WTS Metro Phoenix member Rachelle Giles has been named the 2026 ATHENA Young Professional Award recipient, recognizing her professional leadership, community involvement, and commitment to supporting and mentoring others. We spoke with Rachelle about the experiences that shaped her, her approach to leadership, and the advice she has for the next generation of women leaders.

1. Congratulations on receiving the ATHENA Award. What does this recognition mean to you personally and professionally?

This recognition is incredibly meaningful to me because the things ATHENA celebrates -leadership, mentorship and community service - are the things I have tried to build my career and life around. I have also been extraordinarily fortunate to have people open doors for me, trust me before I had a long résumé and give me room to learn. I don’t think you ever really repay those opportunities directly. You repay them by creating them for someone else. Being recognized in this way feels both affirming and like a responsibility to keep doing that work.

2. What first inspired you to pursue a career in public affairs and local government relations?

I actually thought I was going to be a doctor for much of my childhood. What changed my direction was getting involved in North Dakota Girls State, student government and eventually working in the Governor’s Office in my home state of North Dakota. I realized that public policy was another way to help people, just at a different scale.

From there, I had opportunities in state government, a U.S. Senate office, presidential and congressional campaigns and municipal government before joining Goodman Schwartz Public Affairs in 2013. Somewhere along the way I also figured out that I really enjoy helping people understand systems that can feel intimidating or unnecessarily complicated. That has become a through-line in almost everything I do professionally.

3. Was there a particular experience or mentor who helped shape the leader you are today?

I don’t know that I could point to one person. I have been lucky to have a whole village of people throughout my life who saw something in me, trusted me with opportunities I probably wasn’t entirely ready for and then allowed me to figure things out.

That has shaped how I think about leadership. Some of the most consequential opportunities in my career came because someone said, essentially, “I think she would be good at this.” I try to do the same thing now. I want people I mentor to know I’m there to support them, but I also think you have to give people enough room to develop their own judgment, make some mistakes and discover what kind of leader they want to be.

4. How would you describe your leadership philosophy, and how has it evolved throughout your career?

To me, leadership is providing an environment for people to do excellent work without feeling like they have to become someone else to do it. That looks very different to me now than it did early in my career. I was very buttoned- up when I was younger, took myself extremely seriously and thought professionalism meant presenting a fairly narrow version of yourself. I’m proud of what that younger version of me accomplished, but I’m probably even more proud that I’ve learned I can be excellent at what I do without sanding off my personality in the process.

Don’t get me wrong, I take my work seriously, but I also don’t think we have to take ourselves seriously all the time. I try to model that for others, encourage people to run their own race and help them become the strongest version of themselves rather than a version of me.

5. What professional achievement or community initiative are you most proud of and why?

One project I am particularly proud of was helping create a program that connected college students interested in transportation careers with industry professionals and real employment opportunities.

More than 85 percent of the students who participated ultimately secured internships or entry-level positions, and several have gone on to leadership roles of their own. What I love most about that work is that it wasn’t just about exposing students to an industry. It helped make the industry feel accessible to people who might not otherwise have known how to enter it.

Those are the projects I find most rewarding: building the bridge, but then watching people cross it and keep going.

6. What has been one of the greatest challenges in your career, and what did it teach you?

Leading the Arizona Association of Providers for People with Disabilities through COVID-19 was probably the most difficult professional experience of my career.

The state eventually began publishing graphs showing COVID cases and deaths among people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and I’m still honestly haunted by those graphs. Those numbers represented people we knew. Many people involved in AAPPD knew someone who died, including the loved ones of several of our association members. It made work that was already incredibly important feel very personal.

Our team created new communication channels with the state, helped identify policy changes that were necessary to keep essential services operating and spent an enormous amount of time getting accurate information to service providers. Years later, people still tell me I was “the voice of their pandemic.”

Leadership in a crisis isn’t about pretending you have every answer. It is about listening, bringing the right people together, and being honest and consistent enough that people can trust you while everyone works toward the answer.

