#EngineerGirlShow highlights amazing women in engineering to inspire the next generation. This series was produced by George Retelas with his digital art students at SAE Institute.
Watch interviews with Sarah Price and Lauren Thatch from Northgate Environmental Management, Inc. in Oakland, California.
Interview Transcript
Hello, my name is Holly and I am an eighth grader, and I'm really interested in science and math and I was wondering if you could answer a few questions and tell me a little bit about your career?
Lauren Thatch (LT): Generally we’ll do, kind of on-site sampling. So we'll go out, collect environmental samples — so that could be anything from soil vapor to actual soil samples or water samples — and we'll deliver those to a laboratory and then we'll wait for the results to come back and we'll kind of analyze that.
Was there anyone who inspired you to do this?
LT: Actually my dad's very good architect, so growing up I spent a lot of time around construction sites. So I think I always had an interest for structural engineering.
So why did you choose this career?
Sarah Price (SP): I started out wanting to build bridges. Growing up in the Bay Area, I’ve just kind of always been fascinated by the bridges around the bay.
So were there any activities that you did in high school that kind of prepared you for this career?
SP: I did a project in my statistics class where we built a bridge and that's one thing that I always remember. I remember doing my little arch bridge.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
SP: Well I think if you want to pursue math and science you should definitely reach out to teachers right now. I mean for me, it was my high school history teacher that eventually got me kind of an internship with Northgate when I was in college, and then that led to a career later on. So you never really know what connections will find you a good job.