Hazardous Waste Management Program Director Maythia Airhart’s life story is anything but ordinary – and that’s contributed to her success in seeing a large organization with complicated governance and funding structures through a major reorganization, all during a pandemic.
A displaced refugee of the civil war that ripped apart her Cambodian homeland in the 1960s and ’70s. A young immigrant settling in a foreign land with family members who also survived Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime. A professional who has dedicated herself to promoting healthy, dynamic communities, Maythia has succeeded through commitments to communication and compassion.
The Haz Waste Program’s sprawling governance framework – including DNRP’s Solid Waste and Water and Land Resources divisions, along with other county, city, and regional government entities – puts collaboration and partnership as the top job skills.
Maythia became the Haz Waste Program’s permanent director in 2023 following successes as deputy and interim director. She previously thrived during her 15-year career at the City of Seattle where she led initiatives that supported immigrant and refugee communities, partnerships, environmental stewardship, human health, and race, and social justice work.
Surviving a civil war with the courage of her family
Maythia says the Khmer Rouge regime began a systematic campaign to eliminate what they saw as “elites” and the “ruling class” across Cambodia. Maythia’s parents, both of whom were medical professionals, were targets.
“Those folks started ruling and they are saying, ‘Everyone’s supposed to be on the same level, everybody is supposed to have a share of the power.’ But what they did was kill anybody who was educated, anybody who wore glasses, anybody with money, or with education. We were all labeled as bad people.”
Her family left everything behind.
“They told us to walk,” she said. “So, my mom just packed up a little bit of food and carried me. Everyone was walking for months. Whatever else they had brought with them, they kind of dropped, and they ended up with just me.”
They made it to a village and then to a labor camp where they worked from dawn to dusk. After a while, the authorities learned about Maythia’s father’s professional status.
“The village captain held a meeting. They asked the group, ‘Who here has a medical background? Your people need you.’ So, my dad raised his hand. He raised his hand because he wanted to help people. He disappeared. They took all the folks who were educated and executed them.”
For four years, Maythia’s mother acted as if she didn’t know how to read or write. Then after making their way to Vietnam to be with relatives, the Vietnamese government jailed her mother as a suspected spy for the new Cambodian regime – the one from which they had just escaped.
“I remember bringing dinner in a little small container to my mom while she was in jail. I was scared when I saw her because she was tied to a pole,” Maythia said. “And when they untied her so she could eat, she didn’t eat anything at all.
“My mother looked at me and said, ‘Tell Grandma not to throw away the food.’ That was the sign for my mom, like a secret sign. So, I took the little container of food back, and I said, ‘Hey, Grandma, Mom said not to throw this out.’ Grandma opens the container, and there’s a note in the rice from my mom that says, ‘I’m going to escape tonight because they’re going to torture me.’”
Maythia’s mother fled that night, disappearing into the forest. Sometime later, a woman wearing a wig and disguise enters Maythia’s room where she was sleeping. It was her mother.
Together again, Maythia and her mother they fled to a refugee camp in Thailand, setting in motion their relocation to the United States.
A new chapter begins in America
Safe from the horrors of war and reunited with family, Maythia turned her attention to continuing her family’s tradition of education and a focus on work that was deeply rooted in compassion.
“I grew up in a household where every family member cared a lot for our planet and for our people,” she said. “I think we all have a sense of where we belong and how we are connected to something bigger than ourselves. So, it made sense that I would go into a field that was about really taking care of our world and our communities.”
Maythia graduated from Western Washington University and Seattle University, combining education and a lifelong desire to improve people’s lives to positions at Public Health – Seattle & King County, the American Lung Association, the City of Seattle, and finally Haz Waste.
“I just happened to be at the right place at the right time,” she said. “I started out in nonprofits, and I always wanted to do community health work. I’m Buddhist, too, so my worldview and my lived experience as a refugee drives me and my family members toward lives of activism.
“I never thought I would land in the hazardous waste management field at all. This is not the work I had expected, but it is where I am. But also, my life has changed. It’s even better than what I had imagined.”
How the pandemic affected the Haz Waste Program reorganization
Maythia said the disruptions caused by the pandemic – including many government agency offices primarily working from home, and other actions that reduced face-to-face interactions with colleagues and the broader community – might have smoothed the agency’s reorganization in some ways.
“The interpersonal relationships had been dramatically affected by COVID, so maybe a reorg wasn’t the hardest thing to do at that time, because we’ve got all of this upheaval,” Maythia said. “This reorg is just one more change.
“And when we got to where the bigger changes were happening, it was actually easier for us to have hard conversations. Believe me, people were frank with me. It might be uncomfortable to hear it, but at the end of the day, that’s actually how you advance, it’s how you get past roadblocks and hurdles – by having the tough conversations and having some honesty.”
On reimagining the systems that lead to hazardous materials and the Haz Waste Program of the future
“I think of hazardous waste as being at the end of the line – these are things that have been produced, then used, and now they’re ready to be thrown out,” she said. “Imagine if we found ways of eliminating those hazardous materials at the beginning of the process. That’s where our program is transitioning toward – a place where systems and policy changes can occur.
“Yes, the work of safely collecting and disposing hazardous waste is important, but we want to change systems. We want to hold producers and manufacturers accountable for the products they make. Some of these products shouldn’t even be on the shelf. Why is it even here? We don’t want our only option to be to choose between one toxic product or another.
“With that in mind, I would say that that it’s an exciting time for us because every line of business we have will be focusing on the basic question of, ‘How do we make this system change?’”
Maythia said her organization will address the symptoms of hazardous waste because of the legacy of toxic materials that we have all inherited.
“But moving forward, I really want to look at the root cause: ‘How do we shape and influence the root cause of the problem?’ Even if we’re not leading the way, we can contribute to the change.
“I want us to be excited in that way,” she said. “I think like there’s contagiousness around doing good work, so there’s a lot of excitement. You can have negative contagiousness – negativity can be just as infectious. But being part of something that’s doing good work is also contagious. And I hear people all the time say they like being here at Haz Waste because they feel like that’s where it’s going – and they’re really excited about that.”