Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day
Girl Day is a worldwide campaign to engage girls in engineering. Through the campaign, girls learn how engineers are making the world a better place and encourages them to explore this exciting and rewarding career.
Rani is lucky to have a talented group of female engineers with up to 31 years of experience. The group was asked, “Who or what inspired you to become an engineer?”
Kaylyn Haley, PE
My drafting teacher in High School and my Uncle both pushed me to go into the engineering field. My uncle has always been the one telling me that I can do any job I wanted and was encouraging me to do the job no matter the demographics of the job. My teacher was there to help me realize that I can do more than I thought and pushed me to challenge myself.
Joey Lundquist, PE
My mother did. She had been an engineer during WWII, and then was on the local school board while I was growing up and she also became a high school science teacher. While she was on the school board (she was the first woman on the local school board), I think she helped introduce a junior high industrial arts class for girls – where I got my first taste of drafting. My dad was also supportive of us – giving me the opportunity to use the skills from that class to tune up our lawn mowers.
Heather Spencer, PE
The initial suggestion to consider civil engineering came from my Dad, because I was always the one who helped him with building and carpentry projects around the house, and I liked drawing and math. I saw the powerful impact of the mid-west floods of 1993 first-hand and that inspired me to focus on water resources engineering.
Yoko Nomura, EIT
I was inspired to study environmental engineering when I took a soil remediation class for my undergrad degree.
I pursued my Master of Science degree in environmental engineering. Studying at the graduate level and working on research was challenging, but rewarding. Studying at the graduate level is something my mother had always encouraged me to do and I’m glad she did.
I ended up not going into the remediation field, but my work at Rani includes supporting clean, sustainable, natural environments to support our daily life and that is exciting.
Savannah Hintsala
I was torn when I was in high school between pursuing engineering or my love of Art. I love using creativity to make something beautiful or to improve things around me. The technical side of myself has always enjoyed organizing things and solving problems. My parents are a huge part of why I’m an engineer today. When I was contemplating what to pursue with my life, my mom told me to become an engineer and then I can enjoy and afford to have Art as my hobby. Starting school I knew that I wanted to be an engineer but I wasn’t sure of which kind of engineer I wanted to become. I ultimately chose to be a civil engineer because all of the projects we work on help improve important components of everyday life for society. You can describe the location and point out exactly what you helped create to others. After I told my family that I decided on civil engineering, I had family members coming out of the woodwork who were civil engineers too (I guess great minds think alike)!
The other part of why I’m an engineer, is that I had to prove to myself that I could become an engineer. In high school, I had quite a few people doubt my capabilities when I told them I wanted to pursue Chemical Engineering (my first major). Throughout college I would have classmates doubt me too, but my parents have always pushed me to challenge myself and trust my intelligence.
