Parking Origin Stories is a series that highlights the personal journeys of passionate parking professionals.
Interested in having your Parking Origin story featured? Email editor@parkingtoday.com.
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In this installment, we profile Sarah Blouch, the president and chief executive officer (CEO) of CampusParc, the entity that manages parking operations for The Ohio State University.
Sarah’s current role as CEO of CampusParc requires a cool head in a crisis and the mental agility to see how all of the pieces fit together.
“People were handing me stuff and I was handling it.”
Sarah’s parking career began in 1980, when she was 19 years old.
She was engaged to be married, and her future mother-in-law introduced her to the “parking ladies across the hall” from the credit union at the University of Oklahoma.
Sarah started out as a senior clerk and climbed the ladder to leadership positions. Along the way, she was afforded many opportunities to solve problems and talk to people as the department integrated transportation into its mix.
“I’m someone with thick skin who will do whatever needs to get done,” Sarah said. “I find it easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. People were handing me stuff and I was handling it. That was the biggest factor in my career growth early on.”
“We were raising awareness of the things that no one thinks about.”
In 1995, Sarah accepted a position with The Ohio State University as the executive director of transportation and parking services.
In this role, she was confronted with the gargantuan task of integrating parking, transportation, traffic management, and fleet and repair operations under one umbrella.
The transportation network at Ohio State included buses, motor pool vehicles, and leased cars. Integrating the various functions was an arduous project, but one that made a lot of intuitive sense to Sarah.
“All of these modalities go hand in hand,” Sarah said. “I worked really well with the other stakeholders on the project. We were a great team. We took on all of the stuff no one else wanted to do but had to happen in order to bring parking and transportation together.”
“Stuff that no one else wanted to do” included such activities as working with contractors to ensure that the fences they installed in parking lots for their construction projects would not obstruct transportation flows through campus.
“I was walking across campus, and I got penned in by some fences,” Sarah recalled. “None of the construction project managers talked to one another, so the web of fencing was just nonsense. I sat down with the university’s Construction and Design group, and we developed procedures for putting up fencing, which Transportation and Parking Services then started enforcing.”
Sarah and her team would invite themselves to meetings in other departments and help their staff mitigate potential problems by bringing in a 360-degree holistic view.
“Other departments weren’t always paying attention to the global piece,” said Sarah, “so I focused on raising awareness of the invisible details that get in the way and on pulling in the right people to solve problems.”
“A university is a group that you need to watch closely.”
Sarah sees similarities between the parking needs of universities and municipalities but notes that there are certain key differences.
“The big difference is that in a city, everyone is coming and going,” Sarah said. “The customer base is anonymous. In the university, it’s not. You have students, faculty, and staff who tend to stay.”
University leaders face a lot of pressure to do many different things and must contend with a large swath of stakeholders, including high-level donors and the state legislature.
“Change is scary,” Sarah said, “and with so many leadership shifts, it can be hard to see what could be different. Everyone has their own agendas and expectations, but the general consensus is that parking should be a non-event.”
In addition to Ohio State’s robust athletics program — up to five hundred events, of all sizes, can take place every month — arena and stadium shows also have their own parking requirements.
“On any given night, there are competing parking needs,” Sarah said. “When there are multiple events plus a lack of transparency, the facility gets overwhelmed. A big part of my job is reaching out and setting expectations.”
Her process for kicking off projects involves pulling in key staff from other departments.
It is the boots-on-the-ground folks, who Sarah called the “movers and shakers,” who play the most critical role in pushing for positive change.
“There are so many logistical choices that need to be made to keep a campus transportation ecosystem running smoothly,” Sarah said. “Architects know how to build buildings, but they don’t know how to think about transportation, which makes sense. That’s what we’re here for.”
“You have to know what you don’t know.”
Sarah’s current role as CEO of CampusParc requires a cool head in a crisis and the mental agility to see how all of the pieces fit together.
Her biggest advice to up-and-coming leaders is to “know your limits” and “never hesitate to seek out the expertise of others” as needed, she said.
“When I interviewed at OSU,” Sarah recalled, "I was meeting with an on-site engineer. One of the job's requirements was civil engineering experience. So, when the engineer asked me how much I knew about engineering, I just responded, ‘I know enough to hire one!’ You have to know what you don’t know!”
In her own words, Sarah feels most fulfilled when she “knows that everyone’s happy with what’s going on.” She’s a people-first leader who solves problems and is happiest doing so in collaboration with others who share the same goal.
“I’m optimistic about making changes.”
When it comes to approaching the future of parking, Sarah does so with a mentality of “wouldn’t it be cool if…?” She’s energized by technology’s rapid evolution.
“I like to think about this idea of an ‘Amazon for parking,’” Sarah said. “An easy button for buying a daily pass. We’re getting there. But it takes blending a lot of different technologies, and there are still too many companies out there that want to be everything to everybody.”
In addition to eliminating this “be all, end all” mindset, Sarah sees the need for companies to work together to build out architecture for the integration and data-meshing needed to provide a better customer experience.
“We need to work together to make our consumer solutions equally easy for the very savvy 16-year-old and my 83-year-old mom to use,” Sarah said.
Universities have their own complexities, but present unique opportunities, too. “Grassroots support goes a really long way on a campus,” Sarah said. “If you get local people and students to support you, magic happens. It’s a lot of hard work to educate people who don’t necessarily care how the sausage is made, but it’s rewarding to see them invest in and rally for good.”
SARAH BECHERER is the vice president of marketing at Ocra. She can be reached at sarah@getocra.com.
Interested in having your Parking Origin story featured? Email editor@parkingtoday.com.
