// NATIONAL SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERS

I’m a Past President of the NSPE California State Society. I previously served on the NSPE National Board of Directors where I worked on career development initiatives for early career engineers as its Young Engineers Director. I’ve served on NSPE’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Advisory Committee and as a mentor for NSPE’s Emerging Leaders Program.

Prior to that, I served as the Industry Director for the Connecticut Society of Professional Engineers and am a Past Chair of the Professional Engineers in Industry (PEI) interest group. In 2015 I was part of a small splinter group that founded NSPE NextGen, created to promote the EIT pathway and PE Licensure to emerging professionals.

The National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE.org) was founded in 1934 as a non-profit advocacy group, promoting the professional engineering license (PE) and its aim to promote the safety and well being of the public in the context of technological advances and engineering ethics.

// PECon: NSPE’s Annual Meeting (August 2021)

Originally this year’s PECon would have centered around meeting colleagues in Philadelphia for coffee at La Colombe at Rittenhouse Square after each days sessions to talk engineering ethics, diversity in licensed engineering and the future of the profession. But we are still very much in precautionary, pre-emptive COVID mode (hi, delta!) so virtual it was. And while it will never be quite the same as meeting old friends in person, the connections and professional camaraderie are still very much thriving in NSPE.

// NSPE-California Virtual Meeting (Spring 2021): Milton F. Lunch Ethics Contest Winners

As an NSPE-California alum, I’m so happy to see that our virtual series is picking back up and gaining participation and momentum. A recent get together was focused on the intersection of NSPE’s Code of Ethics with autonomous vehicles and a separate talk on building codes and environmental risk, featuring NSPE Milton F. Lunch Ethics Contest winners Beth Fifield Hodgson, PE and Linda H. Bergeron, PE, FAIChE.

Before COVID made virtual meetings a common everyday occurrence, we had started a NSPE-CA Lunch Break series, short networking sessions during Friday lunchtimes centered around a topical discussion.

With a goal of bringing professional engineers into the conversation around the ethics of emerging technologies, we brought more ideas to the forefront and most importantly, connected California Engineers to each other across the state.

So proud of the current leadership team of NSPE-CA and glad we’re getting these series back up and going.

// In Memoriam: Bob Miller, PE

NSPE lost Bob Miller on December 3, 2020, a huge leader, mentor and friend.

In my earliest days as an NSPE member, crossing paths with Bob, sharing a hallway conversation or co-heckling the NSPE Board during an annual meeting, became something I would look forward to each year.

He was always ready to provide advice on how to navigate the machinations of NSPE. Our conversations always revolved around keeping public safety in the forefront while having a good time doing it through NSPE’s advocacy in the public sphere as well as through our NSPE Education Foundation. Whether it was him sharing guidance on how to be an effective Board member over a glass of wine in Miami or watching him don a dress and “fall” into a swimming pool, he was more than the life of the party. He was the spark of NSPE.

NSPE’s annual conference, PECon, will be a little less bright each year without Bob’s shining personality and sideways smirk.

A celebration of Bob’s distinguished life is here at nspe.org

// California History

Part of my duties as Past President of NSPE-California was to get some hand-off materials and archives together for future boards. Part of that work involved me finally getting photos of some of NSPE-California artifacts (founded as “California Society of Professional Engineers”) uploaded and transcribed so the information could be merged with our national site at nspe-ca.org.

Of those artifacts, the two most significant were the charter that California officially received from NSPE national in the 1948-49 inaugural year, bringing us officially into existence three years after NSPE itself was founded.

The other was a plaque furnished by past Cali President Harold Strauss in 1970 which lists the names of all California Presidents up to the start of 2017 (when yours truly assumed office as society President).

// NSPE PECON2019 IN KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI (JULY 2019)

(Re-post from the NSPE California e-Newsletter, where I filed my last piece as State President in July 2019).

// NSPE-CALIFORNIA PRESIDENT’S UPDATE: The Highest Law

The Southland Mall sits within view of the highway in the San Francisco suburb of Hayward. In keeping up with the disruptions going on in the retail industry, Southland has tested everything from changing its mix of stores to a complete rebranding and modernization of its structure and interiors.

It was a weeknight evening when I parked my car underneath the Southland Mall’s new sign. It had been rebranded with a new scripty typeface that looked like the signature dashed off at the end of a thank you card.

