Like others featured in this column, Kathleen (Katie) Kelly, EIT, A.M.ASCE, took the nontraditional J path to engineering, explaining that her road has been "anything but normal." Her journey began at Mansfield University of Pennsylvania, where she studied music and mathematics. However, life threw her a curve during her sophomore year. Her mother relocated to West Virginia, and Kelly went with her. Because she couldn't afford out-of-state tuition, she took on work as an administrative assistant at an aerial mapping and survey company. It was there that she was introduced to civil engineering as a viable career. Eventually she enrolled at Fairmont State University in West Virginia. After graduating, she entered the civil engineering industry as a public utility waterlwastewater engineer, working with municipalities to provide waterline extensions, among other duties. In 2018, she relocated to Atlanta and spent six months at a heavy civil construction firm working in estimating. Kelly knew construction wasn 't quite right, but she says it was great experience while she searched for the right fit. She eventually landed on structural bridge design with a midsized firm and was employed there for more than three years before making the switch to her current role as a structural engineer in training at Arcadis.
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