Katherine’s early love of math and a high school problem solving project with visiting engineers sparked the interest in her to pursue the field of engineering. Always eager to learn and try new things, Katherine’s varied path throughout her college experience, internships, jobs, and graduate school led her to a place where she knew she wanted to start her own company and work on projects she truly cared about to make an impact in the communities she served. How do you make a positive impact on communities across the world as an engineer? Join us as Katherine takes us through her journey and shares how she and the company she formed, along with her non-profit, are changing people’s lives for the better.
You can follow Katherine @liveconsciouspower and @katherinemorua on IG
You can also find her music (listen to the episode to hear about this!)
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3GtAZ3LFRXG8uQbQx36Dly?si=J4nzugvuTQ-VgviYBuP_qQ and
Katherine’s early love of math and a high school problem solving project with visiting engineers sparked the interest in her to pursue the field of engineering. Always eager to learn and try new things, Katherine’s varied path throughout her college experience, internships, jobs, and graduate school led her to a place where she knew she wanted to start her own company and work on projects she truly cared about to make an impact in the communities she served. How do you make a positive impact on communities across the world as an engineer? Join us as Katherine takes us through her journey and shares how she and the company she formed, along with her non-profit, are changing people’s lives for the better.
You can follow Katherine @liveconsciouspower and @katherinemorua on IG
You can also find her music (listen to the episode to hear about this!)
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3GtAZ3LFRXG8uQbQx36Dly?si=J4nzugvuTQ-VgviYBuP_qQ and
Thank you for joining us today on Paths in Progress. I'm your host, Carrie Young. On this podcast, people in a variety of career fields, talk about their journey from choosing their college, deciding which majors and minors to pursue, their first jobs out of college, and all of the hurdles, detours and victories along their path through today. Our goal is to help students hear about a variety of exciting opportunities out there and understand what day-to-day life is like in these careers. I hope you enjoy and learn from our story today. Thanks for listening.
Carrie:Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We are here today with Katherine Morua. She is an electrical engineer and the founder of Morua Power. She has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, and she has a master's degree in biomedical engineering from John Hopkins University. Katherine, thanks so much for joining us today.
Katherine:Thanks, Carrie. I'm so excited to be here and I love what you're doing with the podcast. So happy to be a part of it.
Carrie:Thank you so much. I'm excited to hear your story and to be able to share your great advice and experience with students. So can you take us back to your teenage years or your high school days, and tell us a little bit about what you were thinking back then regarding your career path and how you approached looking for colleges?
Katherine:Yeah, definitely. So I actually went to three different high schools. It was interesting.
Carrie:Oh my gosh.
Katherine:Yeah. each one focused on something completely different. And what was interesting they brought a bunch of engineers to work on a project and help us understand what they did. And so I think it was specifically a high school program that they brought. And we got to work through different problems and problem solving. And it was a group type activity. And I remember that was the first time that I thought, huh, engineering. Now what they specifically talked about, it did have to do with roads and where the cars were supposed to go and all of that. I knew that I loved the process, but maybe that wasn't the exact type that I wanted. But it definitely got stored in the back of my mind. Forward to, I think it was still that same year, I watched a movie called Apollo 13 where Yeah. Yes, starring Tom Hanks. Essentially there's a bunch of astronauts that are out in space and the machine that allowed them to recycle the air and breathe broke down because of the issues that they were having. The engineers down on Earth had all the same parts that they had up in space, and they had to come up with a way to take whatever parts they had and find a way to fix what was going on or what was wrong with the air recycling unit. And again, I don't know the exact words for all of that specifically, but I just remember that it was so exciting. I loved that there was a critical component to solving a problem that involved people's lives and that these engineers were there to actually make a difference in other people's lives. And so that immediately, that sealed and confirmed as a freshman in high school what I wanted to do. I still wasn't clear about the different engineering disciplines, but I just knew that I wanted to do that. And I would later on understand and find out which specific one.
Carrie:Wow. Had you taken any kind of assessments or anything to point you in the engineering direction? Were you good at math and science? Like were there some other factors that had kind of opened your mind to that particular career path?
Katherine:Yeah, I always loved math. It was really easy for me. I never really had to study for it. It just came naturally. But I never took an assessment. It was more like later, you know, as the idea of engineering was solidified in my mind. I then learned that, hey, this is something else that I can do that involves math. I considered being a math major cuz I loved it so much. But engineering just felt like, oh, I get to use math and I get to also apply it to a problem that's fun and exciting.
Carrie:Yeah. So you're kind of a natural problem solver too, would you say?
Katherine:Yeah, definitely.
Carrie:It's something to think about, you know, if you're a personality or things you enjoy doing, is something, you know, I think a lot of times we focus on fields and jobs to figure out what we wanna do, where we can really step back and be like, I like math and I like to solve problems. And then kind of figure out, you know, what can I do with those things? Cuz there's a whole bunch of things you can do with that.
Katherine:Yeah. And you know, I will say if someone's listening to this that hates word problems, from a textbook, it has nothing to do with it. Right? Like it does teach you the skillset to go about solving a problem, but it's not solving problems in the real world is completely different. So, just wanna say that.
Carrie:Yeah, absolutely. So once you had this idea in your mind, how did you go about looking at colleges and where did you end up attending?
Katherine:So I come from a Colombian family, where essentially you don't leave the house until you're married. It's sort of like how you grow up thinking. And so it wasn't like, oh, let's shop around for colleges where you can go. It was like wherever we lived, that's where I was gonna go to school. So I had gotten a scholarship, actually to FIU and I was really excited about going on tour and doing all those things. And then I remember my dad brought up the news that we were moving. I remember at that time I thought, well, I could just stay. I have some family here. And that was not an option at the time. So I ended up moving with my family to Tennessee, and so I ended up going to school there instead. So it was a different trajectory.