I had been in the midst of the Bay Area’s infamous traffic when I saw that I had a missed call from Ken Discenza who had been serving on the board of NSPE-California. The Southland exit was the closest escape route off the highway where I could pause and return his call. He and then NSPE-California Executive Director Marti Kramer had been working with me on the Society’s virtual chapter and we were in the midst of restructuring some of the state’s activities so I knew it would be an important conversation. But Ken had other ideas. NSPE-California was under a serious transformation, Ken said, and they were looking for an experienced NSPE member to take over as President. They wanted me to consider taking the role.

At the time, I had already been busy on a few NSPE national task forces and had no shortage of to-do list items that I was trying to finish up. Perhaps it was a moment of weakness at the end of a long work day or maybe it was the drone of the interstate traffic, but I said yes. More likely, it was my desire to continue working alongside a passionate team that collectively advocated for the safety and well-being of the public with a direct concern over the impact of licensure to California engineers.

Today, a little more than two years later, I am so proud of what we’ve accomplished together. Between an ever shifting membership landscape across technical professional organizations like NSPE, a retiring Executive Director, a visual and structural transformation of California and of NSPE at the national level, it’s been two years of delightful, productive work.

We’ve done so much and we still have so much more to do. As we head into the start of NSPE’s new fiscal year, NSPE-California has committed to a new action plan centered on member value: the reason why any California Engineer joins and stays a part of NSPE-California. With initiatives such as cross-functional collaborations with sibling societies such as the National Institute for Certification in Engineering Technologies (NICET), partnering with the State of California on its technical education initiatives in primary and secondary schools, and the development of a forum centered on women in engineering in California, NSPE-California has a very bold future ahead.

And for the 2019 – 2021 term, you have a talented leadership team serving you throughout California to make it all happen. For our new officer installation ceremony, we enhanced our traditional pass-the-gavel ceremony by gifting the incoming President with their own actual gavel. On it is inscribed their name and this quote from famed Roman Orator, Cicero: salus populi suprema lex esto or “The health and welfare of the people should be the supreme law.” It’s an incantation worthy of welcoming in the new California leadership. I couldn’t be prouder of this incoming leadership team with Mehdi Khalili as our President and the mark he and the team will make on California and on NSPE as a whole.

Thank you so much for the privilege of serving you these past two years as NSPE-California State President. That day I parked underneath the flashing Southland Mall sign was the best experience rush-hour traffic has ever given me.

And the lights are still glittering.

// LAST BOARD MEETING AS CALIFORNIA STATE PRESIDENT - JUNE 2019

// NSPE-California Strategic Planning in Venice Beach (March 2019)

As difficult as it is to help run a state society that spans the 800 mile north to south range of California, the times the leadership team does get to meet up face to face is always a delightful treat. Being a joint meeting of NSPE-California and our sister subsidiary that runs the state’s MATHCOUNTS competition for local high schools, we got to cover the pipeline of engineers into the profession, from aspiring student to practicing licensed professional.

As I had begun winding down my term as NSPE-California state president, this workshop became the perfect opportunity to do some succession planning and lay out the direction of the state over the next five years. And meeting in sunny Venice Beach certainly helped with the mood as well.

// NSPE Annual Professional Engineers Conference (#PECON18) - Las Vegas (July 2018)

Heading into the second half of my term as NSPE California State President, I got the chance to onboard our amazing new Executive Director Jeanne Marie Tokunaga and our Vice-Chair, Mehdi Khalili, PE. Every year, NSPE holds its annual conference, PECON and there couldn’t have been a more exciting place to welcome in a new team than amidst the neon buzz of Las Vegas.

// A Chance in the Golden State (May 2017)

In May, I became the 58th President of the California Society of NSPE, a huge honor for a kid who first learned about professional engineering licensure not through a mentor or professor, but through browsing the underground stacks of the Eisenhower Library as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University (when I almost certainly should have been studying instead of procrastinating).

Having had the chance to serve on the Connecticut Society’s board when I lived on the East Coast, getting to reapply some of what I learned there on the West Coast made this opportunity all the more exciting for me.

As was the tradition up to that point, the entering and departing board members for the 2017-2019 term gathered at the city council hall in Mountain House, California for a joint meeting, a planning workshop, and the officers induction ceremony. It was an inspiring beginning to try just a tiny bit to keep NSPE-CA shining.

