We’re continuing to celebrate and shine a spotlight on RTC’s female leaders throughout Women’s History Month. Women are underrepresented in many fields, especially engineering. Let’s meet the ladies who lead the regional planning, traffic management, and streets & highways teams.
Deb Reardon, AICP
Deb Reardon is a planning manager at the RTC’s Metropolitan Planning Organization and oversees the administration of the Southern Nevada Strong (SNS) Regional Plan. The SNS team works to further sustainability, economic resiliency, transportation equity, and community health. Prior to joining the RTC, Reardon held planning positions with the National Park Service and City of Henderson and worked in the private sector as a construction project engineer. She holds a Bachelor of Architectural Engineering degree from Penn State and a Masters of Sustainable Transportation from the University of Washington.
Theresa Gaisser, PE, PTOE
Theresa Gaisser is the senior director of the RTC’s traffic management center, known locally as FAST, or the Freeway and Arterial System of Transportation. FAST manages freeway and arterial operations in Southern Nevada on behalf of the local agencies. Regionally, FAST coordinates traffic signal timing, minimizes construction and special event impacts on traffic, maintains and operates ITS devices and manages the fiber optic network.
Gaisser is a licensed engineer in Nevada, California, Arizona and Utah, is a Professional Traffic Operations Engineer, and has a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Joanna Wadsworth, PE
Joanna Wadsworth is the engineering manager at RTC FAST and has over two decades of experience practicing civil and transportation engineering. She has both private- and public-sector experience on a variety of projects, including traffic studies, traffic signal designs, intelligent transportation system designs and deployments, and multi-modal transportation planning and design. Her focus at the RTC includes traffic management, traffic signal operations, incident management, and Smart City technology planning and design.
A native of Las Vegas, Wadsworth earned a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering and a Master of Science in civil/transportation engineering from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is a certified Professional Engineer in Nevada.
Gena Kendall, PE, PTOE
Gena Kendall is engineering manager for the RTC’s Streets and Highways Department, which administers local funding for roadway improvements to the local government agencies. Prior to joining the RTC in 2020, Kendall was a city traffic engineer for the City of Las Vegas. Previously, she worked in Development Services at the City of Henderson and at Clark County.
Kendall has been a member of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) since 2000 and is past president of the Nevada chapter. She is registered in Nevada as a Professional Civil Engineer and is a certified Professional Traffic Operations Engineer by ITE. A Las Vegas native, Kendall is a graduate of the University of Las Vegas, Nevada, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in civil engineering.
