The Future of Engineering with Ardmore Roderick's Sharon Jean Baptiste

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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Engineering Influence podcast.
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My name is Shreya Jain and I will be your host for today.
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I'm very excited to welcome to the podcast Sharon Jean Baptiste,
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the president of Ardmore Roderick.
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Sharon, thank you so much for joining us and welcome. Thank you,
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Shreya. Thanks so much for having me.
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Awesome. So let's jump right into it. You are the new president of Ardmore Roderick.
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Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you so much.
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Of course. So what excites you the most about this new chapter?
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What is your vision for your firm's growth, impact, culture?
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I'd love to hear more about that. Well, I am thrilled to be here,
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first of all, and really enjoy the programming that ACEC puts on and these podcasts,
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right? Really an opportunity to tell stories and connect with others.
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For me, I would say what excites me most about joining the Art for Roderick
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team is the legacy of the firm.
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You know, what I'm walking into and being invited to add to,
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I think, is what certainly excites me.
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I think I am most passionate when I'm building and when I'm creating,
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especially co-creating with others.
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And so very excited about that and excited about our people,
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our reputation in the industry, and the ways that we're thinking about how we're
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going to grow. So that's most exciting to me.
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I get to stay in Chicago, Illinois. So I moved here about five years ago with another firm.
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And the opportunity to stay here and continue to build on a life with my family
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and friends is also exciting.
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It's so nice that you said that and emphasized on like your family and your
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friends, along with balancing what it means to be president of Ardmore Roderick,
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because I think that work-life balance is so important.
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And that's certainly, I think, something a lot of newer people joining companies are looking for.
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So in that regard, what advice would you have for young professionals?
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Well, you know, it's interesting because it's advice that I wish I had heard
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more of when I was younger.
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But when I think about folks coming into the industry now, a lot of what comes
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up to me for me is a couple of things, right?
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So one is what I call knowing your craft, right?
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So pursue something you love doing, something that you enjoy,
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and don't be afraid to discover what that might be.
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Don't be afraid to discover what it is you actually want so that you're now
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in a position to ask for it, right?
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I say know your craft, be passionate about your craft.
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The other thing I would say is surround yourself with a constellation, right?
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And when I say that, it's really from the standpoint of finding individuals
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that are at different points in their life or their career,
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that can provide you with perspective on how to approach a situation,
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an opportunity, a question that you have in your mind about your career or.
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The integration of work and life because there's no balance. It's a fallacy, right?
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It's really about integrating. How do you integrate the two things?
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And give yourself an opportunity to focus on what's most important.
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The other thing I would say is say yes, stay open.
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One thing that a mentor told me early on in my career is just that, right?
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Stay open. You may think that you have your career mapped out for the next 20
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years, which was what I thought I had when I first started out my career.
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But really, it's about staying open. You're going to learn so much.
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Much of what you had not expected to learn.
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And so that continues to inform what's the next set of challenges that you want to take on.
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Where do you want to exert your influence? Because that's really,
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right, where you're striving towards as a leader, whether you're a technical
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leader, right, an operations leader, etc., that you want your leadership to be an influence.
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And so being open to crafting that is is powerful absolutely powerful.
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I think that's so so important it's like staying open to things and that's such
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a good piece of advice because,
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like there are so many opportunities that just come your way again if people
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know that you're probably going to say yes to it that's exactly you know that
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yeah right yeah yeah and then you're you know your yeses count for something,
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but more so your no's count for something more, right?
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That they know it's a no, right?
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That they understand that context, right? They understand that context,
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and it gives you an opportunity to recommend somebody else or say,
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not right now, but if the opportunity affords itself in the future, I'd love to reconsider.
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Yeah. Yeah.
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That's so vital. You touched upon something really important there, I think.
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Talking about your personal career trajectory and shifting gears a little bit,
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you were in engineering and project leadership, and now you are the president
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of one of the nation's fastest growing engineering firms.
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So what experiences do you think helped shape your leadership style?
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And what do you think are some of like the principles that guide you today as a leader?
