Who are some of your role models?

I look up to many people as role models, including many of my fellow EngineerGirl Gallery Members, but the first name that comes to my mind is Alma Kuppinger Forman. Alma was the first female civil engineering graduate from Drexel University in 1949 and went on to have a very successful career. I attended Drexel University from 2012 to 2017 and also studied Civil Engineering, so having her to look up to when I was feeling discouraged by a hard class was amazing. I have had the honor of meeting Alma several times while I was an engineering student and hearing some of her stories. One I distinctly remember is how in her time, the machine shop on campus was through the men's locker room, so her and some of her fellow female engineering colleagues decided to come up with the solution to sing ‘She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain’ to announce that they were about to walk through the locker room. Alma was a trailblazer in her time and is a source of inspiration to me to continue to reach for my dreams.

One of my other role models is Emily Warren Roebling, the “surrogate engineer” of the Brooklyn Bridge as she oversaw the construction of this pivotal engineering project. If you are interested in learning more about Emily, you can read about her here: engineergirl.org/125425/Emily-Roebling. As a current bridge engineer, I have loved learning more about her as one of the few women in this field. Although she was alive before my time, I still consider her as a role model who needs to be talked about more. Her story reminds us that we all have the potential to be a leader and that you can be successful with hard work and determination.

My childhood role model is Sylvia Earle. She entered the male-dominated field of marine biology and has revolutionized the field. Sylvia Earle took on many hats from researcher, scientist, government administrator, inventor, and explorer. She delivers her message about science in an accessible manner. She is also consistently evolving, adapting, and influencing. Sylvia Earle uses her fame to drive home the changes society needs to make for us to continue to thrive on Earth.

As I have grown into the engineering leadership role, Sylvia Avecedo, former Girls Scouts CEO, has inspired me to stretch my leadership capability. Her career took many twists and turns into new ventures. It encouraged me to say “Yes” to things that were not in a traditional engineering path or opportunities to expand my definition of leadership. Her passion to make the face of STEM representative of everyone showed I could do the same. Her frank and warming style demonstrates how a true leader can empower others and make them rise above their own known capabilities. This skill of how you rise others up is a true cornerstone of a leader and an engineer I want to continue to evolve into.

My dad and mom, and my high school Physics teacher, Mrs. Vicki Taylor, first and foremost. She was the one who encouraged me to go into engineering. She was so enthusiastic about Physics and Calculus, that she made it really fun! She was such a fun loving nerd. The last time that I visited her at school, she was over the moon to tell me about her trip to Space Camp.

Women who have inspired me include Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, COO of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg, CEO of Ellevate Sallie Krawcheck, businesswoman Arianna Huffington, the late Nina Gruen, Principal Sociologist of Gruen + Gruen in San Francisco, whom I was lucky enough to get to form a very brief friendship with. I love the film Hidden Figures which introduced me to the women with the brains behind NASA - Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson. I'd love to see more films about women, especially women of color, in math, science and healthcare throughout history.

I strongly am inspired and believe in women who are trailblazers, the first in their fields or careers. Those women truly paved the way for us women engineers!

Watching the movie Apollo 13 and seeing how Gene Kranz performed his role as Mission Control Director was very inspirational to me. I see him as an excellent role model, demonstrating how you don't have to have all the answers yourself, but you need to learn how to leverage all the smart folks around you to get the best answer to solve the most challenging problems. Gene is a great role model for demonstrating how asking good questions, trusting your team, and staying calm in difficult situations will help you get to good outcomes.

My first engineering role model was my dad. He is a water resources engineer also and he owns his own firm. As a child, I would go to his office after school and he would take me out on jobs. I fell in love with the field. He taught me all kinds of things from how to sound a well to how to install a flume. In sixth grade when other kids were turning copper penny's green for the science fair, I was calculating the salt content of the Glenwood Hot Springs Pool. As I have grown in the field, my dad is still a role model, but now I also look to others in my discipline to model after. I work for the State of Colorado in the State Engineer's Office, so the State Engineer and the Division Engineers have been my primary mentors. Sometimes girls only want to look to other girls and women as role models, but the truth is, in this field, sometimes that isn't possible. There isn't always going to be someone that looks like us to model after. So you take the best parts of the accomplished and helpful senior engineers you work with and sew those traits into your own persona. Someday, you will be a model for others and it will serve you well to be well rounded.

People often think that role models are public figures, but I have always found that we are surrounded by role models we may be overlooking. My own role models include my mother (who navigated widowhood and single parenting as a new immigrant late in life and is still teaching in her late 80s!), some of my women friends (who show strength daily as they juggle careers, parenting, and outreach with aplomb), and some of my own children’s teachers (who change lives every day in a heroic but unsung way). Role models are everywhere, you just have to look, notice, and appreciate.

My role models have changed over time. In elementary school, it was the fictional character Charlotte from the book Riding Freedom. She had spirit and courage. In middle and high school, it was Leonardo da Vinci because he excelled in both the arts and the sciences/engineering. In college, one of my professors, Dr. Meng, was my role model because she was an innovative and trailblazing pioneer in her field who would sharply analyze and provide insight into your work. If that wasn’t enough, she was also kind and humble. An amazing manager and friend of mine became a role model for me after college because she was so good at what she did but also a great mentor, advocate, and supporter of me. In recent years and currently, my role model is Michelle Obama. She’s genuine, compassionate and always has grace. She finds strength to fight in the real world but still humanizes people.

My longest-standing role model is Mother Teresa, since she focused her life contributing to the community, and to the most needy among us.

Barack Obama also is a wonderful role model for so many people, globally. From what we can tell, he is a very thoughtful, educated, talented, kind, calm, patient, and humorous individual.

I am very grateful to my faculty mentor, Professor Hani Mahmassani. He inspires many of us with his energy to tackle a number of meaningful transportation research questions.

Related to this, I highly respect Elon Musk’s design abilities and thoughtful drive to tackle major problems. Our vehicle manufacturers and transportation policies are being guided by his and his teammates’ contributions to electrification, which is essential to decarbonization and planetary protection. In addition, they have made dramatic contributions to deployment of solar power and battery energy storage, while pushing vehicle automation, space exploration, tunneling and other very complex problems forward. All this came after a successful electronic payment application, which kicked off a series of tremendous engineering contributions.

We can only hope that many others will follow in their fantastic footsteps!

Mulan: Not the Disney version but the real Mulan (She is not a princess). She was very brave and this gave me a new impression that women can be tough and strong and able to perform well in her chosen career and protect her family and her homeland.

Qiu Jin: She was a Chinese writer & poet, a strong-willed feminist who is considered a national hero in China. She was known as an eloquent orator who spoke out for women's rights, such as the freedom to marry, freedom of education, and abolishment of the practice of foot binding.

I still think of myself as a student, as I am a lifelong learner. So while some people view me as a role model, I have my role models. Just as you have learned things, experienced life, so those younger than you probably look up to you, even if you are not aware. I am later in my career, and find I have many people that I learn from. It’s not necessarily one person. For example, I might like the way an individual runs or handles themselves in meetings, and so I look up to that aspect and try to emulate, or I might see how effective an individual is at staying organized and finding software code or drawings, or maybe seeing how the approach their design methodology, and I try to take those things into how I do my work. I believe this helps make me a more effective and efficient engineer. I also look to people outside my work, to see how they handle time management, between family and work and activities. So I would say I do not have a single role model in my life, but I have many, many role models in which I am learning different things.

My mom has been the single most important role model in my life, showing me how to rise above challenges and become stronger in the process.