C. 2018. Approaches to identifying the emerging innovative water technology industry in the United States. Journal‐American Water Works Association, 110(5), E11-E21.
Gutierrez, S. C. February, 2012. Solving U.S. Water Problems through Technology Innovation. In ECS Meeting Abstracts (No. 4, p. 88). IOP Publishing.
Gutierrez, S. C. March, 2012. USEPA perspectives on water reuse research in the context of sustainable water resource management. In ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY (Vol. 243). 1155 16TH S.T., N.W., WASHINGTON, DC 20036 USA: AMER CHEMICAL SOC.
Sally Gutierrez was born in Houston, Texas, on December 19, 1956. She grew up the middle child of Mary Carmona, a homemaker, and Donaciano Carmona, a truck driver and welder. Gutierrez has two brothers and two sisters. Her parents were immigrants from Mexico, motivated to move to the United States partly because they lost a child to contaminated drinking water.
In 1980, Gutierrez received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Houston. She then obtained her Master of Science from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston in 1990. She has had a strong interest in science since high school. As she got older, her studies in environmental science fueled that interest. Once she started her master’s degree, she was sure that environmental work was what she wanted to do.
Reflecting on how her upbringing has influenced her career, she cites an instance when her mother brought lead into the house without being aware of the impacts it might have had on the family. This and the stories her dad told from living in Mexico influenced Gutierrez. She now thinks about the health hazards families are exposed to because of their limited economic means. Workers are exposed to occupational hazards because they are not always aware that the products they use can harm them and their families. Gutierrez’s personal experiences and the experiences of others in similar circumstances highlight the importance of her work. It is known that lead is poisonous and that children are particularly vulnerable to it. She wants to educate people about ways of keeping their families safe.
Gutierrez’s first job was as a sanitarian with the Houston Health Department, where she inspected food establishments for safety compliance. Support can be helpful when pursuing a career or education in any field. However, the lack of respect in the workplace can often be upsetting and difficult. Gutierrez knows this from experience. One of the most challenging periods of Gutierrez’s career was working for the Texas Department of Health with a supervisor who believed that women were less competent than men. Finding it difficult to work in this type of environment, she left the job. Despite this difficult situation, she found other positions where her competence was appreciated and not questioned.
Although Gutierrez has had many successes throughout her career, she says that one of her most significant achievements was being elected president of the Texas Environmental Health Association in 1995 by the association’s members. The governor of Texas also recognized Gutierrez for her work along the Texas/Mexico border trying to bring safe water to the colonias. Colonias are poor communities with inadequate water infrastructure where people are sometimes forced to get water out of ditches.
The highlight of Gutierrez’s career was being hired as the Water Supply and Resources Division Director. She is proud to be the first woman to lead this group and the first Hispanic person in a senior executive service position in the thirty-year history of the EPA. Since her hiring, more women and Hispanics have been hired due partly to the barriers she has broken.
Gutierrez spent eight years as the Director of the National Risk Management Research Laboratory in Cincinnati, Ohio, conducting crucial research for policy and regulatory development at U.S. EPA. Then, Gutierrez directed the EPA’s Environmental Technology Innovation Cluster Development and Support Program, focusing on environmental protection and economic development through public-private partnerships. She directed Confluence, a collaboration between Dayton, Cincinnati, and Northern Kentucky, to research water quality and innovation. Guiterrez strives to make Cinncinatti a global hub for such work.
She served as the Acting Director of Water Permits Division in the Office of Wastewater Management at U.S. EPA in Washington, DC, overseeing the most extensive environmental permitting program covering 800,000 wastewater facilities in the U.S. She also managed a national research lab of six divisions with over 350-research scientists focused on finding technologies and methods to control contaminants in the environment. Recently, she assumed the Office of Research and Development role as Senior Advisor to the Center for Environmental Solutions and Emergency Response Director.
Gutierrez continues to work in the environmental field because she believes that her work is vital to people in this country. She believes that there is nothing more important than the work that she does to protect drinking water.
“We take for granted the water that we drink but lots of background work and research is done to ensure that it’s safe. The work that many scientists in the laboratories are doing to solve air pollution problems… and things of that nature are all important. The work that’s done in these public agencies is essential to the health of the public at large” (Taylor, 2005).
Gutierrez finds her work exciting, and she is happy to be able to make a difference. Gutierrez is a phenomenal person and a great inspiration.
In addition to a lot of hard work, Gutierrez attributes her advancement mainly to the people in her career who have given her opportunities. Many individuals have supported her as she climbed the career ladder. She says that her mentors were all in supervisory positions. Those same people continue to advise and mentor her to this day. One of the people Gutierrez admires most is Ken Petersen. He was her supervisor at the Houston Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. Gutierrez recalls how Petersen believed in her and gave her many opportunities and words of encouragement.
Mark Lowry was another one of her influential mentors earlier in her career. Lowry was an engineer at that time and very supportive of her. He always let her know that she could succeed in attaining her goals.
One of Gutierrez’s main goals is to increase the diversity in her field. To support this effort, she forged relationships with New Mexico State University and the University of Puerto Rico, where minority faculty and students come to work with scientists in her unit. Although she has a personal interest in promoting the advancement of Hispanics, she also works with historically Black colleges to enhance all aspects of diversity. Now established in her career, she extends the same guidance that was graciously extended to her. She works with students and young scientists to help them advance their careers. Gutierrez believes it is important for the people she mentors to always stay focused and clear about where they want to go in their respective careers. She works with them to identify where there may be gaps in their work experiences and training and then helps them forge a path to develop those skills so that they will be in a better position when job opportunities arise.
Gutierrez encourages minorities to consider a career in the environmental field because she believes they will find it a very rewarding field. “They have an opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives every day. In this work, you can exercise so much creativity. People need you, and it doesn’t matter what aspect you work in. There is so much that can be done in a wide variety of ways when doing environmental protection work. The field is so broad, and it’s advancing. The EPA has been around for thirty years, and we’ve done good work, but a lot of problems are still complex, and so many of our prevention programs are still works in progress. However, they are exciting and very much needed in this day and age” (Taylor, 2005).
More Water Less Concentrate. 2021. Sally Gutierrez. https://www.morewaterlessconcentrate.org/evaluation-panel/sally-gutierrez
Taylor, Dorceta (Ed.). 2005. The Paths We Thread: Profiles of the Careers of Minority Environmental Professionals. Minority Environmental Leadership Development Initiative, University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment.