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Like the rugged trails he enjoys hiking when he can squeeze in some time off, the career path to Douglas Selby’s job as Las Vegas city manager has been a circuitous one.

As a UNLV student, Selby (’75 BS and ’77 MS Biology) anticipated spending his entire career doing some kind of environmental biology work. While he did work in that field for years – and enjoyed it – his career route took a variety of turns that eventually led to his assuming the job as CEO of one of the 30 largest cities in America.

Of course, Selby didn’t move straight from a job as field biologist to the helm of a city with an annual budget of $877 million. Along the way were a number of jobs that each, in its own way, helped prepare him for the challenges of guiding one of the fastest growing cities in the nation.

During his senior year at UNLV, Selby met biology professor Jim Deacon, who specialized in desert fishes. Exposure to Deacon’s research, which involved a great deal of fieldwork, spurred Selby’s interest. After receiving his master’s degree, Selby worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Game before joining an environmental consulting firm.
“I did a lot of field work with endangered fishes – some in Nevada and some in the western rivers of the Colorado River system,” Selby recalls.

Eventually he enrolled in the doctoral engineering program at Utah State University so that he could enter the then-new field of environmental engineering.

Ph.D. in hand, the Clark High School graduate returned to Las Vegas to take a job with the Clark County Sanitation District. Selby subsequently moved to California, but eventually felt pulled to return to Southern Nevada – a desire he admits was strengthened by the major San Francisco earthquake of October 1989.

“I always gravitate back to Las Vegas. Other places I lived and worked just didn’t have the energy and the open-mindedness about opportunities.”

His work as engineering director – first for the Las Vegas Valley Water District and then for the Southern Nevada Water Authority – eventually paved the way for his being selected as deputy city manager. Then, in September 2002, the City Council promoted him to the city’s top managerial post.

Selby says the job suits him. “I like being city manager. It’s nothing my academic background would seem to lead to, but it has turned out to be a good fit,” he says, adding that his studies at UNLV helped prepare him for the perhaps unlikely turn of events in his career. “My academic background did give me a basis for being flexible and adaptable, which is important for a city manger. You have to be analytical, too, and UNLV contributed a great deal to that.”

Selby says he is pleased to be serving as city manager at a time when Las Vegas is contending with the challenges and changes of growth. “While challenges certainly exist, they bring with them tremendous opportunities for success.

I want to work with the mayor and the City Council to help make the city of Las Vegas one of the best-run cities in the country.”

—Diane Russell

For 20 years, James David Ballard worked in the aerospace and weapons manufacturing industry, making everything from fighter jets to missiles. Now a sociology professor at California State University, Northridge, Ballard says, “I study the people who use weapons like these for violent political gain. I study terrorists.”

Ballard, ’00 Ph.D. Sociology, began researching violent political behavior while pursuing his doctorate at UNLV and traveled to Northern Ireland on a Graduate Student Association grant to do research. He has since become an expert on terrorism and, in particular, nuclear and radiological attacks.

“As I was planning the Ireland trip, the Oklahoma City bombing happened,” he says. “That changed things. At that time, we were not worried about Al-Qaeda or international groups; we were worried about domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh. I looked at Yucca Mountain and reasoned that shipments to this potential facility could be subject to sabotage, to terrorism from such individuals.”

Ballard is a team leader for a two-year NATO project assessing the worldwide vulnerability of nuclear power plants and radioactive waste shipments to such attacks. He’s also testified before both houses of Congress and has served for seven years as a consultant for the state of Nevada on the potential for terrorist attacks against Yucca Mountain shipments.

Though he believes that with proper planning the risk of shipping these radioactive materials can be reduced, he questions, among other things, the logic of moving the waste along predictable routes from locations primarily east of the Mississippi River to Nevada.
“Radioactive waste can be thought of like money in a bank. We know how to store it securely in a vault, but when you take it out of that environment and transport it across the country, you make it vulnerable to thieves or saboteurs,” he says. “Why expose it to any number of problems on the roadways and railways of America when it could be interned at its production site until such time as it is less toxic and less of a symbolic target?”

