Utilities Arizona Group Leader and Outdoor Adventurer

Tell us about your hobby.
Anything that is outdoors, walking, hiking, and golf. A new hobby I recently started is disc golf with my boys. It accomplishes a few different objectives: exercise, enjoying the outdoors, and spending time with my boys. It also allows us to explore the Valley through the different courses we play and we recently played five different courses on a road trip through Colorado.

What is your chosen discipline and why do you love it?
Civil engineering with an emphasis on the conveyance of water through pipelines, reservoirs, and pump stations. I enjoy the challenge of providing the valuable commodity of water in the desert and arid southwest. We have a great team that works well together and collaborates, both internally and with our great clients. Our three main water AZ office locations – Phoenix, Mesa, and Tucson –  give us diversity and help us meet our client’s needs to transport water. Due to drought conditions and the scarcity of water in our region, we have recently been focusing on the reuse and recharge of water and helping our clients utilize recycled and reused water out of the water reclamation plants.

If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be and why? Alaska – I love the outdoors and would enjoy fly fishing, hiking and possibly snowshoeing up there and exploring the wilderness.

What’s one thing you’re learning now, and why is it important?
As a manager I am learning how to empower and trust my team to make their own decisions and support them on those decisions. I am working to be a better active listener, especially with our clients. My goal is to focus on what is being said instead of always thinking what I am going to say next. To be a good leader you have to be able to understand the team from their perspective – if you can’t understand from their perspective you won’t understand the outcome they are delivering.