// NSPE Board of Directors Meeting - Newport Beach, California (2013)

// First NSPE Annual Meeting as a Board Member (Las Vegas, 2011)

// Being Mentored by the Indiana Jones of Mechanical Engineering

(repost from the NSPE Young Engineers Blog post about one of my engineering mentors)

When I first met Dr. Robert Greer, he was going through a combination of spreadsheets and table-sized CAD drawings with the meticulousness of an archaeologist on a work site, hidden behind a pillar of manila folders and three-inch binders.

I had shown up in his office as a new hire engineer, looking for help to get on the path of becoming an EIT. He and I had worked on similar manufacturing projects together, and I had always found his insights fascinating. When I mentioned my EIT aspirations to him, a wry smile crept through his Santa beard and he proceeded to give me one of many morsels of career and life guidance that would form the staple of our friendship. Getting his support for the EIT was so much more than just a signature. Over the next six years we would regularly meet in his office for casual chats or would go seek out a worn bench at a local luncheonette called Bob's (no relation) for chicken fingers and sweet tea. Each time we chatted, little scenes from his past would come to life like pages in an adventure novel: pieces of history, anthropology, sociology, and engineering all melded into one.

He had grown up in the Boston suburbs and then gotten his Ph.D. in polymer rheology in the U.K. where over a pint (or two, or three) of ale he had come up with the skeleton structure of what would become one of his company's most successful device patents. He would go on to lead a rather colorful life during his youthful years in Europe and the Americas, whether it was swimming in the Greek Isles with shipping magnates, having champagne toasts with opera divas aboard black-tie yachts, racing Italian sports cars with fellow engineering doctoral candidates through the streets of Belgium, getting ensnared in manufacturing espionage in Mexican factories, all the way to how operating heavy equipment led him to his beloved wife. And he would do all this in time to make it back to the pub to scribble down another calculation or engineering drawing on a beer-stained napkin. I learned that every living day, we are excavating ourselves and actually living the mantra that the act of treasure-hunting is oftentimes equally if not more rewarding than the treasure itself.

Bob's first piece of career advice to me: "When it all comes down to it, we all just want to end up on the beach."

Part of this may have been literal, but the underlying truths were that every human's life-needs are fundamental ones of family, food, finances, safety, and stability. Regardless of how we as individuals might tailor-define each one of these elements to the context of our own world views, these were fundamentals that did not have to, and in some cases were impossible to, be separated from one another as independent pursuits.

He taught me that engineering as a career is the pathway we traverse in order to further both personal and professional ambitions, and that engineering as a discipline, as it did in his life, opens up unique opportunities by which other life fundamentals can be expressed or re-invented.

Personal life and professional life are intimately intertwined and you don't have to be a controls engineer to see how leveraging their entangled interactions is one feedback loop you do want to keep propagating while on the path to becoming great. His life had been the ultimate engineering assembly drawing of all those things, tirelessly (and to my amusement, cynically) optimized as part of a more refined, more breathtaking whole.

So find a mentor. A good one. And don't stop there. Return the favor. Push yourself to make your life as inspiring to someone else just as your mentor has inspired you.

There might even be some buried treasure in it for you (I hope you like snakes).

// STARTING POINTS

This is very possibly the place where I first became a member of NSPE: Peet’s Coffee in Harvard Square.

I had just moved to New England and through searches on engineering ethics and professional engineering licensure, I found out about NSPE’s local chapter: Connecticut State Society of Professional Engineers. I was still doing research on the Society and that same weekend, took the roadtrip up the Mass Pike to Boston to visit friends.

I had the first evening to myself when I arrived. I navigated the snowy icy sidewalks of Cambridge and camped out for an hour or so at this Peet’s as I thought through my plans for the week.

Reading more about the Connecticut Society and being interested to learning how I could help the cause, I signed up as a member over the Peet’s wifi. I’ve been continuing on at my caffeinated best ever since that night.

// WHAT’S A PE?

Just as one would expect a doctor or lawyer to also be licensed in their field of practice in their respective states, a professional engineering license (or just “PE license”) exists in all 50 states in the US to perform work that directly impacts public safety.

Most common are PEs in civil and structural engineering that handle construction and public works projects, but PEs can be found across most any discipline.