What is more inspiring than reading a story of resilience in the civil engineering profession in the U.S. and knowing she’s the project manager of the San Francisco Bay Tunnel Project.
Yesterday, a colleague shared the link to the article on Inquirer.net about San Francisco Bay Tunnel Project Manager Johanna Ilano Wong.
Johanna, who hails from the Philippines, graduated from her civil engineering course with honors at the University of the Philippines. Her family moved to the U.S. for better advancement opportunities.
Her family started hard in the U.S., living in a garage before moving to a real house.
Despite being a top-notch civil engineer in the Philippines, her lack of actual U.S. experience made finding a job very challenging.
Inquirer.net writes:
It was her mom, Jasmin, who egged her to take a job selling clothes while there were no engineering jobs available. She worked at a small retail store for two months until an opportunity came.
A Filipino church mate offered her a job in a startup engineering company as its first, and for a long time the only engineer, on a regular full-time assignment.
At first, she had to be mentored by the church mate and was practically working until 9 p.m. earning only a little more than the minimum wage. That decade-long arrangement worked for her as she learned a lot and became well rounded.
That the company grew and became well-known, and she soon was sent to become a consultant to other big-name companies like Bechtel Engineering, Construction and Project Management Company and Caltrans, the California agency responsible for highway, bridge, and rail transportation planning, construction and maintenance.
It was also at this time when she went back to school for her master’s at the University of California in Irvine, going to classes that lasted up to 10 p.m. after her consultancy job at Caltrans.
She is currently the Bay Division Regional Project Manager (RPM) of the Water System Improvement Program for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, overseeing all the Bay Division Projects, including the Bay Tunnel Project.
Johanna proved her resilience by working hard to make her way to the top and being involved with critical infrastructure projects.
She is committed to making her mark as a hardworking, competent engineer with integrity and one who strictly adheres to U.S. engineers’ code of ethics.
Bringing her resilient engineering experiences and strong values as the direct Project Manager of the Bay Tunnel Project, the San Francisco populace is assured of critical resilient infrastructure.
The eight-kilometer San Francisco Bay Tunnel Project, fully operational in spring 2015, replaces the old pipeline built in the 1920s and 1930s.
It’s designed to withstand a major earthquake, a seismically reliable infrastructure delivering fresh water to approximately 2.5 million people in the Bay Area.
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