Senior Traffic Project Engineer and Artistic Hobbyist

Tell us about your hobby.
I have many as I really like to experiment and be diverse as with all aspects of my life. I have a few hobbies that I stick to, but I regularly find new ones. My go to hobbies tend to be on the more artistic side such as dance, painting, crafting, and even cooking. Even within those hobbies I like to change things up. I never create the same thing twice. My cooking is a great example of that. I rarely follow a recipe or measure any of my ingredients, so I rarely cook the same thing more than once. If I do, I usually change it a little bit from the last time I made it in an effort to make it even better.

What is your chosen discipline? Why do you love it?
My chosen discipline is engineering and more specifically traffic engineering. I love engineering because every day is a new challenge. As with my hobbies, I enjoy the diversity. The challenges may be similar between projects, but they are never the same and with every new project I can apply what I learned from the previous projects.

If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?
I would love to go to Spain. I took Spanish all four years of high school and during that time we studied many Spanish speaking countries, including Spain. I became very fascinated with the country and its culture. Then in college my fascination grew through an architecture history class I took. We learned about famous architecture from around the world. The architecture in Spain stood out to me the most. I would love to see it in person some day and experience the culture of the country.

What’s one thing you’re learning now, and why is it important?
One thing I am learning about now is life balance. As I have transitioned over the past few years from being a student and working part time, I have found that my priorities have changed with it in how I balance all the important aspects of my life. In school I was very imbalanced and focused on getting through school and let everything fall by the wayside. I learned from experience and through mentors that balance is important in order to keep myself happy and working efficiently. Therefore, it is important to me to put in the effort at work to be successful on projects and support my team and the company goals and foster good relationships in the industry. It is also important for me to balance that work by making time for friends and family as well as prioritize my health through downtime and healthy eating and exercise habits. Putting the effort into life balance has had a huge impact on my life thus far.