Yes, She Can!
Tara Chattergoon
Water Treatment Plant Operator Trainee
CCE Certificate, 2016
It took some convincing, but Tara Chattergoon now knows she can do anything.
The native of Trinidad was going nowhere in her retail career, even as a manager, but she didn’t know what else to do. Then her husband came home one evening and told her about a friend who worked for the water treatment plant in Ft. Lauderdale.
“He thought it was something I could do, and I said to him, ‘no, that’s a man’s job.’ But he said ‘no you can do this.’ I think my husband urged me on because he knows what a hard-working person I am.”
In January 2016, Chattergoon enrolled in PBSC’s Corporate and Continuing Education Water Treatment Plant Operator ‘C’ License program. By May she completed the program with top grades, and by June, she passed the state licensing exam and became the first woman to be hired as a water treatment plant operator trainee for the Village of Tequesta.
The journey was challenging, but Chattergoon isn’t done. This 45-year-old grandmother plans to keep advancing in her new profession and attain additional licenses. She now considers Palm Beach State College “my school” and praises, in addition to her husband, her instructor Karen Valiquette and CCE business specialist Deborah Gordon-Noncent for “believing in me from the beginning.”
“I am really happy that I took the course because I love what I do now. I’m excited to go to work. I start work at 7 a.m., but I’m there at 6:30 a.m.”