Carrie:Definitely a different world. Yeah. East Tennessee is definitely different than you were said you were in Florida.
Katherine:Yeah. Miami Yeah.
Carrie:Very, very different. Well, I'm glad you presented it this way cuz I think there's a lot of students that can relate to the fact that they don't have the option to just shop around and, you know, go out of state or even go very far from home because we all have different life circumstances, right? Yeah. A lot of people for any reason could need to stay close to home. And I think it's so important for students to realize that you can be successful wherever you go to school. Like you can take advantage of wherever place you attend. Cuz I think a lot of our culture puts this huge emphasis on, you know, you have to pick this perfect place somewhere, And it's just not true. Right. You can be successful wherever you end up going to school. Cuz sometimes people end up going to school in a place that is not necessarily where they wanna go. Mm-hmm. or life circumstance puts them in a particular place. Finances put them in a particular place. I just wanna encourage students that you can be successful and you can end up anywhere and go anywhere in your future regardless of where you go to college.
Katherine:A hundred percent. And I love that you brought that up because, you know, I didn't have the awareness and there's a lot of people that don't really have the parents who are finding out coaches who can help them figure out to get into a specific school. Mm-hmm. I didn't know that was a thing. I realized it once I had already been working for a while, and during that time it was like I saw coworkers help their kids get into school and have them talk to different people who work in different professions to get an idea. And so that's another reason why I love that you're doing this podcast because it gives students an understanding of what is out there, and opens their world to more possibilities of what schooling in a particular field could look like. But yeah, I didn't have any of that. We didn't even have the conversation about applying for different schools. It wasn't really a discussion.
Carrie:The university you ended up attending, did they have the program that you were interested in or did you need to kind of dabble around a little bit to figure out what that was? What did that experience look like for you?
Katherine:Yeah, so we were moving to Tennessee and there's this school there called Southern Adventist University in Chattanooga, where a lot of my parents' friends were going and some of their friends' kids. It was just a place that seemed like a really good transition into just building a community because specifically it was part of the church that I grew up going to. I ended up going there first. They had an engineering program that was only two years. And so I knew I had to transfer after that. I wasn't sure where I was gonna go yet, but I decided to go ahead and take advantage of being in that school, having community and, you know, making friends for a lifetime, which definitely happened. The program was really good as well. Their science programs as well as their engineering school. And so I felt like it prepared me really well. But again, you know, after that was over, I could have chosen a different school for engineering, but I decided to stay local and that's how I ended up in the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga.
Carrie:I know a lot of students who have an interest in engineering really don't know which track that they wanna follow. How did you go about exploring that? Was that mostly through the courses that you took or how did you kind of decide which area you wanted to pursue within engineering?
Katherine:Yeah, it was definitely the classes. I took fluid dynamics and mechanical classes, electrical, and then physics classes also help you dab into different fields within engineering. That's when I realized, actually it was during physics class that I loved electricity. I was like, Ooh, having this understanding of something you can't see was so exciting to me. Like how charge moves and just figuring out circuits. All of that within physics was what I loved. And so pretty early on, I'm gonna say it was the second year that I was pretty sure I wanted to go into electrical specifically.
Carrie:Nice. And can you tell students a little bit about what distinguishes electrical engineering from the other engineering areas? I mean, you just mentioned a huge thing, right there, but as far as like the types of classes you take and the types of work you go into, which obviously we'll get into with your career path, but what do you think kind of sets that apart and distinguishes it from the other areas?
Katherine:All engineers have to take electrical classes, mechanical classes, civil classes, so depends on the school, but the ones that I went to, we had to take the different disciplines. The first two years it's pretty generic where you see all of the fields and you get a comprehensive understanding of all of it. And then once you get into your third year, is where you start to see the differentiation. So instead of taking more mechanical classes, you're taking more electrical. So you're taking electronics, you're taking digital circuits, you're looking at power. And again, depending on the university, they're gonna have an emphasis on certain classes. Some look at radar design. The ones I went to didn't focus on that. They focused more on power. And that's because at UTC, University of Tennessee and Chatanooga, T V A was one of the largest industries there. And TVA is a Tennessee Valley Authority, which is one of the largest electrical companies. And so there was a lot of emphasis and a lot of the professors had worked in the power industry. You're gonna tend to see a little bit more of that. So that's how it differentiates from mechanical and from civil. Again, once you get into your third and fourth year is where you start to specialize in the particular field.
Carrie:Yeah. And that's such a great point you brought up because that's something that students can kind of get a sneak peek into what programs are like at the universities they're looking at, by looking at those faculty bios, right. And seeing yeah, what their career trajectory has been like, where they've worked, what they've specialized in. Because often you're gonna find that the program is gonna lean towards specializations where the faculty have been and where their experience is. Like you're talking about that you may have a greater emphasis on something in particular if that is the background of the faculty members.
Katherine:Oh yeah. And also look at the research program. So for PhD. If they have people doing their PhD in that university that are specializing in a specific field, that means they have a professor that's also backing up that research. So that's where they're gonna be emphasized more. And I learned that as I was looking for my master's degree school, I was looking at what would be my next step. I was looking at universities and seeing what they were specializing in. And that's when I started to see these patterns around their focus and decided that, you know, I wanted to go to a university that was focused on something that I was really excited about. But that's a separate thing. I would say, just to finish the first part with getting an electrical engineering bachelor's, really, you know, also as a woman, I do wanna mention that I was the only one that graduated in my class. The only female.
