Autumn Kellar – Creating The Future
Engineers Week February 19-25, 2023
Today is Introduce A Girl To Engineering Day, a time to focus on showing girls how engineers can help change the world. On this special day we would like to introduce you to Autumn Kellar! Autumn is based in our Maynard, Massachusetts office and is a Project Engineer in our Municipal Infrastructure Service Line.
Autumn grew up in Virginia and attended Virginia Tech University. Autumn chose to pursue civil engineering because she liked the thought of working to make things more environmentally friendly and do her part to help save the planet.
After graduating in 2014 with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering, Autumn decided she wanted to leave Virginia and followed her now wife to Massachusetts. Soon after arriving, Autumn was offered a job at what was then Haley and Ward (Which was acquired by then CES in 2020).
Over the past few years, Autumn focuses much of her time in the areas of drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater. Some of her favorite work involves water modeling that allows her to use technology to understand how processes will work under different conditions, but she has been able to work on a broad range of projects, which she really enjoys. “Instead of being thrown in niche, was able to work on a broad range of projects” she said, “It’s easy here to ask to be included and to have the opportunity to learn from peers”.
Beyond the wide variety of work that she gets to do, Autumn really likes the culture of empowerment and professional development that Haley Ward has, and the number of women in engineering that the company employs. “You don’t often see that, especially when I was first starting out. All my internship work was done with companies that were almost entirely men, and it makes a real difference in the culture”.
Autumn’s advice for anyone just starting out in engineering is to ask a lot of questions. “A lot of people, feel like they should have all the answers, but you shouldn’t be afraid to admit when you don’t know something. Ask questions, download the knowledge of your colleagues, that is how you will learn and grow”.
Autumn spends most of her free time enjoying life with her wife, Emma, and two-year-old son, Nathan who keeps her very busy!
