Jolene Yates can pinpoint the moment she began to fall in love with transportation. As a 5-year-old, she was wonderstruck by the cutting-edge tech at the 1986 world’s fair that her family visited in Vancouver, the city where she grew up. The expo featured a sleek, fully-automated elevated rail system that became the basis of Vancouver’s iconic SkyTrain.
“It felt so new age-y,” said Yates, 44. “That was the first I remember being in awe of this major infrastructure that impacted people’s lives and how excited they were.”
That zeal for optimizing public space to improve the lives of others followed Yates into college and is what led her to a career at the Chelsea-based Sam Schwartz Engineering firm, where she consulted on transportation and streetscape projects in the region and across the country for more than eight years.
“I think I didn’t even realize I was kind of missing this until I got this job,” said Yates. “The thing about being a consultant is that you’re always recommending these solutions to people, but you don’t get to make the decision on whether or not it gets implemented.”
At the World Trade Center’s 16-acre campus, Yates is the one steering the ship.
She coordinates between the immense mix of retail and office entities that work with the Port Authority to operate the World Trade Center’s 16-acre site, and ensures their joint customers have a smooth experience. The complex’s network of towers employs over 13,000 office workers at top companies, including Morgan Stanley, advertising firm GroupM and media group Condé Nast. On the retail side, Yates is regularly coordinating with Australian-headquartered Westfield, which oversees the center’s retail.
The Oculus — a $4 billion transit hub and mall with more than 100 storefronts that over 200,000 commuters pass through each day — is perhaps where Yate’s impact is most visible. Her ethos is simple: make the site more of a community destination. Among those efforts are hosting screenings of major sporting events, such as the Yankees’ World Series games last October, a farmers market each Tuesday and a pop-up of the popular Smorgasburg food market every Friday, from April through October.
Another way is by making it easier to navigate the labyrinthine World Trade Center. Last year Yates and her team launched a pilot program in which they set up QR codes throughout the Oculus. When visitors scan the codes, user-friendly maps with specific directions and photographs pop up to help them navigate. The program in early April snagged gold in the CMSWire IMPACT Awards, a prestigious annual award for customer experiences.
“Pilot is my favorite word,” said Yates. “I’m very much a do-by-trying person.”
The Financial District is also home for Yates, and in combination with her work, she has become a wholehearted booster of Lower Manhattan. She’s on the board of directors at the Downtown Alliance, the local business improvement district, and of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, an arts group.
“It’s like an extension of my work at the World Trade Center — it’s place making,” she said. “It’s really neat to see downtown going from this sort of one-note, 9-to-5, Monday-through-Friday kind of place to being a real neighborhood.”