Carrie:Oh, wow.
Katherine:Yeah. Yeah. And so that was, you know, really interesting. I also wanna encourage the women or the female identifying people that are listening to this, that I did notice that I just learned differently and I approached the curriculum differently.
Carrie:Oh, interesting.
Katherine:Oh, yeah, yeah. it was really fascinating and sort of what the professors expected out of you, you know, like for example, and some of it has to do also with like, knowing your learning style and standing up for that. Yeah, because sometimes the professors would call on me and I would just freeze. And so instead of knowing the answer, I might have known it. but that just wasn't the best way for me to interact in the class. When that happened, I felt like I just didn't know, or like I was stupid. The reality is that I could have answered the question, but that's just not the way that I would've done it. That's just an example. Right? Also, the way that I studied was different from the guys. It was fun and it was interesting to see those differences. I learned so much. But I do wanna encourage you that even if engineering or the school isn't catered towards different learning styles, don't give up. Because there's different ways to approach it. As long as you stick with it and you're interested and you're curious to learn, and you seek out the help that you need. There's always a way forward and a way for you to get to the next level. Mm-hmm.
Carrie:Yeah, that's so true. I think it's also important to say that, you know, just because you're different from a lot of people in your field or your cohort or your class or you know, whatever the situation is that you're in, you know try to find your strength in that, right? That your difference is your strength. Cuz a lot of times I think we can find ourselves saying, oh my gosh, I do not think the same way that all these people do. Exactly. And it makes you feel less than, right? Or it can make you feel put on the spot in an awkward way, depending on what kind of situation you're in. But really try to find your strength in that and show, you know, I look at this differently and that is a strength and that's something hopefully other people can learn to appreciate, right? Mm-hmm. that you can bring something different to the table than everyone else does.
Katherine:Oh yeah, a hundred percent. That became so much more apparent once I started working in engineering.
Carrie:So did you go straight into a master's degree or did you work for a little while first, after undergrad?
Katherine:I worked for a little while. I wanted to get experience and know what it was that I was getting myself into. I remember a lot of engineers said, we have no idea what we're actually gonna do. Like, there was no clear path of, there's just so many different disciplines and areas that you can work in. I did do an internship for a couple years, around my third year, I believe is when I started doing that. And that was a game changer. I remember the first time I walked away from the first day of my internship, I thought, this is exactly what I wanna do.
Carrie:Oh wow. That's awesome.
Katherine:Yeah, it was so reaffirming and it was nothing that I would've picked. I've always been pretty girly and I never would've told you like, oh, I wanna work in a manufacturing facility. That would've never come out of my mouth. Yeah. But that's literally what my first internship was, and I loved it so much because it's so interesting. Yeah. Yes, because there were three things that I really loved about it. One, as soon as I got there, I was placed in a leadership position as an engineer to figure out something that would then inform others of what decision to make that could save millions of dollars. And the decision was left up to Wow. Mm-hmm. The second aspect I loved about it was that I got to work with a diverse group of people. While I was doing things on my own to test out, whether it was fans or whatever component I was testing out, I got to work with others to make that happen. And so it took relationship and I was really good at that. And then the third that I loved is that there weren't any answers that I had to figure out how things worked. That made it exciting because it was a challenge. It was intellectually challenging to me. Those were the three things that I absolutely loved. And also, I guess I would add, there were some critical factors to the job. So like I said, as soon as I got there, the person that was my mentor in the internship said, please find out if we can use these fans, X, Y, Z. So I had to run this entire test looking at temperatures and testing out one way and another way. And he is like, let me know by tomorrow at this time. And they literally were going to run manufacturing facility and spend millions of dollars based on the decision that I made.
Carrie:How did you feel in that situation? Because listening to that, I mean, I don't know anything about what you were doing, so obviously that adds like a whole level of anxiety to me that'd be like, oh my God, what is going on? But did you have any kind of feeling like, why are you giving this to me? Right. You know? What was that experience like? Because that just seems kind of extreme for an intern position.
Katherine:Yeah. Well it was with GE, so I have to say that. They definitely know how to, or at least, you know, back when I did that with them. They have a really good leadership program, so they know how to bring you in and teach you. But I honestly, how did I feel? It was a lot. It felt overwhelming.
Carrie:Was it intimidating?
Katherine:It was intimidating. It felt overwhelming, but it excited me. So it was both for me.
Carrie:Okay.
Katherine:Yeah. It was like, how am I gonna do this? But I just had to start somewhere and then figure it out. And that was very fulfilling for me to be able to look back and say, Ooh, I figured that out. It did feel a little bit stressful, but I was just in that place where I was learning and growing and jumping in even if I was scared, you know. I, I just did it.
Carrie:Yeah. Well, and I'm glad you said the comments about GE cuz that's an important thing for students to think about when they're looking for internships is, you know, you can intern with a small business in your community, you can intern with an individual, you know, like as a shadow or a mentor, an apprentice. You can intern with a large corporation that has a very well planned out internship mentorship program. There's a lot of different ways that this can be approached, but I think there is probably this additional level of confidence when you go into an organization that has a very well-intentioned, reputable internship program. Cuz you can kind of have a little extra confidence that like they know what they're doing, they've planned this out, they've done this for years, and you probably feel a little more secure going into that kind of situation.
