My office is near the junction of the Seattle Ship Canal and Puget Sound. I can see the Hiram Chittenden Locks that separate the fresh water of the Canal from the salt water of the Sound. Topping off the view is a railroad drawbridge that raises to allow boats to pass, and lowers to let trains go by. It’s a non-stop canvas of centuries-old transportation operating with modern engineering efficiency.

Presiding over this outlook is a bald eagle’s nest, or aerie. In the summer, the eagles feast on salmon journeying up the canal to their spawning grounds. The most exciting time of year is when the baby eagles fledge. Since the young eagles don’t fly well, they have lots of extra feathers, making them look even bigger than the adults.

This setting provides a model for my approach to Regulatory Operations: day-to-day operations must be robust, reliable, and efficient, like the Locks, but they must be developed with a far-reaching vision, like the eagle’s. The strategies put in place today will become the operational norms of the future.