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Yeah, well, you know, I had a lot of amazing mentors, both women and men from
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different backgrounds, again, different perspectives, and came in and out of
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my life at different phases of my life.
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And so the constellation concept, right, just ensuring that you're opening up.
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Your world a little bit more.
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So for me, it was really first breaking out of this is how my career will go,
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sort of mindset and coming across mentors that allow me to challenge my thinking,
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and stretch myself in ways that, again, I had not anticipated or,
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sought out, if you will. And so.
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A lot of what I tell folks about my particular journey, you know,
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is try things out, right?
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I was encouraged to try things out and to learn, to learn from that.
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So learn about the things that went right and learn from the things that didn't
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go so well, right? So, you know, I had to learn from a project,
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design project that, you know, didn't go that well, right?
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And to hear really, really tough feedback from the client about where did not go well, right?
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But I used that and fueled that into how I showed up for the client moving forward,
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and how I pulled resources together to accomplish that specific task, right?
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And so that needed to be really responsive.
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And then what went right, you know, being able, you know, for example,
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to win that big pursuit, right, that you would always position for for several
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months and whatnot, and just seeing all the right conversations come together at the right time.
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And so you learn from that, right? You learn from what went right.
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And you also learn from what didn't go so right. And then it's just principles
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for me that I've gravitated towards over my career.
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You know, I firmly believe that discovery is irreplaceable, right?
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You can tell someone how to do something, right? But when they discover it for
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themselves, that's irreplaceable. That they have with them no matter what.
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But they can always tune you in and out.
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And so as a leader, I have to create an environment where my team can discover
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for themselves and lean in for themselves and engage for themselves.
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And then I always tell folks, leadership is not about me, but it starts with me.
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So it starts with the things I prioritize, the things I measure,
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the things I reward, the things I talk about and put my attention to. That matters.
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And how I show up and care for the team, that matters. It starts with me setting
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the tone, the culture, you talked about that earlier, to allow them to do their best work.
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Yeah, I think you talking about discovery is so important and letting people
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discover things for themselves.
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I'm currently like benefiting from a leadership style where I'm able to,
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I have a lot of creative leeway and I'm able to just do things that I think
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will work out and present them.
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And if they don't work out, then I often get a lot of like constructive feedback,
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as to why this, you know, maybe someone's tried it and it didn't work out in
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the past. And so that's why it won't work again. Or why down the future there
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might be some problems that I might have overlooked.
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And in the same vein, lots of really positive feedback if it is something that,
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has not been thought of before.
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And I think that like creative freedom to discover things and being able to
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do that in a like a safe environment is so, so important and vital.
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Very, very important. Yeah. You just can't replace that. Yeah.
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I agree. Yeah. It also leads to a lot of just human creativity in different
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processes. That's exactly right. Because everyone's going to discover and apply it in their own way.
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Right. And so exactly. You have to give the space to be able to do that.
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I think that's so important, absolutely.
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So again, going back a little bit to more of your leadership style,
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was there any kind of like a defining moment in your career where you kind of realized that
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you weren't just leading projects, you weren't just working on projects,
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but you were actually leading people and you were building like,
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you were building a group of people, you were building a culture,
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you were building like a company.
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And was there like a defining moment or did that just kind of happen?
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That's a really excellent question.
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You know, for me, it was when I realized, and I think it was probably on that
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project, I gave an example of that design project that didn't go as well and
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gained that really tough feedback from the client.
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I think I realized, and I had a project team, right, you know, supporting me.
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And I think it really made me realize the influence that I had to connect the
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dots, bring the right resources together, ask the right questions.
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For me, it wasn't just about being the task manager and getting it done.
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It was really about realizing that I had an influence on how it got done.
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I had an influence on bringing the right resources together and connecting the right pieces.
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And that was really the beginning of the aha moments for me that made me realize that.
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Sharon, you've got a say, you've got a voice, right?
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And as you grow as a leader, you cultivate that influence, you cultivate that
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voice, right? And you start to see more and more your impact on an organization
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or a team, right? Or even a community.
