Aspect recently welcomed Cleo Pineda and Baxter Call to our Seattle office. Here are Five Questions we asked to get to know them better…
Cleo Pineda, Stormwater Engineer, EIT
“I rode in a crystal cabin up to the Yao Yue Tea House in Taipei, Taiwan. The floor to ceiling windows provided scenic views of lush green mountains and tall skyscrapers as we approached Maokong mountain…2.5 miles all the way to the top”
1. Where are you from? If you’re not from the Pacific Northwest, what brought you here?
I was born in Pampanga, a province located on the largest island of the Philippines. After my grandpa retired from the Navy and received his U.S. citizenship, he settled down in Lacey, Washington, and petitioned for my family and I to come to America. In June of 2000, I flew to the PNW with my two older sisters and our dad. The immigration process for my mom and younger brother took longer than anticipated so they didn’t get to join us until six years later. During the time we were apart, I traveled back to the Philippines to visit them for extended periods of time. I haven’t been back to the Motherland since 2006, but I heard a lot has changed since my last visit and I’d love to go back there someday.
2. What inspired you to pursue stormwater engineering? What made you curious about it?
The deeper I got into my civil engineering major, the more I realized how much it is a service-driven profession as it is a technical profession. I took stormwater design as an elective during my junior year of college, and it was in that class where I first saw the connection between my personal strengths and their impact on serving a “real-world” purpose. Like many engineers, I went into this career to help solve problems—and protecting the health of our waterways was a goal that made the most sense to me.
3. What do you like best about your area of expertise? What excites you and keeps you motivated?
Every project will get rained on, especially here in the PNW. What’s cool about stormwater design is that each site will have its own unique set of solutions. The design process involves factoring in not only varying site conditions but also the far-reaching implications of stormwater pollution that inspire me to use inventive ways of implementing on-site stormwater management. The days of solely relying on traditional conveyance systems are over. Stormwater design keeps my mind open to new ideas, which is what I love most about engineering in general.
4. What do you like to do when you aren’t working?
Though I enjoy the “structure” involved in engineering (no pun intended), I make it a point to exercise the right side of my brain too whenever I get the chance. I was raised in a very creative household. My dad showed all my siblings and me how to play instruments, while my mom taught me how to cook Filipino dishes. Some form of art was always happening around me growing up. Now as an adult, I spend most of my free time painting, writing, trying new recipes, or building DIY home improvement projects. During the summer, I take advantage of the nice weather by going on new hikes and city day trips with my loved ones.
5. Anything else you’d like us to know about you?
Experiencing different cultures is one my life’s greatest pleasures. Last year, I got to explore different parts of Asia (Tokyo and Taipei). This year, I will be going to Europe for the first time. I’m excited to visit Paris with my boyfriend and family in October.
Baxter Call, EIT, Environmental Engineer
1. Where are you from? If you’re not from the Pacific Northwest, what brought you here?
I was born in Seattle and grew up living on Vashon Island. Being a kid on a small island, I feel like I had the quintessential PNW experience; sea kayaking and biking in the summers and skiing on the weekends in the winter were certainly the highlights! That love of the outdoors has kept me firmly planted in the PNW—I only got as far as the Willamette Valley in Oregon for any significant amount of time before moving back to Seattle. Corvallis, where I completed my undergraduate degree, feels a lot like Vashon in that it is content to exist a little removed from the hustle and bustle of city life. Living in Seattle has been a great new experience and offers a lot more variety than I am used to, although I have discovered that I have no patience for sitting in traffic and try to avoid it at every opportunity.
2. What inspired you to pursue environmental engineering? What made you curious about it?
I have to thank my parents for introducing the idea of environmentalism to me. They framed it as an effort to protect the things that we derive such enjoyment from and are so easy to take for granted. That idea has stuck with me and is certainly why I chose Environmental Engineering without hesitation when I started college, and I haven’t looked back since. My interest started to focus when I began taking more classes related to chemical fate and transport in the environment. I think that there is a really engaging problem-solving challenge to environmental engineering work, and that has always held my attention.
3. What do you like best about your area of expertise? What excites you and keeps you motivated?
Something I find very exciting about my area of expertise is the long-time scale that we work on. Environmental processes are slow, even considering all we do to accelerate them. While that does not sound conventionally exciting, it forces you to take a step back and consider the big picture. When you adopt that way of thinking the anxiety of day-to-day, minutia disappears and what you are left with is a body of work that you can be proud of. I really connect with that idea and it helps me work come to work every day with a purpose.
4. What do you like to do when you aren’t working?
Rowing has been a huge part of my life since I was 14 years old and continues to be something that I derive an immense amount of pleasure from. As I have gotten older, and the injuries have piled up, I have shifted my focus away from competing and towards coaching. Most weekday evenings and early weekend mornings you can find me barking at the Green Lake Crew high school guys team. I also enjoy running and biking, which have been a great way to familiarize myself with the city.
5. Where in the world would you like to travel next?
I have not traveled nearly as much as I should, so I have a lot of ground to make up in this category. Madagascar is a destination that is on my radar right now. One of my best friends is in the middle of a Peace Corps deployment in Madagascar. The country sounds very interesting, and the opportunity to go and visit him makes it easy to justify traveling there when normally Madagascar might be forgotten with so many other cool places to visit.