7. Mentorship is a central part of the ATHENA mission. How have mentors influenced your career, and how do you support emerging women leaders?

Mentorship has influenced virtually every stage of my career. I benefited so, so much from people who invited me into rooms I didn’t yet know how to navigate and then took the time to explain how those rooms worked.

I try to be very practical about doing that for younger women now. Yes, I want to teach them the technical parts of the work, but I also want to talk about the things nobody puts in a job description: how to recover after making a mistake, how to read a room, how to deliver bad news, how to handle a difficult personality and how to build professional relationships safely and without losing your own personality.

I also think good mentorship eventually requires getting out of the way. At some point, you have to let someone own the meeting, make the decision or take the visible role and know you are there if they need you.

8. What can organizations do to create more meaningful leadership opportunities for women?

Give women real responsibility. Mentorship matters, but organizations also have to move beyond advice and create opportunities for women to lead something consequential. Invite them into the meeting, give them ownership of the project, put them in front of the client, let them make and own decisions and give them candid feedback afterward.

I also think sponsorship is incredibly important. Sometimes the most meaningful thing a senior leader can do happens when the younger professional isn’t even in the room: recommend her for an opportunity, say her name when someone is looking for a leader or make sure her work is visible.

And when you bring someone into an unfamiliar environment, explain the unwritten rules. Access is much more impactful when people also have the information they need to succeed once they get there.

9. How do you balance professional responsibilities, community involvement, and personal priorities?

I’m increasingly skeptical of the idea that some ideal balance exists. I think everyone is different, life has seasons - sometimes work needs more of you, sometimes family does and sometimes you need to acknowledge that you are the thing that needs attention.

That is something I understand much better now than I did earlier in my career. I still work hard and tend to say yes to things I care about, but I am much more conscious of whether the pace is sustainable. I make time for the things that bring me back to myself: my husband and friends, my dogs, travel, hiking, camping, volunteering, thrifting and generally getting outside whenever I can.

I don’t always get the balance exactly right, but I am much, much better at recognizing when something needs to change.

10. What advice would you give young professionals who want to become more involved in public service or civic leadership?

Start showing up before you feel completely qualified to be there.

Go to the meeting. Join the committee. Volunteer for something. Attend a city council meeting. Ask someone whose work interests you if they will have coffee (and don’t be discouraged if they decline). Learn how your community actually makes decisions and who is doing the work behind the scenes.

I would also encourage people not to think civic leadership has to mean running for. Communities need people serving on boards and commissions, volunteering with nonprofits, mentoring young people, participating in neighborhood organizations and simply being informed and engaged citizens.

You do not have to know exactly where you want to end up before you begin. A lot of my own career came from saying yes to an opportunity, doing the work well anddiscovering that it led somewhere I never would have planned.

11. What do you hope to accomplish next, and what kind of impact do you want your leadership to have on the community?

At this stage of my career, I’m increasingly interested in what I can build that lasts my own involvement.

Professionally, that means continuing to help organizations solve difficult problems and creating stronger systems and relationships in the process. Personally, I want to keep investing in younger professionals and helping them find their own paths into leadership and public service.

I also don’t ever want to stop trying new things. I still have things I want to learn, communities I want to serve and probably several career chapters I haven’t even imagined yet!

Ultimately, I would like my impact to be measured partly by what I accomplished, but even more by how many other people were able to accomplish something because I helped open a door.

12. When people look back on your career, what do you hope they will remember most?

I hope people remember that I was kind and useful.

That may sound less grand than “career legacy,” but I mean it sincerely. I hope people remember that when something was complicated, I helped make it understandable. When people with different interests needed to find a way forward, I helped bring them together. When someone was new or unsure of themselves, I made the room a little easier to enter or be in. And when something was difficult, I was willing to show up and help do the work.

I would be very proud if people also remembered that we had some fun along the way.