Summer 2023 - Flipbook - Page 26
EWRI Member Spotlight
The EWRI Communications Council has worked to put together a series of
questions to get to know our members so that we can feature our members in a
“member spotlight.” We’ll be sharing these quarterly interviews, and hope that you
enjoy getting to know our membership! If you’re interested in participating, please
contact EWRI! This month, we are sitting down with Lily (Sanchez) Baldwin, P.E.,
M.ASCE, EWRI Member Services Executive Committee (MS ExCom) Chair, to
hear about her experiences and how she became involved with EWRI.
How did you originally get involved with ASCE/EWRI? Despite being a
member of ASCE since my freshman year at UC Berkeley, I didn’t get involved until
well into my career and I was presenting a paper at the EWRI Congress in
Roanoke, Virginia. A couple years later, I was invited to a meeting for the
Emerging and Innovative Technologies Committee at the Salt Lake City, Utah
Congress. Before I knew it, I was volunteering to be secretary.
What committees have you participated in? In addition to the Emerging and Innovative Technologies
Committee, I was Secretary for the Performance Based Sustainability Indicators for Infrastructure Task
Committee, a precursor of the Sustainability Committee. Later on, I joined the New Professionals Council and
served as Ex Com Council Rep. My favorite “job” has been helping to organize the New Professionals and
Student Mentoring event at Congress. I’ve also served as Technical Program Chair for the 2018 International
Perspectives on Water and the Environment in Cartagena Colombia, and the Technical Program Co-Chair for
the 2021 virtual EWRI Congress.
Is there an overall theme to your activities in the MS ExCom?
I believe Civil and Environmental Engineers want and endeavor to be more inclusive. I believe we’ve made
great strides with female representation in our leadership. Let’s continue on our path to creating a culture that
intentionally includes women from new to experienced professionals! Let’s start small. Why not start by
understanding the difference between equity and equal?
The society that Civil and Environmental Engineers serve is half women. The solutions this society needs have
to come from engineers and scientists with the perspective representing all of society, within every layer of our
ranks.
What advice would you give to someone considering becoming involved in ASCE/EWRI? Just do it.
Don't worry about having enough time because your participation can and will ebb and flow throughout the
course of your career and that is totally OK. But start now and get involved where you can, even if it means
you only have time to subscribe to a newsletter at this point of your career, and you might click on that article,
maybe follow up with the author. One of these days, you will notice an article or talk to someone who will
resonate with what you are doing. If you have more time, meet and begin to develop your network. At the root
of it all, civil engineering is about serving people - it’s in the name!
What is one piece of advice you would give to your younger self? Don’t be afraid to get involved. You
have a lot more to contribute than you give yourself credit. AND you aren’t as important to that project as you
might want to believe. The people at home need you more.
What benefits have you realized? I think the more important benefits have been intangible. There are the
obvious benefits of course, the resources available, the journals and standards and professional development
classes for example. But what I value the most are the relationships, the friendships that I’ve developed over
the decades. I always look forward to Congress because I get to catch up on what’s been going on with my
friends.
www.asce.org/ewri • EWRI Currents • Volume 25 Number 1 • Winter 2023