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So that was probably the defining moment for me when I realized that,
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oh my goodness, I do have some influence, right, to connect things for a better outcome, right?
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That's so important, too. And I feel like it's kind of that moment when you
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realize you've accidentally become important at work.
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That's a perfect way to describe it. That's a perfect way to,
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like, how did this happen, right? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
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So you're asking me this question and I actually know the answer? That's exactly it.
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Right. And you realize, wow, I've grown. Right.
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I've grown. Yeah. And I'm ready for more. Yes.
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Exactly.
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That's just it's such a pivotal moment when you kind of can relate to that accidentally
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becoming important and you're like, oh.
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Yes, that's right. Folks are looking up to you, right? And they're expecting
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something different now from you and your leadership. Yes.
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Absolutely. So, you talked a lot about mentors during this conversation. Yes.
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When you first became president of Ardmore Roderick, was there someone specific
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you thought of? Someone specific you wanted to reach out to first,
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who you knew would just be the happiest, the most proud of you?
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Absolutely. Absolutely.
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When I said yes to the job, I thought immediately of one of my former bosses.
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So I worked for, in a previous organization, the CEO of the company,
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really as an executive advisor,
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almost a chief of staff, just learning about running a large multinational company
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and developing strategic plans
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and managing change and transformation organization, et cetera, right?
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So I had the opportunity to work with her for a couple of years,
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and she was the first person I had thought of when I accepted the role for a couple of reasons.
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One, she is a model for my leadership in many, many aspects,
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particularly in terms of how.
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I choose to communicate, very intentionally about that, and in terms of who
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I surround myself with, right?
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And again, being very intentional about that and really avoiding being the smartest
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person in the room, Right.
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And she and I have kept in touch, you know, since that assignment,
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you know, 10 plus years ago.
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And she was the first person I thought of to share that with because she's been
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rooting for me and cheering me on. And when I worked for her,
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she's like, you could be CEO.
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Right. She's the first one to articulate that in words. And I'm like,
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wait, what? I'm not even thinking about that. Right.
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And so it was really a seed that she planted.
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And it was fun to give her a call and let her know.
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I said yes, and I'm looking forward to this journey, this new path.
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So that would have been the first person I thought of.
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Yeah, it's so important to have people like that in your corner.
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And you're right, like the first person who articulates it, it just plants that
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seed. And from there, it's like, I know I laugh then, but like, what if?
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That's exactly right. Yeah. Whether consciously or unconsciously, right?
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You start to think about it in a very different way. Yes.
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Yeah i that's that's such a nice story that's so inspiring too and like,
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i hope it it motivates people listening to get mentors to find where they can
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find that kind of mentorship and leadership or join organizations where they can find that
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because it doesn't even have to be within your own industry i think it's even
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more impactful sometimes if you have a mentor who's not in your industry because
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they have like an outside lens into what,
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your industry looks like and what your role looks like.
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Yeah, I completely agree with that. I've got a couple of mentors who's not in
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the AEC industry and the perspective, right?
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First of all, realizing that some things are not unique to the industry is very,
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very helpful because then it gives you perspective on how to handle or whatnot.
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But just the opportunity to understand how industries work and where there There
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are some takeaways that can be applied and how you may bring that into your
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own organization, for example.
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But absolutely, the perspectives matter because that's what we need as beings, right?
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We tend to get comfortable with our way of seeing and viewing the world.
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You've got to have many disruptors in your life to help ask the right questions.
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Yeah, it really is important as also in like the way you think about things.
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And because, you know, there might you might be entering an industry where things
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have been thought about a certain way for a really long time.
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But when you do have some kind of outside mentorship and they're like,
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we have something similar, but we don't really go about it or consider it in
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that way. I feel like that's really interesting and important to listen to.
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That's a great comparison. That's right. Yeah.
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Absolutely. Closing off here. So engineering and infrastructure projects have
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the potential and power to transform communities completely.