Katherine:Yeah, I think so. Again, for me, it was about relationships. So, someone that I knew from school referred me, and that's how I ended up there. I didn't shop around. I just, and they still interviewed me. They still want to make sure it was a good fit, you know, did the whole thing. But yeah, I think what you said is true. I also think it's good to get a lot of different kinds of experiences. So that was a much larger corporate Yes. Experience that also felt like it was a smaller one because, while GE is large, we're backed by the larger company, it was a smaller branch of the company. So then it also had that smaller quote unquote family feel, even though it was pretty big, but just different from the larger GE. It's good to have the different experiences. So that, you know, especially at the beginning, because if you are wanting to grow in a specific field or market or area, later on it can be a little bit more difficult to make the transition when you have on your resume, you know, power engineer, power engineer, power engineer for everything, right? And then you wanna change. Yeah, it's still doable and I encourage everyone to still do what it is that your heart is calling you to do. But at the beginning, just take the opportunity to try as much as you can. Try a lot of different things.
Carrie:That's great advice. You said you had a few things in between undergrad and grad school. Mm-hmm. what are the kinds of jobs you were doing? Like, how were you spending your days and what was the type of work that you were doing?
Katherine:Yeah, so as I mentioned with the internship, it was manufacturing and product cost takeout and looking at how you can design something differently so that you reduce the cost for manufacturing. And then my first job out of college was actually working with fossil plants and designing the communication systems. And just wanna, again, encourage everyone that what I was doing in that first job has nothing to do with my internship. And it also had nothing to do with anything that I learned in school except for the basics, right? Your first job, like always just be willing to learn. If you have the attitude of I wanna learn this and I can learn it really fast and I can bring value to the business, it doesn't matter if you know what they actually do or not. You can still be an asset to the company and get hired. That's what I did for my first job.
Carrie:I think that's such a good point too, because you do feel kind of a pressure when you graduate from college. Like, I just got this degree. I should know all this stuff. I should be totally ready to take on whatever your field is. Right? But at the same time, you don't know anything because you mm-hmm. you've had the work experience, right? Mm-hmm. I think the way that you're saying it is, it's so great that you are open to learn and also take the pressure off of yourself because when companies or organizations hire a recent graduate, they know that you don't have a lot of work experience and they know that you're not gonna know anything. So don't put the pressure on yourself to feel like you should. Right. Exactly. They know that you're still learning.
Katherine:Yeah. exactly. And you will continue to keep learning. You asked me what kinds of jobs I've done, you know, that was the first one. It was designing the communication systems for power plants. I also worked in a nuclear plant with the same company. And this was like a much larger company that subcontracted to the government. And then after that went into a small business, which at the time I didn't fully understand all the ins and outs of what that meant until I started my own business myself. But essentially it was a startup. They had been working for a while, but it was still a small business. I worked with a really small team of engineers and started doing circuit board design. and learning about the different components and how about circuit boards work and the software. And constantly learning. Every single job I had, I was learning something new. After I finished with that job that was more of a contract job, I got another job, working for a startup that did co-location systems. They had their own device with their own circuit boards. So I was doing circuit board work again. This time I was also helping'em make sure that when you designed the circuit boards that have all of these different chips and components in it, that goes through a manufacturing facility, once you design it and that manufacturing facility ends up, let's say out of a hundred boards that they create sometimes, Maybe only 80% of them come out correctly, and there's manufacturing reasons why that happened, and there's design reasons why that happens. And so my job there at first was to figure out how to increase the output so that it was closer to a hundred percent. And some of it had to do with different components that were placed next to each other, and that had different temperature requirements. And so when it was passed through the machine, it somehow either short circuited one component or the other, or the trace, which is like the little cable, essentially that connects one component to another. It's called a trace within a circuit board. Maybe that wasn't properly designed or didn't have the spacing necessary to be able to create the right environment for that component based on its specifications. That was a lot of fun. And then I also got to troubleshoot some circuit boards there, and worked on a couple experiments that they were working on as well. I just had so much fun, to be honest, in every single job and every single job I interviewed with, I didn't know what I was doing. I had never worked on that. I had never worked with circuit boards before, except for, you know, that one other job. There I was and I was working on some of the power components also of that board.
Carrie:As you were going through those different jobs where you were saying, you know, each time you had a job, you hadn't worked on that before and you were learning something new: was that exciting for you in that moment? Were you recognizing then how valuable it can be to collect all of these different experiences within your resume? Or were you just kind of taking the opportunity that was in front of you? Like how intentional was that and how much were you realizing that value at that time?
Katherine:Yeah, I've always been really intentional. I think how I was intentional then was not because I was trying to collect the knowledge. My intention was to be in a place where I was continuously learning. So if something became stagnant or if it was too cookie cutter and I couldn't really learn more. Or it wasn't intellectually challenging enough, then I knew it was time to go. That's how I approached it.
Carrie:That's so important for people to recognize, cuz I think it's hard, it's hard to actually do that. Right. I think a lot of people recognize when they hit a certain point, but it's a whole different thing to take the steps to move into something different when you start to feel that lack of challenge and lack of excitement.
Katherine:Yeah. And it also takes personal growth, right? Because when you're redoing your resume and you have to acknowledge and see what it is that, that you did before, you can tend to forget or to acknowledge that you've had all of that learning and all of that growth because you're in the trenches. But when you start working on your resume and you start realizing, wait a minute like this, I have done this. This is how I have grown, this is what I'm doing, and you start to see that you bring value to the companies. And then you can start to understand like the kind of value that you bring, right? I would say yes, my engineering was why I was hired, but really when I started bringing value, it had to do with the soft skills as well. I decided to do my master's and I realized that they were focused on radars and different kinds of things that I was like, okay, I could do a master's in electrical engineering, but these areas are not exciting me, so let's see what else is out there. So I ended up looking at Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering program and I just fell in love with the program before even arriving.
Carrie:That's awesome.
