To say Tara Ingram-Hunter is a busy person in a bit of an understatement.

First of all, she is director of the Slidell Parks and Recreation Department. When she is not overseeing the maintenance and management of the city’s 10 parks, Ingram-Hunter serves as the assistant chief of staff, helping Chief of Staff Bob Dunbar deal with the day-to-day operations of the city.

As if that isn’t enough, Ingram-Hunter is also a lieutenant in the U.S. Coast Guard, where she serves as a marine casualty investigator. That takes up a lot of her time since she also deals with marine collisions, marine fires and marine regulations. And she used to work as a reserve deputy in the St. Tammany Sheriff’s Office for four years.

Tara Ingram-Hunter

“Yeah, I don’t have much of a social life,” Hunter-Ingram admitted.

When not working for the city or the Coast Guard, she also goes to Rotary meetings and is a member of the Community Playground Committee, the Slidell Skatepark Committee, the 9/11 Memorial Committee and the Keep Slidell Beautiful Committee. She is also one of the five founding members of the Krewe of Selene and currently serves as the krewe’s vice president after serving as the president for two years.

For most people, a schedule like that would drain their energy quickly, but Ingram-Hunter is a ball of energy, always smiling, always full of ideas and always willing to make Slidell a better place to live.

“I love to help people,” she said. “I want a Slidell where our children and grandchildren want to stay.”

Public service is nothing new for Ingram-Hunter. Her father, Keith Ingram, was Slidell’s city manager in the 70’s. Every day after school Ingram-Hunter would go to her father’s office and watch and learn how to work in municipal government and how to run a city.

She got the bug from watching her father, and after graduating from St. Scholastica Academy she went to school at Texas Christian in Fort Worth, Texas, where she received a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. Being an over-achiever, she then went to the University of Nebraska in Omaha, where she earned two master’s degrees, one in criminal justice and another in urban studies.

During her urban studies program Ingram-Hunter worked as an intern in the Slidell Department of Planning.

A year later, she was hired as a full-time employee, and since then, Ingram-Hunter has been working for the city.

From the Planning Department she became the risk management director for the city in 1996. With her experience and knowledge, Ingram-Hunter than became director of Parks and Recreation in 2000. She joined the Sheriff’s Office in 1993, where she started as a street deputy, then left the Sheriff’s Office in 1997 as a reserve detective. She was named assistant chief of staff in May 2007.

Her background in law enforcement came in handy when she tried to join the U.S. Navy after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack. However, she was told she was too old for the Navy, so she joined the Coast Guard and ended up in the Marine Casualty Investigation Unit. She also got married in Las Vegas in 1997.

Her husband died in 2002.

Despite all her accomplishments and hard work, Ingram-Hunter is very humble about what she does.

“It’s the employees that really run the city,” she said.

She added that being a native of Slidell, she grew up with a lot of city employees, and they all came up through the ranks together.

“We look out for each other,” Ingram-Hunter said.

She also said that because of her previous experience in other departments, she brings a “holistic” approach to running the city, plus she and her boss share a lot in common, which helps.

“Bob and I knew we would be a great team. We have similar backgrounds in law enforcement and the military,” Ingram-Hunter said.

Currently, she said her duties as assistant chief of staff takes up most of her time, which is spent in meetings.

“My schedule these days is unbelievable,” she said.

She averages five meetings a day with city personnel, developers, contractors, department heads and recently with representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Bringing back Slidell from the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina is Ingram-Hunter’s biggest goal these days. Though the city has come back very well, she said there is still a lot of work to do. She said the hardest part of her job has been helping to rebuild the city.

“We were the hardest hit by Katrina,” she said. “Recovery is really tough, but this is a great place to work, because I work with a wonderful organization.”

She also enjoys her work in the Coast Guard.

“It is exciting. I get to meet people from all over the world and work with other law enforcement agencies,” Ingram-Hunter said.

She likes her present life so much she plans to work for Slidell and the Coast Guard until she is forced to retire.

She spent the last month in Yorktown, Va., attending the Marine Investigation School. But the day she came back from Virginia, she had only enough time to take a shower, get dressed and go the City Council meeting to help defend the mayor’s 2008 budget.

“It’s tough balancing the workload,” she said. “What makes the work fun is all the dedicated employees.”