On March 10, 2024, our members Kate Ross, Victoria Camp, Kelsie Priest, and Karen Hincks volunteered along with two other amazing women from the industry, Shannon Smyth and Zahra Asadi, to participate in a panel discussion at UBC. This discussion is one of the events organized by Women in Engineering (WiE) that provides mentorship opportunities for students. The event was a huge success and covered some great topics, such as: 

  • Choosing a field and specialization
  • Advice for young women considering engineering
  • Crucial soft skills for success in engineering
  • Preparing for the job market and internships
  • Typical workday in engineering
  • Challenges faced by women in engineering

The panelists shared valuable insights and experiences on gender equity in the workplace and career navigation. The event ended with lots of helpful advice for new university students.

Kate is a Project Manager/Team Lead at BBA Engineering and has a background in Mechanical Engineering. Kate grew up in the Lower Mainland and attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. She graduated in 2014 with a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering. Her career started at BC Hydro, where she spent four years as an Engineer-in-Training completing design, construction, and maintenance engineering rotations at a variety of generating stations around BC. After four years, she left BC Hydro and moved to Christchurch, New Zealand, where she spent 1.5 years working for Meridian Energy, the largest renewable energy utility in New Zealand. When COVID hit in March 2020, she found herself back in Vancouver, where she found her current role at BBA Engineering. Her technical focus remains on hydropower projects, but she has also taken on the role of project manager on several First Nations-led renewable energy projects in Northern Canada, which is a particular passion of hers.

Victoria is Geotechnical Engineer and currently an M.Eng. student. She grew up in Halifax, NS, and moved to Vancouver in 2009 for her undergrad at UBC. She fell in love with the city and people and have been around ever since. She loved her time at university and took advantage of all the opportunities offered to her (volunteerism, co-op, exchange). She graduated in 2015 at which point she started work at a geotechnical consulting firm, BGC, where she got tons of great professional experience. She stepped away in 2022 to pursue a Masters in Science Communication last year, and to complete a Masters in Engineering, which she is finishing up this year at UBC, after which she will be returning to work.

Kelsie is a Project Structural Engineer at Glotman Simpson. Kelsie has a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering with a focus on Structural Engineering from UBC. She has worked at Glotman Simpson since 2012 as a co-op student, since progressing to the role of Project Engineer. Kelsie is also a Co-Founder of WCE, that she and other women engineers established to help support and advance women in engineering. She is a great resource for diversity and inclusion initiatives in the engineering profession and passionate about increasing women’s participation and ability to succeed in our industry. WCE was launched in 2018 and has since grown to over 600 members hosting monthly events made possible by over 70,000 dollars in industry sponsorship to date. In her professional role, she is changing the skylines of Vancouver, Seattle, and Los Angeles as the Project Engineer designing residential concrete towers up to 60 stories tall. Her ambition for the next five years is to work on more social housing projects to contribute to solving Canada’s housing crisis and apply sustainable building practices to reduce embodied carbon in residential buildings.

Karen is the Group Manager and Principal Engineering Geologist at WSP. She was born and raised in Maple Ridge, BC. She moved to Kelowna at 18 to attend UBC-O, then moved to Calgary to complete her Bachelor of Science in Geology and Applied Environmental Geology at the University of Calgary. Karen then went to work as a contaminant hydrogeologist at Alberta Environment for a year. Then Karen moved to Edmonton to complete her Master of Science in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta. At the University of Alberta, Karen’s master’s degree was completed as a joint degree between the Faculty of Science (geology) and Faculty of Engineering, with courses in Engineering Geology and Rock Mechanics. As a result, Karen fell in love with the interface and integration between geological sciences and geotechnical engineering. Following completion of her master’s, she worked for Stantec as a contaminant hydrogeologist for a year and a half, and then she moved to Amec (now WSP) to work in the geotechnical engineering group as an engineering geologist. Karen will have been at WSP for 19 years in May 2024. She has had the opportunity to work in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories.