Minority Business Awards: L’Tryce Slade

Minority Business Awards: L’Tryce Slade

Slade L.E.T. Planning
Date: Sunday, August 15, 2010, 11:00pm CDT – Last Modified: Thursday, August 12, 2010, 5:43pm CDT

L’Tryce Slade has a complex firm with a simple mission. “The vision of my firm is to leave the world better than the way we found it,” said L’Tryce Slade, managing director of Slade Land Use, Environmental and Transportation Planning LLC.

L’Tryce Slade has a complex firm with a simple mission.

“The vision of my firm is to leave the world better than the way we found it,” said L’Tryce Slade, managing director of Slade Land Use, Environmental and Transportation Planning LLC.

The firm, founded in 2006, employs four part-time and two full-time workers, offering environmental planning and engineering services.

Slade counts among her client base municipalities, universities, the federal government, construction firms, developers and contractors.

Now 33, she began marketing her engineering services when unemployed and looking for work with another firm, but found that she could support herself by venturing out on her own.

Slade was formerly a legal clerk with the Federal Highway Administration in the chief counsel’s office, an environmental planner with Arcadis G&M Transportation Consulting Firm and community planner with the North Carolina Department of Transportation.

The University of North Carolina graduate is in the midst of branding her company as SLADE.

In partnership with an environmental consulting client, Dunn Construction, Slade helped start an urban construction garden, with the harvest benefiting local shelters.

Hoping to grow her business in measured increments, Slade now offers job opportunities to other women in this primarily male-dominated field.

“Really I’m most proud of being able to offer people employment opportunities in their field, especially if they’ve had hardships in the past,” Slade said.