Katherine:Yeah. And the reason is because I would get to apply electrical engineering to something that was bio in nature, so biomedical engineering, and I just loved how you know, once I got to start the masters, some of my professors developed the first equation for the curvature of the cornea, for example, for the eye, right? Like I was working with people who were the first ones to develop like the bionic arm. And so that's when I realized in your bachelor's degree, I think you can get a bachelor's from anywhere. And you can always, yeah, specialize. You can always go for that secondary degree, or master's degree in a field once you've had experience. Once you understand certain things about life that really enrich what you already know and what you've done. And that's how I felt about my master's degree. It was just beautiful enrichment to what I knew. And even when I was taking that, I wasn't sure that I was gonna specifically go into biomedical engineering. But I knew that I could take all of my learnings from that into the energy field or into the power engineering or electrical engineering field. It gave me more creativity. It opened my horizons to other ways of doing things. So even when I hire people, I always look for diversity in their education or well-roundedness because you know that they're gonna come in maybe with that skillset, but they're gonna have a different way of approaching the same types of problems.
Carrie:Yeah. I think that's so important too in so many of the STEM fields, because the STEM fields are kind of known for having this suggested path, right? If you wanna be a doctor, make sure you major in this and do this and get this kind of research experience. You know, there's kind of these prescribed paths that a lot of students try to follow because that's what they quote should do, right? Mm-hmm. if they want to be an X, Y, Z in the STEM fields. But having the well-roundedness, whether it's something you do personally, you know, maybe you play an instrument, maybe you volunteer for a particular organization. You know, maybe it's part of your life outside of school, or maybe it's this whole part of your life that, a minor that you pursue, or a language that you've learned or study abroad that you've done, or whatever it is. But it's so important to if you have the interest too, like having this creative part of yourself too. You know, being able to explore that and to dig into other things in your life mm-hmm. that help you develop that. No matter what you're doing, even though it seems like this thing has nothing to do with your career path. Right? Mm-hmm. it just brings this extra aspect to you as a person and the way that you think and experience life that you can talk about in other contexts and bring that to the group of people that you're working with.
Katherine:Oh yeah, a hundred percent. I was recording a CD in Nashville and touring and singing and writing music through all of this.
Carrie:What? Okay, you skipped over this. Now hold on just a second, Okay, let's back up a little bit cuz that's a big bomb you just dropped here. So let's do a little sidetrack here. How did that start and how did you fit that in with all of these other things that you're talking about with engineering and school?
Katherine:I, I don't know how I fit it in. I was very active. How did it start? Okay. My family's always been very musical and I've been singing kind of just for fun with my family. One day my Aunt Ruth asked me to participate in a, like a talent show, singing talent show. So I did it. I was so nervous. It was a lot, but I did it. And that kind of started me on that path where I was like, wait, I think I can do this. And this is a lot of fun. So just kept singing. And then I had been playing piano since I was little and my mom taught me. That was always a part of it. I started playing by ear and exploring different chords and that led me into this outlet where I could, if I was feeling something, I could write this beautiful melody that sang the exact feeling of my soul. And then I started putting words to that. And so all of that happened in college, as I'm making my way first, second, third year of engineering. And I think it was by the fourth year of engineering, I did some background vocals for a friend's cd. At this point, I'm singing a lot more for, again, everything is for fun. And they're inviting me to different churches and doing retreats and things like that. And so a friend invited me to do her background vocals and her producer said, I would love to produce a CD for you. That's how that got started. So I ended up showing up and people, I had been playing the songs that I had written, and people had been starting to ask me, is there a way that I could listen to that song again? So it wasn't until I got to Nashville and the producer said that, that I was like, okay, let's do it. I liked and I still do, doing things well, so I didn't wanna just record something in the basement. Now back then, recording studios were harder to, the technology was different. Let's just say so mm-hmm. But I wanted to do it really professionally. And so I have some amazing musicians in my cd. I think one of the bass players that has played for Faith Hill is in it. There's a couple other people who are just amazing. So now I just put it on Spotify, by the way.
Carrie:I just love that you brought this up because I think so often we categorize people mm-hmm. Oh, they're a scientist, or they're an artist, creative, and there's a lot of people that are both. Yeah. And you can do both. Maybe, not necessarily make a living doing both, but there's a way to have both of them in your life. And you don't have to categorize yourself as one or the other because you can have both of them significantly in your life experience. So I love that you brought this up because as you're telling us this electrical engineering path, I don't think anyone would've been sitting here going, oh, I bet she's an artist, too. Right? Yeah. But it's more common than people think. Mm-hmm.
Katherine:Yeah. I, I remember very vividly going into controls class, and leaving swiftly to the building in front of the engineering building to make it to my opera voice classes.
Carrie:I love that. So when you went to graduate school, did you take this musical part of your life with you? Or were you more focused on what you were doing in graduate school? Like how did you weave this together, or did you, throughout this time?
Katherine:Yeah. It's really good thing that you mentioned that because up to graduate school. I was still doing concerts. I was still singing. I actually got invited to present at a channel called Hope, hope tv. It was about singer songwriters and I got to tell my story there. Which I'm gonna just add to the mix because why not? When I was there, I did my own makeup and the makeup artist saw that I did it and she liked what I did, and she said, Hey, I need to go on vacation. Do you think you could do the makeup for the show next week? So all the, oh my gosh, centers have to get their makeup done. So I ended up getting paid. This is all completely legal and good. I took off time and got p t o from the engineering job that I had and instead, I did makeup for a couple days.
Carrie:Well, and it also just shows you never know where opportunities can present themselves. And if it's possible to take an opportunity just to do it, to have that experience, like why not? I love that.
