Kelsie Priest, project engineer at Glotman Simpson, has been recognized with a Structural Engineers Association of British Columbia (SEABC) Young Meritorious Achievement Award.

Kelsie joined Glotman Simpson in 2012 for a co-op placement and then continued to work with the firm as she completed her degree and worked towards her P Eng designation.

Throughout her career, Priest has put immense effort towards building a community of women in engineering and helping others feel more comfortable and welcome within this industry.

She had her eyes set on a career in engineering when she was in elementary school, thoroughly enjoying the studies of math and science throughout high school. She found that a challenge within the field of engineering has been the lack of female role models.

Priest noted that despite having amazing male mentors in the industry who have encouraged her to grow both personally and professionally, she has been challenged by the limited number of women role models in the structural engineering community and because of that, she has an unstoppable desire to be an advocate for gender equality in the workplace.

At first, Priest didn’t see someone like herself in a leadership role, but she took the initiative to change that and in 2018, she co-founded Women in Consulting Engineering and has helped grow the community to more than 500 members and 12 plus industry sponsors. To this day, she serves as co-chair of WCE. She also currently sits on the WinSETT board, which is a non-profit organization which aspires to recruit, retain and advance women within he fields of Science, Engineering, Trades, and Technology.

“It brings me a lot of joy to empower and support other women engineers, especially those just joining the industry,” she said.