Stacey Harris
Civil engineering was fun for Stacey – she learned about how buildings stand up to wind and snow – but she really wanted to work in the field where the action is.
As a young girl, Stacey Harris really liked school – especially math and science. Her parents thought she would be a math teacher like them. But Stacey liked Lego bricks, too, and helping her grandpa in his wood shop.
When Stacey went to university, her teachers showed her all of the things she could do with math and science. One of the things was engineering. When Stacey saw engineering on the list of careers, she thought, “I don’t want to drive a train!” because that’s what she thought engineering was.
Then her teachers explained that engineering means designing things that people will build, like buildings and bridges. One teacher told Stacey that civil engineering was like playing with Lego, but for big kids!
Stacey was excited. She went to university for four years to learn how to be an engineer, and even more school to learn about how to run a business. But even after all that learning, Stacey found she wasn’t excited about her work. She felt that something was missing – until she started to work right on the job site. Now she really was building with Lego bricks for big kids!
Stacey was so good at building things and so excited to be doing it that she got to be the youngest general superintendent at her company. She was good at talking to people, at finding out what they needed to do their jobs, and helping them get it.
Not everybody was excited to see Stacey on construction job sites. People in construction were so used to seeing only men working at building things that they mistook her for an assistant or another worker, when really she was the boss of the whole project!
By talking with people and building relationships, Stacey proved that women can be great superintendents. In the future she wants to make a difference in construction, the industry that has given her so much, by helping show companies how they can use technology to build things better.
“Nobody’s going to look at a little girl in a princess dress and think she belongs in construction until we hear and tell more stories like mine.”
Stacey Harris
