Rudy Bonaparte knows one thing for sure: Earth’s atmosphere is warming, and civil and environmental engineers will lead the way toward mitigating the damage and adapting our infrastructure to the effects of climate change.
More than 30 years after founding construction management firm MBP, Blake Peck, MS CE 78, is confident that its success is thanks to the strong values he and his team have lived by over the years.
In more than 30 years in academia, Reginald DesRoches has learned a lot about leadership.
As the provost of Rice University, he is the chief academic officer—a role that’s often an arbiter between the interests of a university’s faculty and administration.
Stacy Sire, CE 96, loves her job as director of structures engineering at Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Over 23 years, she has risen through the ranks at Boeing Commercial Airplanes and achieved a lot as both an engineer and an executive. But she’s quick to credit her mentors, role models, peers and professors for helping her succeed along the way.
When it comes to leadership, Bill Higginbotham, CE 76, has learned many valuable lessons from the 13 businesses he’s founded over the course of his long and successful career. Actually, that number only includes his “real” businesses—in geotechnical consulting, energy and environmental management, construction, venture capital and more. But Higginbotham is a natural entrepreneur who has started businesses over the course of his life doing everything from cleaning pools to landscaping to buying and selling vintage sports cars.
In three decades of leadership, John Huff, CE 68, has helped Oceaneering International Inc. become the premier organization in underwater technologies. He grew the business from a small diving company to a highly successful corporation with pioneering technologies that have been used to explore deep ocean basins and outer space. He has achieved a lot in the business world, and he says that understanding people is a key to leadership and success.
Hyatt speaker Wassim Selman did a little bit of time traveling in his presentation to School of Civil and Environmental Engineering students, faculty and alumni Oct. 2.
Leadership is complicated — “squishy,” even — but the principles are simple, according to the fall 2017 Hyatt Distinguished Alumni Leadership Speaker. The hard part is applying those principles effectively.
Suzanne Shank still keeps two textbooks on her bookshelf from her days as a civil engineering undergrad at Georgia Tech. From her classes on differential equations and mechanics of deformable bodies, those two books remind her of a key lesson she learned in those days: “I was much stronger when I reached out and relied on the support of my peers. I realized I could only go so far on my own.”
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Mason Building, 790 Atlantic Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332-0355
Phone: 404-894-2201
Fax: 404-894-2278