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You know, we had a really great example of this with our Engineering Excellence
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Award Grand Conceptra winner, which was the Klamath River Renewal.
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They completely revitalized a river, changed the community around it,
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worked tirelessly on it for years. and the community, the ecosystem,
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the environment is so much better off now that that project is completed.
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Is there a kind of impact that you're hoping you can make through engineering,
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through infrastructure, and through your leadership? Yeah. Oh, I love this question.
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I really love this question, Shreya, because it really stems back to why I became an engineer.
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And it was because I wanted to change the world, right?
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Big, ambitious, old, young mind, right, out there. But it's the essence of why
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I love what I do and why I continue to do what I do over these years.
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We recently, as a company, launched our three-year strategic plan.
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We refreshed our mission and our vision.
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And interestingly enough, our vision is about reimagining infrastructure to
00:18:05.078 --> 00:18:06.716
improve lives and community.
00:18:07.209 --> 00:18:10.648
Gets back to the core of why did I choose this field?
00:18:10.648 --> 00:18:13.878
Why did I choose this profession in the first place?
00:18:13.878 --> 00:18:18.698
It wasn't to just do projects, right? It was really to change the world,
00:18:18.698 --> 00:18:23.888
if you will, change the world community by community, right?
00:18:23.888 --> 00:18:28.794
By working with amazing, smart, creative, innovative people.
00:18:29.300 --> 00:18:37.238
And so for me, that's what I would hope that my leadership brings through projects
00:18:37.238 --> 00:18:41.982
that are delivered in communities across the country and,
00:18:42.539 --> 00:18:46.030
hopefully ones that I contributed to around the world,
00:18:46.500 --> 00:18:52.408
that it provided an opportunity to improve the community, to improve the lives
00:18:52.408 --> 00:18:58.474
of the people in that community, to give that community a more refined voice,
00:18:59.060 --> 00:19:01.828
in the matters related to the community, right?
00:19:01.828 --> 00:19:07.449
Infrastructure projects getting those going and started that's a big deal.
00:19:08.458 --> 00:19:13.488
Right it takes a lot of time in many years sometimes to get through the completion
00:19:13.488 --> 00:19:17.089
of a project such as the one that won the award and so,
00:19:17.838 --> 00:19:21.675
Ensuring that the community understands you have a voice in this,
00:19:22.087 --> 00:19:28.464
you have a say in this, and how this project is delivered and how it adds to
00:19:28.464 --> 00:19:33.154
your community right after the project is done and wrapped up.
00:19:33.154 --> 00:19:39.537
So for me, it's really thinking about that from sort of beyond the project,
00:19:40.042 --> 00:19:44.454
but also it's about future leaders, right?
00:19:44.454 --> 00:19:51.137
Who's delivering those projects? Who's working in those communities in 20, 40, 60 years from now?
00:19:51.706 --> 00:19:59.174
And so my opportunity through my leadership is to mentor, is to do succession
00:19:59.174 --> 00:20:01.663
planning, right? As simple as that.
00:20:01.941 --> 00:20:07.734
And really ensure that there aren't these continuing conversations about the
00:20:07.734 --> 00:20:10.344
first or the only, right?
00:20:10.664 --> 00:20:15.688
But that we are in an environment where that's what excellence looks like.
00:20:16.427 --> 00:20:22.414
And and so that's how I think about you know leveraging my leadership and the
00:20:22.414 --> 00:20:26.344
impact that can be left behind by that the community has a voice,
00:20:26.931 --> 00:20:31.954
there are future leaders ready to lead us right into the next phase of what
00:20:31.954 --> 00:20:34.263
this industry will represent.
00:20:35.019 --> 00:20:38.783
And I think most most of all right that we're not in this.
00:20:39.585 --> 00:20:45.411
You know celebrating the first and the only's right for for much longer that it just is.
00:20:46.705 --> 00:20:51.205
Yeah, that is so important, the community having a voice so that it's not just
00:20:51.205 --> 00:20:56.815
like nameless, faceless people just coming into your community and doing things
00:20:56.815 --> 00:20:57.965
that you have no idea about.