A shipment of nuclear waste will be a tantalizing target for terrorists, he says. “It’s radioactive, which we’re all frightened of. It would also be part of a large-scale federal program. It’s also being forced upon a community, in this case, Nevada, which creates an antagonistic environment. Now put those things together – this train would make a highly symbolic target for those who seek to make a statement against the radioactive cargo, or those who oppose the actions of the federal government, or even as a protest statement about how the repository is being sited.”

The general public, Ballard says, has only limited information on what types of activities could be considered terrorism with respect to these materials. In early 2004, Carolina Academic Press will publish Ballard’s Nuclear and Radiological Terrorism: Weapons of Mass Destruction and Mass Victimization, which is aimed at first responders such as police and fire personnel. His book Terrorism, Media, and Public Policy is due out at the same time from Hampton Press. It deals with how federal agencies like the Department of Justice used the media to advance their own agendas in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing.

He’s also published more than 30 professional papers and about two dozen poems, which he says he writes “to get away from the violence inherent in this research.” His poems cover a wide range of topics, including his marriage to fellow UNLV graduate Donna Pattee-Ballard, ’98 MFA.

Kathleen “Kitti” Hammons is living life in the pink. The UNLV alumna (’96 BS Business Administration) spends her days – and sometimes her nights – in the bright pink world of that most famous of fashion dolls, Barbie.

For most of her career, Hammons has worked for the toy company giant Mattel. Her professional introduction to Barbie came after she earned her MBA from Loyola Marymount University. She was hired at Mattel as a senior financial analyst in the fashion doll division and was placed on a Barbie cross-function team. Among the team members devoted to Barbie were a marketing representative, a planner, and three designers – one each for the doll’s face, hair, and clothing. When a job in collectibles marketing opened up, Hammons was selected. There she was responsible for marketing about 30 of the Barbie dolls made each year for display rather than play.

In her current job as brand manager, she negotiates deals and maintains relationships with companies that produce an amazing variety of products bearing Barbie’s likeness. Barbie’s smiling countenance can be found on linens, clothing, lunchboxes, and – coming soon – ceramic dinnerware. Mattel takes great care to make sure that its star appears only on high-quality products manufactured in plants that meet stringent criteria, Hammons says.

This year, Hammons’ duties were expanded to include licensing responsibility for other Mattel toys, including Polly Pocket dolls, Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, the Magic 8 Ball, and He-Man figures.

She said she’s enjoying learning about the boy-oriented toys such as Hot Wheels and He-Man, but confesses to having a particular fondness for that perky doll with the striking figure.

You see, Hammons’ affinity for Barbie didn’t begin with her employment at Mattel. As a child growing up in Las Vegas, she had more than 20 of the stylish dolls – not to mention a full complement of Barbie’s friends and relatives, including Skipper, Ken, Midge, Alan, and Steven. She remembers an Afghan hound, too, but can’t recall its name.

“I probably played with Barbie until I was 12,” the Eldorado High School graduate recounts. “I had the dream house, the swimming pool, and the Winnebago.”

One thing she remembers clearly from her childhood – and is finding still to be true today through her 2-year-old daughter Kira – is, “You can’t have too many Barbies. Once you put them in the tub and cut their hair, you have to get new ones.”

Kira, whose father is UNLV alumnus and attorney Wally Hammons (’97 BA Political Science), apparently needn’t worry about running out. “I’m bad,” Hammons confesses. “She already has about 40. Maybe 25 of those, though, are the collectibles, which are kept in their boxes.”

Kira isn’t the only family member reaping the rewards of her mother’s job. Hammons’ mother-in-law already had amassed nearly 400 Barbies before Hammons went to work for Mattel. Now her collection is automatically augmented on every significant gift-giving holiday.
“She doesn’t even have to ask.”

Fall 2003| Vol. 11, No. 2

n Alumni Profiles