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Today's Featured Biography

Cheritta Jackson Johnson-Ortiz

Mrs. Johnson-Ortiz is a retired career public servant with more than 35 years of experience helping the City of Dallas to be a safer, better place to live and work for all its residents. She started as an officer with the Dallas Police Department where she served as a detective and later a lieutenant before being appointed assistant director for Code Compliance. She is the 1st person in the City's history to permanently transition from a sworn position in DPD to an executive
position at City Hall. In Code Compliance, Johnson-Ortiz launched the City's training academy to teach inspectors and animal control officers the law, residents' rights and responsibilities. After moving to the Sanitation department, she marshaled the resources, and led the marketing needed
to implement OneDAY Dallas, the largest service delivery change in the city's history.
Furthermore, she was responsible for initiating weekly recycling collection for 250,000 customers and overseeing the contract for recycling processing which put over $15 million back into the City's
general fund annually.

As the assistant director for Equipment & Building Services at the City, Johnson-Ortiz managed a $50M operation for a 5,300 unit fleet valued at more than $400M. In this role, she was responsible for 240 people who repaired and maintain almost every city vehicle to assure that Dallas employees were there when the public calls. Under Mrs. Johnson-Ortiz's leadership, the City of
Dallas' Equipment & Building Services was named one of the top fleets (ranked #49) in the Americas by Governing Magazine, The 100 Best Fleets. She was also selected (by Dallas
City Manager) to create a new department titled Office of Community Care and serve as its interim director. The Office of Community Care provides social and supportive services designed to help create equity for seniors, children, and other people in financial need to improve their quality and standard of living. Additionally, Johnson-Ortiz was selected (by Dallas City Manager) to
oversee the stabilization of Dallas' School Crossing Guard Program. Johnson-Ortiz serves as the program's executive liaison for the City of Dallas. During that period, she secured a $15.5M 3rd party contract with the number one Private School Crossing Guard Company in the nation; and assisted with the development of a School Crossing Guard Assessment Criteria for school intersections based on prevalent industry standards. In 2018, she was selected to lead the Building Security Operations. She was responsible for security staff and numerous citywide private
security contracts. Under Johnson-Ortiz's leadership, Security Services completed security risk assessments at 180 city facilities based on US Homeland Security framework; enhanced security surveillance for high-profiled city-owned buildings; and revamped policies/procedures to strengthen
accountability and safeguard equipment/supply transactions.

As president of the City of Dallas Black Employees Support Team (BEST), Johnson-Ortiz created Breaking the 4th Wall (BT4W) Speakers Series to educate & inspire future minority leaders from the City's employment pool. Previous speakers included Dallas local KDFW Anchor Clarice Tinsley, U.S. Ambassador Ronald Kirk, U.S. Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, Hollywood Screenwriters Todd/Richey Jones, and former Dallas Mavericks forward Justin Anderson.

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