Ana Tijerina Esquino is an Engineer 3 and co-champion of the Advancing Race and Culture Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion group at Mott MacDonald. Connect with her at linkedin.com/in/ana-tijerinaesquino/
1. In layman’s terms, what do civil engineers do?
Civil engineers are big picture thinkers who make and sustain the things and infrastructures that society needs to run and survive. We build transportation networks that get us around our cities. We deal with water supplies, both getting clean water and treating sewage. We deal with power grids and energy supplies. In other words, we deal with our poop, our food and water supplies, our transportation networks, and our energy.
2. What is your background?
I was born in Mexico City, and when I was eleven my family moved to the US where I eventually graduated from high school in southern California. I attended community college part time while I worked, mainly in banking because my father worked in finance. At the back, I helped to manage our construction portfolios and discovered that I really liked checking in on building projects. With that interest and the fact that I was pretty good at math, I decided to focus on engineering, even though my understanding of what that entailed was a bit vague. I moved to Portland specifically to establish Oregon residency and attend Maseeh College at PSU.
3. What was your educational path?
I took ten years to get my undergraduate degree, even though I took a lot of classes, both in San Diego and at Portland Community College. One factor was that I needed to continue working and that I changed my major after taking several classes.
4. Why did you choose Maseeh College at PSU?
Originally, the biggest driver to me was cost. Maseeh College is one of the most affordable engineering schools on the west coast. Once I started classes and got to know the school, I knew I had made the right choice. The professors at Maseeh are preparing you for the world, not just for academia.
5. What was your favorite aspect/experience/moment/class/professor at Maseeh College?
I remember my first engineering class with Dr. Avi fondly. He asked if he could take a class picture and by the second day of class he had already memorized our names. I had never before really felt people were invested in me as a human being, but I did at that moment. I also feel this experience was not unique to that class–generally at PSU all of the faculty staff are incredibly encouraging of personal growth and helping me find pathways to accomplish my goals.
6. Do you have any advice or words of wisdom for current Maseeh College students?
Build your network: your network really really matters. The civil engineering community is small, and the connections you make in your program will open future doors for you. So make sure that while you're learning the skills, you're also creating the network.
7. Do you have any advice for high students/young people/aspiring engineers?
Stick with it. Things are supposed to be hard if they weren't, it won't be so satisfying when you finish. Dive further into it. You don't need to be already good at something, like math; you can learn that as you go. Also, if you don’t want to be an engineer, you don't realize how cool it is and you don't know how much it helps society. Engineering is more fun than you realize, and you’re absolutely capable of doing it.
8. How did Maseeh College help you prepare for your career?
PSU’s engineering college teaches you how to solve problems and prepares you for a job in the real world right away. Taking part in holistic extracurricular activities and student organizations also helped build my network and prepared me most for a job.
9. Please share any career highlights, awards/recognition you've received, and/or accomplishments you're most proud of.
The first highlight that comes to mind was presenting at the annual Sustainable Stormwater Symposium in Portland as a professional. I was also recently honored as a 2022 New Face of Civil Engineering Honoree. There were only ten winners of this award, and when I went to the annual conference in Anaheim, we were honored at a gala.
I really enjoy being on the Social Outcomes team at Mott MacDonald, where we work on different initiatives involving accessibility and resilience and make sure engineering directly serves communities. I’m also proud of my outreach work with Portland students, including workshops with Adelante Chicas, encouraging young Latina women to explore civil engineering, and bridge-building workshop and competition at Grant High.
10. What are you most hopeful about in terms of engineering and/or engineering projects in the future?
All of the easy problems have been solved, and now engineers have to get to work on solving the complicated problems. That's exciting as a young engineer because you’re testing limits. We have really big growth issues that we have to address, and we need to combat climate change and make our communities more resilient.
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