Katherine:Yeah. And I think there's more and more multifaceted people, or at least people that are realizing that it's possible. That's why maybe you're seeing it more and more. And so I just wanted to throw that in there because I have always been very multifaceted and interested in a lot of different things. And you can do it. So just to go back to the music, when I graduated, I took a year off and I did a pretty large tour with my cd. It got to a place where I had placed so much energy into it. It was really growing, and I was starting to have people reach out to me and I could just feel that it was on the verge of going to the next level. And I could feel also that it was one of those things that I had to make a decision on whether I wanted to go full-time on the music industry or engineering. I chose engineering because number one, I had not spent all that time to not figure out what that looked like, but also because I felt like I needed to prove myself that I could do it. That I could get the job, that I could do the thing, right? Because it's very different when you're an intern and when you're just in school. And I just wanted to see how I would use all of that knowledge that I had gained in the real world. So I chose engineering and that led me, honestly it helped balance me out. I was already very artsy. But engineering and working with engineers and working with mostly male engineers helped to bring this really interesting balance in the workplace. I, as a woman, got to bring some of those aspects, some of that nurturing vibe into the projects. Like my projects were my kids. Saw them to the end. I worked for them with my soul People could see that and they could feel that. And you could see it also in the results. And that was another thing I always showed up and wanted to bring value right away. I wanted people to see it and to feel it. But then also being amongst this male driven, patriarchal culture, it helped to bring balance to me. Beautiful
Carrie:really?
Katherine:Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Carrie:Can you explain a little what you mean by that?
Katherine:The way it brought balance to me had to do with the way that we process information and the way that I felt it had, it was a combination of feelings and thoughts and how you carry yourself in the world. I was already super feminine. And I remember at first I felt like I had to dress like with pants and polo shirts cuz that's how the guys, you know how they were dressing. Yeah. And slowly as I just became more comfortable with just who I am, I said, you know what, no, I'm gonna show up. I'm gonna wear heels and a skirt and I'm gonna be super fashionable. And I know that everyone's gonna scratch their head and wonder what I have to say about the power analysis that I just made. But I'm okay with that and it's gonna shatter perspectives, right? So when I talk about balance, it's like I show up and I'm really good at relating to whoever it is that I'm talking to. And so in interacting with them, it was like I had to think a specific way in order for whatever I was trying to communicate for it to come go through. That's what it was. Mm, mm-hmm. So even in my emails, right? Like the emails were somebody says, Hey, do you know about this part number? And I would answer, Hey, yeah, the part number's this and this is what we need to do, and da da da. Do you have the information? If I were to be in a mostly female driven environment, which did happen after a couple of more jobs than I haven't talked about yet, if I were to answer an email that way, which is very to the point, let's get this going on purpose, right? It would kind of backfire because I had to be a little softer. I had to say, Hey, how's it going? I hope you're having a great day. So, you know, yesterday I was thinking about this part number and da da da da
Carrie:lot of us have learned this over the years with, even with specific people we work with sometimes, right? You have to write the email completely differently depending on who you're addressing it to.
Katherine:It's true. It's true. And so, what I'm referring to in terms of balance, it's not that one is bad and one is good. It's that together, when we allow ourselves to work with a diverse group of people with different thinking, with different way of approaching, we get the best of both worlds. And that's where I felt like I achieved that balance.
Carrie:So can you talk about the graduate program you chose? You said you chose John Hopkins University and you're really excited about a lot of the work that they were doing. As you went through that program and when you chose that program, were there certain things you started to think about that you wanted to do within your own career path? Or were you really just taking that time to absorb everything within the program and then kind of thinking about how to piece that together later?
Katherine:Yeah, when I was in the Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering program, I was taking that time to explore that field. I wasn't necessarily thinking, I'm definitely gonna just go a hard left and only do this. I was just exploring it and seeing how it felt. And at the end of the day, when I did start looking for jobs within biomedical engineering just to see what was out there, there were some really cool jobs that I could see myself doing because again, it had to do with the critical factor of I'm helping save lives or I'm helping people through working on this device or improving the way that it operates with the body. To me that's still a really interesting field. But what ended up happening is because my resume was so electrical engineering and power centric, I ended up getting called for a job. Again, I was just looking at job postings. I wasn't fully applying yet. And so I got a call for a job, and I do wanna say how that happened because this was for Lockheed Martin. And I had applied to Lockheed about seven years prior to that when I was in Florida. And I heard from them seven years later. So Wow. And I was not looking at any of their jobs, it was just suddenly I got a phone call and they said, Hey, we see that you've done power engineering. We'd love to interview you. And so I started exploring that. That's kind of why I didn't really fully try to go the biomedical route is because I was already in that track and I had that knowledge. I was still enjoying electrical engineering. So, I kept going with that. Johns Hopkins was amazing. It was what I felt was excellence. People that were there knew everything about their field. They had made discoveries. They were in the cutting edge of whatever it is that they taught. To me, that was like a kid in a candy store to be able to learn from people like that. Yeah. I honestly enjoyed my master's degree so much, so, so much that, I felt intellectually so challenged in such a juicy, wonderful way. And it's interesting because when I feel like I meet that need for myself, intellectually, there's this other piece, which is the artistic side that thrives. It's like both are necessary in my world. So during that time, I actually took all of the possible ballroom dancing lessons I could and, oh my gosh, And I was having so much fun learning tango and waltz and all these things. While doing my masters, while also working. It's one of the times in my life that I think I did so much in such a small timeframe. I started exploring, traveling to Europe. I hadn't been before then. I was making all these friends. It was just such a beautiful, beautiful, time. I felt like I was thriving. So yeah, when it comes to your masters, Take the opportunity to pick the program you want and the school that you want, and make it something that you really are gonna enjoy because it can have that effect on you.
