What I Do I am The Director of Operations and Engineering for an Aggregate (crushed rock) producer. In my role I oversee twenty different mine locations as well as a technical services team of 13! At my company we produce construction aggregate, which is rock used to make asphalt, concrete and for site work. We also have two Industrial Minerals site where we mine high calcium and high-magnesium limestone. Hi-Cal limestone is used in the cement, adhesives and energy industries. Hi-Mag Limestone is used in glass making, agriculture and at golf courses as bunker sand! I lead all aspects of the operations, which starts with prospecting, mine planning, blasting and processing the stone. With my engineering team we create mine and environmental plans, use drones to conduct site surveys and work on large capital expenditure projects to improve the safety and performance of my sites!
Why Engineering? When I was growing up I really enjoyed building things and learning how they worked. All through school I was really good at math and science, so I felt engineering was a natural fit.
School Days I have my BS degree from Virginia Tech in Mining and Minerals Engineering and a MS degree from Wilkes University in Engineering Management.
My Day At Work My days are so fun because each one can be different. I can be working with my team on mine plans, discussing how best to utilize the resources we are mining, how to set the haul roads up to be safe and productive. I also work on how to improve throughput at my plants to make the different sized rocks that are needed for our customers. I prepare budgets, and prodcution plans. I can be found walking the sites and conducting safety and performance audits. I also work with my team and my vendors to design improvemnts to my plants. Mining really is a BLAST (pun intended)!
Best Part I love being and engineer because I am always solving problems and challenges, I have the opportunity to do so many different things. Engineering really has given me a great structured thoguht process which can be used to solve any problem!
Proud Moments I have a few proud moments in my career, early on in my career the company I worked for started a performance group, I was asked to join and was the only woman on the team! In doing this work I had the chance to learn from some really amazing people as well as share my knowledge of mining engineering. At one of the sites I was working at we were able to improve the plant throughput by adjusting the plant setup! Most recently my proudest moment is actually building out my current engineering team. When I took over the engineering and technical services team, I had three people. I've been able to grow that team to 13 and bring in not only some really talented engineers, but 2 geologists, and some great project managers too!
My Family I am so blessed to have a wonderful family, my husband Patrick works in Talent Acquisition for the healthcare industry. We have two beautiful children, my daughter Sophia and my son Noah. We also have two adorable labs Sunnie and Bruno.
Want to be an Engineer? I say go for it! This is such a rewarding field to be a part of and there are so many opportunities for engineers. Engineers can to "engineering" or they can move into sales, management, teaching etc. Yes the schooling can be difficult and challenging but I have found it to be so rewarding.
Hobbies When I'm not working I enjoy playing with my kids and dogs, reading books, growing my flower and vegetable gardens (we especially love lavender, cucumbers and peas).