Your early experiences working with your father’s masonry business sparked your interest in engineering. How did those formative years influence your career path?

I love building houses!  Masonry construction - whether it’s building brick walls, stone fireplaces, concrete block warehouses - is both an art and a trade. Working for my father’s small business was a lively and enjoyable summer job. I learned valuable, practical skills and could see what we’d built at the end of the day.  

I’ve carried that love of construction, especially housing, with me throughout my career.  In the early days of Build Change, we held bricklaying trainings and competitions, with the goals of building masonry walls that were “Fast, Neat, Strong”.  

Not only did my dad teach me the value of hard work, he also demonstrated the importance of listening to the customer. He did a lot of custom work and invested in building relationships with his clients.  This client-first, homeowner-driven, user-centered design approach has always been at the heart of Build Change’s ethos.

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in transitioning from traditional engineering roles to launching Build Change, and how has its mission evolved over time?

As much as both of my parents were inspiring role models when it came to working hard, treating people fairly, solving problems and recognizing patterns, I faced some resistance when it came to my career choices. It seemed risky to follow a PhD with a Fulbright Fellowship to India.  

Also, I had to learn on the fly in other disciplines necessary to run and scale a company and create systems change - business, marketing, HR, policy advocacy, financing. Fortunately, today’s graduates have more opportunity to build those skills before leaving school. Programs with interdisciplinary focus on sustainability and global development were nascent when I was in graduate school in the late ‘90’s. 

Build Change’s mission of reducing deaths, injuries and economic losses from building collapse due to disasters has essentially stayed the same, though it has broadened in scope. Initially, the focus was primarily on earthquake-resistant housing, with our early programs in Indonesia after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and subsequent earthquakes, the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China, and the 2010 earthquake near Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  Flood resilience was addressed from the start, and it wasn’t long before we expanded our mission to include resilience to hurricanes and typhoons and fires. 

Also, in the early days, we supported families to rebuild new housing after disasters.  After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, we saw an opportunity to retrofit damaged buildings.  It is more cost effective and offers better protection to strengthen an existing building before a disaster.  Our prevention retrofitting programs have really accelerated over the last few years. 

With much of your work focusing on making homes safer in disaster-prone regions, what are some of the biggest obstacles in changing global construction practices? How do you approach balancing engineering, finance, policy and community engagement to create lasting impact?

One of the largest obstacles is financing - making financing affordable and available to those who need it most.  After a disaster, there is a history of government or NGO subsidy to support people to rebuild.  If we want to strengthen existing housing to prevent a disaster, we have to be creative about financing, using government subsidies as well as loans from microfinance agencies. 

We’ve learned a few things about how to lend to homeowners to strengthen existing housing.  First, existing clients of lenders, especially women, have high repayment rates. Next, home improvement projects may be more manageable for both lender and borrower if they are done incrementally.  For example, a homeowner borrows for a roof repair, does the work, pays it back, then takes another loan to upgrade a kitchen.  

Homeowner engagement is more an opportunity than an obstacle, but it takes time, effort, and good listening skills to meet people where they are.  We leverage incentives to create change - subsidies are given out in installments, contingent upon complying with building standards.  

At 20 years, Build Change has enabled over 1.4 million clients to build a new or retrofit an existing home to withstand disaster.  This equates to 280,000 safer buildings and  over $5.2 billion in assets protected from loss in disaster.

Looking back at your time at Illinois and your early academic journey, how did your experience in General Engineering help shape your career and the way you approach problem-solving?

Early exposure to design software, hands-on learning experiences, and the opportunity to take a Secondary Field. 

My first exposure to AutoCAD was during my Freshman year at Illinois, in a Computer-Aided Design course.  Build Change has used drafting software from the start, and has had a successful 10 year partnership with Autodesk.  Use of tools like Revit and Dynamo Scripts has enabled us to scale existing home retrofitting programs by applying prescriptive design rules to like types of buildings.  This enables efficient design for existing houses which all look the same.  

Check out Build Change’s use of workflow automation tools and crowdsourcing photographs to reduce field visits and increase design efficiency for retrofitting houses after the 2015 Ghorka earthquake in Nepal. 

The Balsa Wood Design Project, which combined construction of a structure with numerical modeling, was an excellent lead-in to the physical model testing and numerical analysis I did in grad school, and continued with Build Change.  Being able to observe how a physical object behaves - particularly buildings in earthquakes and windstorms - has informed and influenced Build Change’s engineering solutions.  I’ve had the incredible opportunity to lead or participate in 17 post-disaster reconnaissance missions in 10 countries. These experiences enabled me and our team to develop research partnerships with universities in multiple countries.  

Exposure to economics and marketing through the Secondary Field option wetted my appetite for a more diverse academic background.

Your induction into the National Academy of Engineering is a tremendous honor. What does this recognition mean to you, and how has it influenced your mission and goals moving forward?

What an enormous honor!  I’m so proud to represent engineering and the U of I within the NAE.  While Build Change’s work has evolved to a truly multidisciplinary approach, cost-efficient, scalable, life-saving engineering solutions will always be at the foundation.  

