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President
Kim Levine,
Asset Management Associates, PLLC
Vice President
Jenny Fleming, PE, Ecological Engineering
Secretary
Memory Washaya, NCDOT
Treasurer
Jessalyn Abril, PE, LEED AP,
Stewart
Past President
Amy Simes, PE, CPM, NCDENR |
Advocate Sponsor  |
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Leslie Tracey, PE
City of Durham
Hatch Mott MacDonald |
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 I hope everyone is having a great start to the year and looking forward to the spring warm-up! Here at the NC Triangle Chapter of WTS, spring will bring with it some great programs. Next month, we will kick off the 2014 breakfast series, and the first one will focus on personal and professional finances. Come by to get some advice from a financial advisor about investing and how to plan for the future.
Transportation YOU, the mentoring program for middle-school-aged girls, is underway for the 2013-14 school year. The group met recently to introduce about 15 girls to pavement design engineering. Everyone learned a lot and got to take home "asphalt cookies" - made from aggregate (coconut flakes, walnuts, etc.) and binder (melted chocolate). The program has one more event planned in April before the school year ends, and becoming a mentor is a great way to get involved with WTS and your community.
Also, we're gearing up for our annual Go Gala event in May, as well as a big membership drive event. Stay tuned to this space in the coming months for more information on those events and make plans to attend or help out. The chapter's BINGO game is still underway, and it's not too late to get started. Attend the next WTS event, pick up your BINGO card at registration and start covering the squares. We hope to see you at the next event!
Kimberly J. Levine
President, WTS NC Triangle Chapter
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Upcoming Events in March
 The WTS NC Triangle Chapter's breakfast series for 2014 will start March 11. Bonnie-Clare Kunath, ChFC, CLU, CASL, of AXA Advisors in Raleigh, will speak about personal and professional finances. Women Wealth & Wisdom shares the message that Knowledge is Power when people make sound, educated financial decisions for themselves and their families. Ms. Kunath will talk about helping women and their families learn more about investing, family finances and planning for their future. The event will be from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. at Stewart Engineering, 421 Fayetteville St., Suite 440, in Downtown Raleigh. The fee to attend is $5, which includes breakfast (coffee and bagels), and the deadline to register is March 10. Click here to register.
Other March activities include:
The Success Suits Her luncheon is a fund raising event for the Dress for Success Triangle, an organization devoted to helping low-income women make the transition into the workforce. The luncheon will be 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. March 21 at Exhibit Resources in the Brier Creek area. The keynote address will be delivered by Anita Brown-Graham from the North Carolina State Institute for Emerging Issues. Visit Success Suits Her for more information. Tickets are $75, and the deadline is March 3. Click here for tickets. Click here if interested in volunteering. Volunteers can attend for free.
The WTS NC Triangle Chapter will volunteer as a group for Habitat for Humanity March 28. The volunteers will work on a home in Raleigh from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sign up to volunteer by clicking here, and also contact Paddy Jordan with WTS, in order to get information about schedules and coordination among the volunteers. For more information, click here. |
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Get to Know Your Board
 President Kimberly Levine
Kimberly Levine has been an active member in the WTS NC Triangle Chapter for over 10 years. Upon graduating from NCSU in 2003, a colleague and member of WTS prompted Levine to attend a WTS luncheon, which initiated her active participation. Serving as Treasurer for several years led to the role as Vice President. Finally this year, Levine has decided to continue her journey with WTS by serving as President. Levine encourages anyone unfamiliar with WTS, or even on the fence as to whether or not to join, to attend an event and come check out WTS for themselves.
"The networking is fantastic," said Levine, who lives in Apex with her husband Greg and almost 2-year-old daughter Rebecca. I get to meet people I probably wouldn't meet otherwise, including some of my now most cherished friends."
Levine started at HNTB after graduation, and has been working as a contractor for the North Carolina Turnpike Authority for the past six years. Just recently, she began her new role at Asset Management Associates as Project Manager.
"For women working in the Transportation field, WTS has a special function that other organizations can't provide," she said. "Although we have many male members, WTS also appeals to the outnumbered women in our field, and it's comforting to meet and know other women who are balancing having it all. We serve as a support system for each other, and truly enjoy spending time with each other at our events." |
In Case You Missed It ...
About 15 elementary- and middle-school girls learned about pavement design engineering as part of the Transportation YOU mentoring program recently. LaTonya Heyward, PE, an NCDOT pavement design engineer, talked about her job - what she does on a daily basis, both at her desk and in the field - and how she got to where she is. She showed off cores drilled from various sites around the state and explained the process of building roads. Then the girls learned how to make "asphalt cookies." These are no-bake cookies with ingredients that mirror the asphalt mixture used to pave roads. Aggregate is represented by coconut flakes, walnuts and oats, and the binder is represented by melted chocolate. The girls mixed it all together and flattened the mixture using soda cans, which represent the rollers used to compress asphalt in the field. For more information or to volunteer, contact Nadia Aboulhosn.
 Introduce a Girl to Engineering
In conjunction with NCDOT, the WTS NC Triangle Chapter supported the "Introduce a Girl to Engineering" event in Raleigh recently. NCDOT held a series of these workshops across the state during National Engineers Week in February to encourage high-school girls to consider STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) related fields as career paths. About 30 girls attended the workshop in Raleigh, where they learned about engineering careers and completed a hands-on activity of designing and building rubber-band cars. Women make up only about 10 percent of engineers nationwide. See video of the event here or here.
Future Cities
A team of students from J.M. Alexander Middle School in Huntersville won the state DiscoverE Future City competition recently. A number of WTS NC Triangle Chapter members volunteered to be judges for the competition, which involves teams of students using city planning and management concepts to design a future city using SimCity software. The students write a research paper on a city issue and build a model of their city. This year's competition theme was transportation-related: Identify a problem of moving people in your future city and design a mode of transportation to solve this problem. For more information, visit the Future City competition website. |
We are always looking for newsletter content, volunteers, ideas and suggestions about our involvement in transportation programs. If you are interested in being a newsletter editor please contact Leslie Tracey or Paddy Jordan.
Thanks
WTS NC Triangle |
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