Heather Hershkowitz – Women’s History Month Spotlight

Heather Hershkowitz recently joined the Alpine family, but she’s no stranger to Tahoe. She grew up in Incline Village, getting her lake days every summer and 100+ ski days in the winter. After discovering rally car racing, she was drawn to a tech school in Sacramento, where she learned to be a mechanic and began building cars on her own. Thus began a life on the road working all over the world as a rally race car mechanic. She has lots of travel tales to tell, but is happy to be back home in Tahoe, where five months ago she accepted the role of Alpine Vehicle Maintenance Manager. Read on to learn about Heather’s experience with cars and about the department that keeps Palisades Tahoe moving.

What is your role at Alpine?

I started as the Alpine Vehicles Manager in November 2025, so it’s just been a few months. There are 150 vehicles, including cars, snowcats, snowmobiles, groomers, and trucks. I’m in charge of all of these vehicles and everything inside them. With just 8 mechanics, it’s a lot. We try to do everything here- weld, wench, make our own parts, you name it. We even want to get a sewing machine so we can fix our upholstery in-house. 

As the manager of the shop, I handle a lot of admin work. I delegate tasks and prioritize those tasks for our team, check inventory schedules, fuel reports, work hours, manage our budget and expense reports, make sure hazardous waste is disposed of properly, and order parts and diesel. Overall, I make sure my mechanics have everything they need to do their job. I also go help in the shop when I can. There are a lot of intricacies with these machines, so we are often learning together as a crew. 

I really enjoy the variety in my days, and I am so happy to be back in Tahoe and close to my family here. I grew up in Incline Village, so I have always been connected to Tahoe. I was a ski racer for Diamond Peak and loved it when we came to race at Alpine. It has always been a favorite of mine. My dad actually worked at Palisades as a lifty. It was his first job after moving to Tahoe 40 years ago! 

What made you want to be a mechanic?

In high school, I wanted to save some money, so I learned how to replace my own brakes. I actually really enjoyed it once I figured it out. After I graduated from High school, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, and around this same time, I went to my first rally car race out in Nevada. I heard about it through friends and volunteered to be a timer. Once I was out there and watching cars race by over 100 miles per hour in the desert, I was hooked. My dad had always said, “You know what you want to do in life when it gives you goosebumps and brings a tear to your eye”. That race gave me goosebumps. I knew I had to work in motorsport. 

I enrolled in the Universal Technical Institute in Sacramento and began my studies to become a mechanic. After college, I got an apprenticeship at a Subaru Dealership where I worked for 6 years. 

How did you get into Motorsports?

I enjoyed my apprenticeship, but I was still drawn to those desert-racing rally cars that can handle all conditions. They race on all surfaces: snow, ice, rain, gravel, dirt. I was already building rally cars as a hobby. I built my first car with money I made from a modeling gig at Mt. Rose. My first job in Motorport was in 2016 when I worked for the Subaru Rally Team in Burlington, Vermont. After getting into it there, I left Subaru to work as a freelancer for a rally school called DirtFish in Snoqualmie, Washington. They taught people how to drive and also had four race cars for competitions and events. I made sure the cars were ready to go between events; I did repairs, checked their gearboxes, handled inventory, etc. I was their caregiver. DirtFish was a great company to work for. It was actually the first place I worked as a mechanic that had women’s sizes in their uniforms. Up until then, I was always in men’s clothes. 

After DirtFish, I moved to Race City USA in North Carolina, where I worked for Vaughn Gittin Jr and their drift team. It’s the most prominent and famous drift team in the country. I stayed there until the start of 2020, when I decided to chase some big girl dreams and apply to be a mechanic for Hyundai’s Rally team. I am so glad I did because I got a callback and moved to Germany after COVID to work for them. With Hyundai, I was able to work in the World Rally Championship and travel the world working on race cars. One crazy highlight was getting to go to the world’s toughest rally – The Dakar Rally. I was living in the middle of the Saudi Arabian desert for 30 days, working on world-class cars. When I returned to the US on a more permanent basis, I got to help build the start of a US Rally team called Element RallySport. 

I was in Motorsport for 10 years. In that time, I talked a lot about cars and got to show this fun girly side of myself while working as a mechanic. I was on TV and podcasts, and did a lot of work on my own brand on Instagram @MissShift.

How has your background in motorsport helped you in this role?

I knew this role was going to be a lot, but I come from a background in motorsport racing, and everything in that realm moves fast. My job here at Alpine is to fix vehicles when they break and prevent repairs as best as I can. We focus on trying to foresee issues, and there are always multiple things happening at once, which is exactly how motorsport was. Motorsport is more than racing a car. It’s making sure people are fed, it’s booking hotel accommodation, it’s organizing logistics, it’s 15 things going on at the same time. I didn’t expect my background with rally car racing to be so handy, but there really are so many crossovers.

There are a lot of differences too. Oftentimes, there are recovery missions when a vehicle breaks down on the hill. You need to come in early and work with your team to tow it back to the shop for repair. And there’s a very different mindset you need to have as a manager. I work with various partners in the area – highway patrol, the EPA, Palisades Employees, my shop employees, and our guests. We work to prioritize safety for all of these groups. You have to see and understand all the players in front of you to foresee things and to make things easy when it does go wrong. 

Why did you come back to Tahoe?

I love motorsport, but you are always traveling in this career. I got tired of living out of a suitcase. I would be gone for 1-3 weeks of each month; it became too much. And after my mom passed away, my priorities changed. I wanted to come home and be with my family. When I came back to the US, I first found a job in Birmingham, Alabama, in marketing at an overlanding company. But the Southeast climate was tough; I couldn’t enjoy being outside, so it really pushed me to move back to Tahoe. I missed the snow and the mountains so much. In all of my travels, I never found a place like Tahoe. I am really glad to have found this job at Alpine. It is a great opportunity to settle down in Tahoe. And just like motorsport, it is so mentally stimulating and different every day. 

What has your experience been as a woman in this male-dominated industry?

When I first started my classes in Sacramento, I was the only woman in the room. By my last year, I was 1 of 3. I was the first female mechanic for Subaru Rally Team USA in Burlington, Vermont. And it took me years to work for a company that had women-sized uniforms! The career has definitely been a man’s world. But I have my girly side that is always out when not in uniform. I take every opportunity to get dressed up. I love wearing dresses and heels, and I even used to model for car companies. It almost feels like I am living this double life – working in the shop one day and getting dressed up the next. But this is who I am, and I have learned by now how to carry myself, how to walk confidently, and be authentic in nature. I didn’t mind being the only woman in the shop. Here at Alpine, it is actually the first time in my career that I have worked directly with another female mechanic! So that is exciting. 

The tide is turning. Female mechanics are questioned a lot less now. A few years ago, I won a scholarship from the Jessi Combs Foundation and now mentor a group of current scholars. I help them with projects and talk to them about the industry. Jessi Combs is a huge motorsport inspiration to me, so it’s great to be involved.

One thing that has always kept me going in the mechanics world is that there were always guys significantly less smart than me doing just fine. I always thought, “If he can do it, I’ll be just fine”. Recruiters tried to tell me I would never make it, and here I am still in it with the world’s toughest rally under my belt. I tell my mentees that if the younger generation of boys is getting upset about perhaps the attention a girl gets during the job, for example, photos or interviews, that’s a good sign. They don’t understand why you get all the attention for doing the same thing they are. It means they see you as an equal, and that rocks.