TRWD’s water supply manager Nicole Rutigliano is a civil engineer who has been with TRWD for nearly eight years. She works in the Water Resources Engineering group, with a staff of three and another position open in the group, where she and the team manage water supply planning and projections to meet current water demands and those of the future.
There’s a lot more that her job entails, but not many people know that she’s also a dancer, engaged in something completely different from her day job during her off hours. She danced for 20 years, starting as a child and dancing her way through college.
“I loved it,” she says, and “I still do.”
Nicole still stays active today, taking a tap class once a week when she’s not working, traveling (another of her off-duty pleasures), and engaging in other hobbies. She once spent a summer in Spain – one of the best experiences of her life, she says – and she enjoys making trips to Colorado and has fond memories of a truly “incredible” time in Costa Rica one year.
Nicole is an outdoors person. She enjoys mountain hiking as much as visiting beautiful beaches to swim and relax. In quieter times, she also enjoys reading.
She has three kids. The oldest has graduated from high school and is working. Her middle child, age 17, is in high school. And her youngest daughter, who’s 10, takes after her mom in the world of dance. She is on her dance studio’s competitive team that often travels for competitions.
“It’s very intense, and she loves it like I do,” Nicole says. “She does all genres of dance, from tap and jazz to musical theater, hip hop, contemporary and ballet.”
Keeping the flow
On the job, Nicole is also involved in short-term water supply operations, to anticipate what might be needed over three- to six-month periods.
Water contracts also fall under her jurisdiction. TRWD services more than 50 raw water customers, including cities, special utility districts, municipal utility districts, golf courses, power plants, quarries and private companies. 95% are municipal customers.
Nicole also coordinates with potential customers seeking water from TRWD.
She oversees water rights reporting for the District as well and is responsible for the annual accounting audit for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. TRWD has over 40 water rights to withdraw certain amounts of water from across the state.
Finding her path with the Water District
For more than 10 years before joining TRWD, Nicole served as an independent consultant engaged in hydrologic and hydraulic modeling for dams, dam design and balancing reservoirs. This is how she first became acquainted with the District. When Nicole was offered a position and joined TRWD, she initially joined the flood team. When the reservoirs are full and discharging water, flood team members are making decisions like how much water to release – a critical part of the District’s operations.
She enjoyed the job, and when the planning director retired, his responsibilities were divided among certain members of the staff. That ultimately led to Nicole moving into her current position in the engineering department.
Collaboration, caring, community impact
Nicole says she likes working at TRWD for a number of important reasons. People are a key factor. “I really like the people I work with. We are there for each other and back each other up. It feels like we are a family,” she explains. “We have wedding and baby showers, celebrate together at the holidays, have events like ‘pie days’ where we bring in treats to share, and our Fort Worth Henderson Building has organized a ‘fun committee’ that we participate in,” she adds. “I genuinely enjoy the people I work with – we’re interested in each other on more than just a work level.”
Nicole is also committed to the job she does, as well as the organization’s mission and vision. She says she’s happy to work in a place where “you see immediate impact to the public where we livefrom our executive staff all the way through the District, people are really trying to do good things for the community.”