We start with an affordable, culturally appropriate, disaster-resilient design that can be built with local materials and scaled through process automation. Most of our clients prefer masonry buildings - concrete blocks, fired bricks. Small changes such as adding confining beams and columns and tying them together, tying down the roof, and focusing on workmanship can increase resilience.  The NAE recognition is a strong validation of this design approach.  

The field of disaster resilience and sustainable housing has evolved significantly in recent years. What innovations or trends are you most excited about, and how do you see Build Change contributing to these advancements?

While building codes may not seem innovative or trendy, their absence, especially for existing housing built in informal neighborhoods, can lead to a regulatory vacuum when it comes to building upgrades. In partnership with the Colombian Seismic Engineering Association (AIS), Build Change contributed to the creation of AIS 410-23, a first-of-its-kind methodology for upgrading informal housing to withstand earthquakes.  Colombia’s Minister of Housing signed it in 2023.  

Another 1 billion people live in informal housing around the world. Similar efforts in other countries, combined with financing, could lead to safer, healthier housing for many more people who currently lack basic services and safety in their homes. 

Build Change was the first to illustrate that damaged, unreinforced masonry homes could be strengthened and saved after an earthquake.  This shift away from a temporary shelter approach, which wastes materials and time, presents a permanent, long-term option that preserves the homeowner’s initial investment in their home.  I am excited to see this shift away from temporary solutions to permanent housing. 

Build Change has also pushed the disaster relief and development industries to look at housing, especially upgrading of existing housing, as more process than product.  Our innovations are less about the building materials themselves and more about making the process to assess, design, and retrofit/repair houses more efficient.  We use technology to design houses quickly, reduce the number of site visits and inspections, and support the local market to source the most affordable building materials.

Women remain underrepresented in engineering. Reflecting on your journey, what challenges have you faced as a woman in the field, and how can the engineering community better support and encourage women to pursue and thrive in this profession?

I’ve had some amazing opportunities, supporters, mentors, and partners over the years, for which I am truly grateful. Yet the challenges for women in engineering and in leadership - in almost any field where women are in the minority - are significant and growing. It is well known that women entrepreneurs receive significantly less funding than men; the same is true in the field of non-profit social innovation. 

It’s a difficult moment for women. We have to stick together and support each other, find and engage allies, and support the clubs and societies that create a safe space to help women thrive in engineering. Channeling financial support to women-led organizations and those supporting women’s leadership and participation in technology fields is essential for these programs to grow and thrive. 

Regarding gender bias, we have to educate ourselves about gender bias, learn to recognize it, and steel ourselves to minimize its effects.  It’s not easy, but it can be done.

Build Change has not only transformed construction practices but also empowered women in the communities you serve. Can you share an example of how your work has helped advance gender equity in engineering and construction?

During my 20 years at Build Change, we broke many barriers and records when it comes to gender equity.  We were the first woman-led organization to win the top five awards for social innovation and entrepreneurship.  With women leaders, Board members, engineers, finance experts, coders and construction trainers, our stats were groundbreaking and industry-leading.  As a leader, I consistently fought to maintain spaces for women, to recognize and address the challenges women face on the construction site and in the field, to ensure pay equity and to adapt our benefits to support working parents.  

Build Change has created capacity building programs for women engineers, hired women construction trainers, trained over 38,000 women in the basics of safe construction, and supported women owned businesses in the building materials industry.  

Build Change creates an enabling environment where women can lead the decision making process for their home - they make the decisions about materials and architecture - where is the kitchen, where are the doors, etc. 

Read more about Build Change’s partnerships with women here. 

For students and young engineers interested in making a social impact through engineering, what advice would you give to those aspiring to enter the field?

Get out there!  Meet your client where they are. Get your hands dirty. Take risks. It’s one thing to theorize a solution in a classroom or lab.  It’s an entirely different opportunity to build something that solves a problem in a local context.  Get a Fulbright fellowship, join the Peace Corps, find an internship. 

Build your network!  People have asked me if one person can change the world, and I believe they can, but we need a lot of help from our friends.  Make genuine partnerships with people in other disciplines and learn from them. 

Communicate!  Invest in building your communication skills, and diversifying them. It’s essential to be able to communicate through multiple media and to multiple different audiences.  

Find what you love and just do it.  Housing - resilient housing, safe housing, especially for women - is a lifelong quest and passion for me.  Doing something you truly love and feel committed to makes the risks and sacrifices worth it.

Looking ahead, what’s next for you and Build Change? Are there any upcoming projects or initiatives that particularly excite you, and what are your aspirations for the future of women in engineering?

After 20 amazing years, I stepped aside from the CEO role at Build Change at the end of 2024.  The team is continuing Build Change’s high impact work, expanding in Colombia, Indonesia, Nepal and the Philippines, growing new programs in Turkey, Morocco, and Mozambique.  

Women’s contributions to the fields of science, engineering, technology, and entrepreneurship are being recognized in ways overlooked before.  I look forward to continuing to amplify and elevate women’s contributions through the NAE recognition and other networks. Women will continue to invent, to innovate, to engineer, to solve problems, to lead.