Carrie:Yeah. I love that. I think it's so important throughout our lives to place yourself in rooms and in situations with people who you feel like are smarter than you, who are more experienced than you, who can really teach you something, right? Mm-hmm. because it's so easy to get stagnant if you kind of stay in the same place and you're not exposing yourself to that. Obviously school is an obvious place where you can do that. Mm-hmm. but there's so many other ways that you can do that in your life as well to make sure that you're constantly being challenged and like you're saying, kind of activating those parts of your thinking and your creativity in your brain, because it keeps you moving forward when you're intentionally putting yourself in those places.
Katherine:Definitely. And I was thriving at work too, you know, I was The star employee I had my sight pretty high. I wanted to go up the ladder and I made it known to people and I was doing well. Yeah, it was a really, really good time. And in terms of the music and singing, I put a bit of a halt on it during that time because again, I was already doing a lot of things and those were the things that I wanted to explore at that time.
Carrie:In the jobs that you had after graduate school, can you talk a little bit about those experiences and the type of work that you were doing and how one thing led to another along your path?
Katherine:Yeah. After graduate school, I got that call right around the time I had graduated, to be a project manager. And I knew I wanted to go into some sort of leadership role, but I was still not sure what that looked like. It turns out project management looks different depending on the size of the company, the kind of company, the kind of market is just gonna look really different in a small business. It could look like you're doing a little bit of troubleshooting and a lot of interacting with people and figuring things out. And if you're an engineer, you maybe get to do a tiny bit of that. For larger companies, maybe you have a list of projects and you gotta look at the timeframes and the deadlines and the milestones and make sure that things move forward. As an engineer, you're gonna have two tracks, right? You can either continue becoming an expert and stay specifically in the engineering side of things, or you can get into some sort of management position. I think engineering in itself is very leadership oriented. So you could really go either track and again, the position itself is gonna vary depending on the company. After my masters, it was really getting into a different territory. The project management at first, you know, I learned it really fast and then it didn't feel as fulfilling as figuring things out that hadn't been figured out within engineering. And so I started to think about maybe it's time to start a business. So I went to every single possible startup meetup that you could possibly imagine in the Washington DC area. I started to even see how they were overlapping in content. I went at it full steam ahead and I did something called Startup Weekend where people pitch an idea and then you build teams based on that, that you work on for market research, business plans, all that strategy through an entire weekend. It's a very intense weekend. And at the end you presented for a prize. There's some companies that have been formed as a result of that. Cuz there's judges that decide which idea is best and they help you with maybe some funding for that idea. I ended up being one of the companies that pitched at the end of the weekend. And somebody that was on the panel of judges saw me and liked the way I carried myself on stage and how I communicated, et cetera. And she said, Hey, I would love to interview you. Again, wasn't really looking for a job, but that opportunity presented itself and she basically allowed me to interview with four different departments, within her company. I did that, and ended up picking one of the departments. It was actually the one that she led, cuz I really liked her approach. And it was in an innovation department. As an engineer, I had been in innovation and in innovating my entire career without necessarily talking about innovation and what it means.
Carrie:Isn't that interesting? How there's these threads that you just don't even like, like, oh duh, I've been doing that this whole time.
Katherine:Yeah. And so I ended up there. It was wonderful and also really jarring because this is when I started to work, it felt more like marketing than engineering or innovation. And this will happen, you know, for those that are listening. Where you'll get a job offering or an opportunity and you think it means something and you get there and maybe it means something else. So always just mm, yeah, be okay with asking questions and maybe even asking for, Hey, is there somebody that works in your department I could talk to? you're interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you, so always remember that.
Carrie:Yeah. And that happens with college majors, too. Can we just say that? Mm-hmm. like you think, oh, this major's called this, so it must mean that we're doing this, or a minor, or whatever it is. And then you start going through a program and you're like, oh, this focus is more on something else. Mm-hmm. than what I thought it was gonna be. Oh, yeah. So important to look through like individual classes and ask questions and everything. Mm-hmm. about that too. I did wanna ask you, going back to this, when you mentioned you thought about starting a business. People do that for a lot of different reasons, right? Sometimes people see a need in a market, or sometimes people have been having different jobs and they realize that they bring something different to the table than what the other options in the market right then are, and they wanna start their own business because they wanna bring that different thing. When you thought about maybe it's time to start a business, what were the things in your head that were causing you to think that that was kind of the next logical step or something that would make sense for you during that time in your career?
Katherine:Ever since I was little, I've been starting my own business like, for fun. I wouldn't have been able to tell you why or how or what that meant, but I just always knew. And the reason why, specifically in that moment, I knew is because, it was more like an intuition, to be honest. There wasn't anything in my outer world except for Okay, I've built quite a bit of experience. Maybe this is something I can start looking into now. And I also have, and had at that point, a really great network. I had heard that before, that it's important to build your skillset and also to have a really good network when you decide to start your business. So I was like, well, just seems like it's a good time. But I was very much an intuition that it was time to start looking into that.
Carrie:That's so interesting. There's different paces that people take to do that and sometimes things take so much longer than you think they're going to. So that's always something too, if students kind of have in the back of their mind that they wanna start a business, it doesn't mean that you graduate college and you have to immediately start your business Right? Sometimes it's really beneficial to work for other organizations or companies or businesses first because you get to observe, right? Yeah. Like how do they run this place? How do they organize this? How is their HR? When I start my business, I'm gonna have to figure out how to do this, so mm-hmm. it doesn't hurt to have some positions under your belt first to look at how other organizations and businesses do certain things so you can learn, yes, I wanna make sure I do things this way, or I do not wanna run my business like this Mm-hmm. right? You could learn both sides of the coin.
