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Wayne State University is a public research university in Detroit that touts 13 schools and colleges offering over 350 programs to nearly 24,000 graduate and undergraduate students. Its School of Medicine has earned various Best Grad School awards from U.S. News & World Report for serving vulnerable communities and offering a culture of excellence and inclusion.
Behind the School of Medicine’s world-class faculty members and students, there are facilities and maintenance crews who work tirelessly to support those innovative minds with functioning, comfortable buildings. Bridget Graham, associate director of facilities planning and management for the university’s medical district, spearheads those efforts.
It’s a responsibility she holds dear.
“The medical district is a very important pillar of Wayne State, and I take my responsibility over it very seriously,” says Graham, a Virginia native. “It’s an honor to know that anything we do for our faculty and students is for the good of the world, since that’s what medicine does. With that in mind, it’s important that equipment is functioning properly, that buildings are properly cooled, and that we can respond quickly to ensure proper safety, compliance, and comfort levels are maintained.”
Since bringing her leadership to the university in April 2023, Graham has contributed to that mission by overhauling the work order scheduling process and implementing systems that create faster response times to requests. She created an updated building task list for staff to prioritize their projects more efficiently and conducts biweekly meetings with leaders and faculty members to learn about ways her team can meet their needs.
Additionally, Graham has made great strides in breaking down siloes within her team. She and her colleagues started by transforming a storage space into a district meeting space and break room. What used to be a room full of old furniture, boxes, trash, lab equipment, and other waste is now complete with an organized toolbox and workbench, a daily meeting space, computers for work orders, a kitchenette, and a timekeeping system. The transformed space has not only offered Graham’s entire team a meeting place but also fostered “a sense of togetherness.”
“Before, we were broken up into districts. Our trades housed their vehicles at the other side of campus. But when we all meet in the morning in our common space [with] the engineers and trades, we’re able to foster a sense of collaboration,” she explains. “When we know what we need, we know who to go to. Now, it’s more of a ‘we’ instead of just being the locksmiths or just being the engineers.”
Graham has always had a passion for figuring things out, working with her hands, and using tools. She got these interests from her dad, who worked in a shipyard for over 40 years. In college, she studied mechanical engineering and spent her summers as an intern in the shipyard, working with generators, HVAC systems, and large mechanical equipment, like turbines.
She went on to become the first African American mechanical supervisor at Philip Morris, where she served as a maintenance packaging supervisor at a Virginia plant. From there, she took on facilities management and quality systems roles of increasing responsibility at the likes of Pfizer, Caraco Pharmaceutical, Coca-Cola, Terumo Cardiovascular Group, and PathWise.
The role at Wayne State provided an opportunity to return to maintenance, one of her true passions.
“There’s always something different every day, and that’s what I like about facilities. You have breakdowns, things that fail, things that need to be resolved,” she says. “Each day has a new experience and new problem in store for you. I love to use my brain to figure things out and to understand why something works, how to fix it, or why it failed in the first place.”
As a leader, Graham believes in the power of influence and “practicing what she preaches.”
“I want to be the change that I want to see. Sometimes the only way to show your team that something will work better is by showing them how it’s working for you,” she says.
In the future, Graham is looking forward to completing her master’s program. She hopes to use that education in retirement, when she plans on starting her own business related to FDA compliance and investigations. It would fulfill another lifelong passion: teaching.
“When you teach people, you’re facilitating something that will grow and evolve in them for life,” she says.
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