Building Communities Both Inside and Out
February, 2021
Projects that Otak undertakes require multi-faceted teams of professionals—engineers, planners, surveyors, designers—but perhaps more important is what each of the team members bring to the table. The team members themselves are multifaceted, bringing not just their professional skills, but a host of life experiences that help form their decisions.
Embodying this is Water Resources Designer and EI Teresa Huntsinger. Don’t let the Engineer Intern moniker fool you. Teresa is a seasoned professional, having started her career working in rural communities for the Peace Corps and then shifting to non-profits that had a focus on environmental public policy, particularly for river and stream health. Her favorite part of her job was promoting green infrastructure and reducing the impacts of urban runoff, and she decided to return to school to strengthen her expertise. “I wanted to learn more of the processes for designing infrastructure like stormwater facilities. I like that working on the design side has a direct, tangible impact,” she said.
She completed a Master’s Degree in Civil & Environmental Engineering, and now has just six months left to be eligible for her PE certification.
While she’s changed gears, she emphasizes that her experiences are brought to bear on all the projects she’s involved with now. She’s working with the team that’s completing the Red Rock Creek project in Tigard, Oregon to explore the benefits, both economic and environmental, of rehabilitating the creek instead of only implementing current stormwater requirements. “The requirements would result in building ponds and underground detention vaults as the area redevelops, but that won’t help restore the severely degraded creek. The area is already urbanized so we looked at how stormwater requirements can drive rehabilitating the creek,” she said.
Internally, she was named program manager for Otak’s equity and inclusion strategy. In this role, Teresa has tapped into her experience from working in the Peace Corps where she learned that to be effective you need to work not only with the official leaders but also with the unofficial leaders who are respected by their peers and often volunteer to get things done, which is why she focuses on making sure everyone is given equitable treatment and opportunities. She says the equity and inclusion committee work has a lot to do with how colleagues and clients relate to each other and bring their different perspectives to projects. “Otak is multidisciplinary already, but we can do more to bring our different cultural and personal experiences to the table and to create opportunities for all kinds of people to grow with us,” she said.
Her recognition of the roles in a community and the value that each has melds into Otak’s vision that the projects they do, in the end, improve communities and do not just solve one problem. “There are different ways of looking at my path which hasn’t been typical for an engineer, but it’s all related to building sustainable communities,” Teresa said.
As Kevin Timmins, project manager for Otak’s Water and Natural Resources Division states, “Teresa has an incredible commitment and engagement with the communities she belongs to. She brings a lot of established relationships, management skills, and different life experiences from her prior career to share with us at Otak and has served us well in her role on the E&I Strategic Plan.”