00:20:57.965 --> 00:21:02.665
And suddenly you're walking around and see a construction project and you're like, what's going on?
00:21:03.165 --> 00:21:08.125
That's exactly right. Yeah, that's exactly right. And now it's created something
00:21:08.125 --> 00:21:11.335
very different than what the community needs, right?
00:21:11.335 --> 00:21:16.785
It met a need, but it didn't holistically, perhaps, right, address what the
00:21:16.785 --> 00:21:21.362
community needed. And so there's an opportunity there for greater awareness
00:21:21.711 --> 00:21:25.472
of infrastructure solutions and the dynamics around that.
00:21:25.786 --> 00:21:30.735
So that, again, your voice is more refined, more effective, more impactful as
00:21:30.735 --> 00:21:35.379
work is done in communities to really, you know, again, transform communities.
00:21:35.994 --> 00:21:41.235
So it's an exciting field. It's an exciting field. And I'm always grateful to be a part of it.
00:21:42.014 --> 00:21:47.445
Yeah. This kind of transformative engineering is something that I know the engineering
00:21:47.445 --> 00:21:50.269
industry is trying to really,
00:21:51.025 --> 00:21:54.825
impress upon younger students and the younger generations who might be interested
00:21:54.825 --> 00:21:59.453
in engineering because a lot of them do have the perception that it's just math.
00:21:59.985 --> 00:22:02.985
I don't want to do math. I'm not interested in math. But actually framing it
00:22:02.985 --> 00:22:06.765
as you're changing communities, you're connecting communities,
00:22:06.765 --> 00:22:08.421
you're improving lives.
00:22:08.925 --> 00:22:12.445
You know, the water in your tap, the bridge that people drive on to go to work
00:22:12.445 --> 00:22:15.810
every day, all of that is engineering and infrastructure.
00:22:16.454 --> 00:22:19.125
Impressing that upon the younger generation, I think, is so,
00:22:19.125 --> 00:22:23.365
so important and vital for the continuation and including succession planning
00:22:23.365 --> 00:22:24.605
and everything. Absolutely.
00:22:25.065 --> 00:22:29.605
And, you know, we always need a fresh perspective looking at this,
00:22:29.605 --> 00:22:34.895
right? A new passion, a new commitment around this to keep evolving it,
00:22:34.895 --> 00:22:38.098
right? To keep evolving where we go with this.
00:22:39.497 --> 00:22:42.845
Well, I think that's about all the time we have. Is there anything else you
00:22:42.845 --> 00:22:47.455
would like to add? Anything else you'd like to say? Well, I enjoyed our conversation.
00:22:47.455 --> 00:22:52.385
And again, I thank you for the opportunity to share a little bit about my story.
00:22:52.785 --> 00:23:00.055
But I will just say as we as we close up that, look, the opportunity to be part
00:23:00.055 --> 00:23:05.142
of an industry and be part of something much bigger than ourselves,
00:23:05.607 --> 00:23:07.929
is extremely powerful.
00:23:08.410 --> 00:23:14.799
And the opportunities that we get to interact with our people and our clients
00:23:15.240 --> 00:23:18.752
and our communities and to really tell our story.
00:23:19.699 --> 00:23:26.003
We have a huge opportunity as an industry to really hone in that storytelling.
00:23:26.804 --> 00:23:31.325
And just what we talked about, the transformative impacts of what we're doing
00:23:31.325 --> 00:23:34.380
and what we're committed to. So thanks. Thanks for the opportunity, Shria.
00:23:34.838 --> 00:23:38.585
Thank you so much for taking the time being on the podcast today and I couldn't
00:23:38.585 --> 00:23:41.137
agree more with your last sentiment.
00:23:42.686 --> 00:23:46.185
To all of the subscribers, to all the viewers, thank you so much for joining
00:23:46.185 --> 00:23:48.886
in on today's Engineering Influence podcast episode.
00:23:49.147 --> 00:23:51.411
Don't forget to like and subscribe and we'll see you next time.