Knatz (Geraldine) papers, 1890-2024

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Summary

Title:
Geraldine Knatz papers
Dates:
1890-2024
Creators:
Knatz, Geraldine
Extent:
17.98 Linear Feet 21 boxes and 90 Gigabytes 678 digital files organized in 15 digital folders
Language:
English .
Preferred citation:

[Box/folder no. or item name], Geraldine Knatz papers, Collection no. 7160, Regional History Collection, Special Collections, USC Libraries, University of Southern California

Background

Scope and content:

The Geraldine Knatz papers consist of material created or collected by Geraldine Knatz during or subsequent to her tenures as Executive Director of the Port of Los Angeles (2006-2014) and Managing Director of the Port of Long Beach (1999-2006). Included are weekly reports written by Knatz, management files, correspondence, memoranda, speeches, publications, photographs, posters, awards, press materials, and clippings. In addition, the papers include port-related ephemera and historical materials, minutes of the Board of Harbor Commissioner's meetings (1907-1980), and annual reports (1912-1990). Lastly, the collection includes digital files, accessible via the USC Digital Library, of port-related goals and strategic plans, videos of Knatz's presentations, digital photographs, and other content. Knatz served as the first female director of the Port of Los Angeles, the largest port in North America, and she implemented several groundbreaking environmental initiatives throughout her career, including the San Pedro Bay Ports Clean Air Action Plan and, as Managing Director of the Port of Long Beach, the Green Port Policy and Truck Trip Reduction Program.

Biographical / historical:

Geraldine Knatz supplied the following biographical sketch to the USC Libraries at the time of USC's acquisition of the Geraldine Knatz papers.

Geraldine Knatz was born in New Jersey. She received a B.A. degree in zoology from Rutgers University in 1973, and an M.Sc. degree in environmental engineering in 1977 and Ph.D. degree in biological sciences in 1979, both from the University of Southern California. She completed the Global Logistics Professional (GLP) program at California State University, Long Beach at Long Beach in 2000.

Dr. Knatz is Professor of the Practice of Policy and Engineering, a joint appointment between the USC Price School of Public Policy and the Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Previously, she served as the executive director of the Port of Los Angeles from 2006 to January 2014 and made a significant impact through the creation and implementation of the San Pedro Bay Ports Clean Air Action Plan, an aggressive plan that reduced air emissions by combined port operations of over 70 percent over five years. The Clean Air Action Plan is recognized around the world for its innovation and success. Prior to directing the Port of Los Angeles, Dr. Knatz was the managing director of the Port of Long Beach where she also led a number of environmental initiatives, including the Green Port Policy and Truck Trip Reduction Program.

Dr. Knatz is chairman of the board of trustees for Altasea at the Port of Los Angeles and is on the board of Dewberry Engineering. She is a past member of the Viterbi School of Engineering Board of Councilors, past president of the American Association of Port Authorities, past president of the International Association of Ports and Harbors and was founding Chairman of the World Port Climate Initiative. She served ten years as a gubernatorial appointee on the Ocean Protection Council. Internationally recognized for her accomplishments, Dr. Knatz has received numerous awards, including Outstanding Women in Transportation (Journal of Commerce, 2007), Woman Executive of the Year (Los Angeles Business Journal, 2007), Compass Award (Women's Leadership Exchange, 2008), honorary PhD, Maine Maritime Academy (2009), and the Peter Benchley Ocean Award (Blue Frontier Campaign, 2012). In 2016, she won the Bruckman Award for Excellence in a book about Los Angeles -- presented by the Los Angeles Public Library in recognition of Terminal Island: Lost Communities of Los Angeles Harbor, which Dr. Knatz co-authored. She received a grant from the Haynes Foundation to write the political history of the Port of Los Angeles, Port of Los Angeles: Conflict, Commerce, and the Fight for Control.

Dr. Knatz was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2014 for international leadership in the engineering and development of environmentally clean urban seaports. She served as a member of the NAE Section 12 Peer committee. She serves as a member of the National Academies' Marine Board, and Gibbs Brothers Medal Selection Committee. Previously, she has served as a member of the Committee on the Review of Effectiveness and Efficiency of Defense Environmental Cleanup Activities of the Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management, Committee on Transportation Resilience Metrics, TRB Executive Committee, A Symposium on Arctic Matters: Understanding How the Arctic is Changing and What It Means for People and Places around the Globe, Marine Board (chair; vice chair, member), Committee to Assess the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Methods of Analysis and Peer Review for Water Resources Project Planning, Committee for a Study of the Federal Role in the Marine Transportation System, and Committee for the Study on Landside Access to U.S. Ports.

She currently serves as an advisor to the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) Port serves network headquartered in Bejing, China and is the Chairman of the Grand Jury to select the Antoine Rufenacht Prize, a global award sponsored by the Association of Port Cities, headquartered in Le Havre, France. She serves on several non-profit boards, including the Los Angeles City Historical Society, the General Phineas Banning Residence Museum, the Immigrant Genealogical Society, and is the chair of the Board of Trustees for Altasea at the Port of Los Angeles.

Knatz has authored three books and numerous publications including several focusing on early women marine scientists in Los Angeles Harbor. She co-authored an award-winning book Terminal Island, Lost Communities of Los Angeles Harbor (Reissued in 2024 under the title Terminal Island, Lost Communities on America's Edge). Her most recent award-winning book is a political history of the Port of Los Angeles, co-published by the Huntington Library's Institute for California and the West and Angel City Press, titled, Port of Los Angeles, Conflict, Commerce, and the Fight for Control.

Knatz's career has been featured in several popular books, most notably in Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Edward Humes's Door to Door, Bill Sharpsteen's The Docks, David Helvarg's The Golden Shore and Kat Janowicz's Chasing Zero.

Acquisition information:
Gift of Geraldine Knatz, March 19, 2024.
Processing information:

The intellectual arrangement of descriptive records in this finding aid follows Geraldine Knatz's original organization of the material prior to its acquisition by the USC Libraries. Along with the donation of the papers themselves, Knatz also provided multiple inventories with detailed descriptions of most of the material in the collection. The accessioning archivist re-used Knatz's descriptions for the majority of the records in this finding aid. Many item- and folder-level descriptive records in the finding aid include notes titled "Notes from Geraldine Knatz," which quote the inventories that Knatz provided. The finding aid's series correspond to the separate inventories that Knatz provided--saved as separate Word documents--with her donation. As these inventories were partly based on the collection's previous physical arrangement, there is some overlap of similar topics and formats across the finding aid's series.

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

About this collection guide

Collection Guide Author:
Bo Doub
Date Encoded:
This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2025-01-09 11:36:42 -0800 .

Access and use

Restrictions:

Collection stored off-site. Advance notice required for access.

Terms of access:

All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Department of Special Collections at specol@usc.edu. Permission for publication is given on behalf of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained.

Finding aid description and metadata are licensed under an Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

Preferred citation:

[Box/folder no. or item name], Geraldine Knatz papers, Collection no. 7160, Regional History Collection, Special Collections, USC Libraries, University of Southern California

Location of this collection:
Special Collections
Doheny Memorial Library, Room 209
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0182, US
Contact:
(213) 740-5900
specol@usc.edu
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