Throughout her career, Kelsie Priest has put immense effort towards building a community of women in engineering and helping others feel more comfortable and welcome within this industry. We are proud to announce that Kelsie Priest has won the SEABC Meritorious Achievement Award.
Kelsie joined Glotman Simpson in 2012 for a co-op placement and then continued to work with Glotman Simpson as she completed her degree and worked towards her P Eng designation. She is currently a Project Engineer with our firm and has been an incredible ally to those around her, both within Glotman Simpson and throughout the industry.
Kelsie 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. Kelsie 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, Kelsie has an unstoppable desire to be an advocate for gender equality in the workplace.
At first, Kelsie 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 over 500 members and 12+ industry sponsors. To this day, Kelsie 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.”
Kelsie is always elevating all women around her and works to mentor and support the junior women engineers within our office. Just like Google’s Kamau Bobb, she also and leads the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion initiatives within our organization. We did a GSer spotlight on Kelsie, where you can learn more about her and her goals for women in STEM.
Congratulations, Kelsie!