Thressa Lockridge-Ali

“The story of the Department is really a big story. Before (Jim) Hightower took over, that agency was pretty white. There weren’t very many minorities in that agency and that’s one of the things that was a real concern to Hightower…I feel like, if you have a more diverse department, then you have a better department, because you have a diversity of ideas. That’s what I did for that agency.”

Thressa Lockridge-Ali was recruited as the Equal Employment Opportunity coordinator, and rose to become the Director of Human Resources. She focused on outreach for departmental vacancies to improve how those vacancies were announced and who got that information. She traveled to places like Stephenville and Tyler, and up in the Panhandle, because when she joined the department, there wasn’t very much representation for people of color in those particular places.

thressa lockridge-ali smiling