Katherine:Oh yeah. It's so important to do that is really, really important. I worked with a lot of large companies, so I had the corporate feel, but I also worked for medium sized companies and smaller ones. So I had a really nice understanding of the spectrum of what that would look like at different stages of business.
Carrie:Yeah. So going back to that job with the woman who saw you and had you interview with the different areas, and you said it wasn't what you thought it was gonna be. Mm-hmm. what did you do next once you found yourself in that situation?
Katherine:I made it known to the leadership, and I told them, you know, I am really missing engineering. I need to find something in that area. And because it was a large enough company, they had their feelers out, but honestly, making it known wasn't enough. Right around that time, I got an opportunity to lead a project that would have a lot of visibility and I knew exactly what I needed to do to make that a success. So the first thing I did is, I made sure I gave my all to that. Again, not because I was trying to prove to anyone that I could do it, but because I was passionate about the project and I really wanted to do an incredible job. So I did. By the end of that, I remember I had my boss's boss's boss call me the day after the project was completed with great success and she said, Hey, you did such an incredible job. I just wanna let you know, I've heard that you're really missing the engineering that you wanna be back to that. I've made some calls and there's this department that's looking for someone right now and it's specifically with power. I was like, oh my gosh. So that's What ended up happening, I ended up going into that other department, and just really enjoying that department to the fullest. I got to switch back into engineering. I was doing a little bit more of like systems engineering at that point, but I knew enough about power of course, to get involved, more specifically in other aspects of the project, which was a lot of fun.
Carrie:Can you give us kind of a general feel of what kind of project that was that you found great success in, that launched you into this next space?
Katherine:Yeah. It was actually, leading a startup weekend for the company itself. So it had nothing to do with engineering. It had to do with organizational operational skills, putting people together, bringing people together, communication, and that department was in charge of that. That's one of the reasons why I was like, wait, I don't think this is what I wanna be doing right now. But that was the one project I knew I could sink my teeth into and just really get it done and do a good job. Because yeah, I was really fascinated with startups and I was wanting to do one myself.
Carrie:That's so interesting. One important thing I think that a lot of us learn along the way and for students to keep in mind is that sometimes we are really good at things that we don't particularly enjoy. So that's something that's a really interesting lesson is that sometimes we have these strengths, these things that we can utilize to help us advance or help us round out a position or whatever it is. But it may be something that you don't like doing. Don't completely discount the things that you don't like. It's not that you need to get a nine to five and do it all day long, you know, but is it something that you can utilize as part of your package and bring to the table that sometimes you're doing because you are really good at it, but it's not necessarily the thing that you wanna be doing 24 7, right?
Katherine:Oh, true. Yeah. And we are built energetically. I've gotten into a lot of this like body energy and how we can best use our energy and human design. And I've become certified in that as well. But I think one thing I wanna bring to the table for students is that energetically, sometimes there's a certain kind of way that we work that meets us where we need to be energetically. For some people they have to have multiple things at the same time. Doing a lot all the time, nine to five, 10 to whatever, you know, they need that. And some people have periods where they have a lot of energy and then sometimes they need to rest. So what kinds of projects allow you this ability to plug in, provide a lot of value, and then plug out and have a little bit of rest? Right? Some projects, some. Mm-hmm. jobs allow you to do that. And then some are all the time constantly. It also depends on the company culture, right? Looking at that is important and to your comment about what you're good at sometimes doesn't necessarily mean is what you love doing. There's also that what you would really thrive doing may be something that you don't even know you can do or that you know yet how to do.
Carrie:Yeah. Yeah. That's where all those trying new things and having different experiences can help inform you to get you to that place.
Katherine:Exactly. And two jobs prior to that, I was actually, the job I was at while I was doing my master's. So grateful for them. The way I was able to work with everybody in the company. When they hired me, it was over the phone and they said, Hey, we're looking for a power engineer. Do you know how to do this and that? And I was like, Nope. I dunno how to do that, but I love to learn and I know I can be the best at it. And they hired me. Now, I think part of it had to do with intuition that the guy that hired me was really good at kind of telling these things. And so he brought me in, I started learning. I became their power expert and I designed power systems, end-to-end transformers, you know, worked with the folks with the transmission line, got really into the nitty gritty doing actual models for power and power quality. So again, I hadn't done that before, but it became one of the jobs that I've enjoyed the most in my career. So this job that ended up being one of the ones that I've enjoyed the most in my career. I knew I had this passion for, even though I had tried project management and I had tried working in more of like a marketing innovation type situation, and then, you know, back to engineering and research. That allowed me to say, okay, you know what? I think I understand how this works. I think I'm just gonna do it. I felt it in my bones. I just knew intuitively it was time to start my business. I quit the job. I started working on my company, which is Morua Power. That in itself, I do wanna talk about what we're doing now. It wasn't always that way, right? I think there's some exploration that has to happen for businesses. Businesses as I like to say, are kind of like a hypothesis, right? I say that here's a problem that I believe I can help solve and this is how I can help solve it. And then you go out in the world, you test it out, you see what you get, and you kind of adjust based on that. For me, adjusting really came from understanding what it was that I was here to bring to the world. For me, starting a business is really about your internal journey as much as it is how you're interacting with people and with your clients.
Carrie:Can you start by telling us what was your vision in the very beginning? I understand that things have changed over time, but can you tell us a little bit about when you took that leap to start your company, what were you envisioning in the very beginning?
Katherine:When I took the leap, I was envisioning that we are the best power engineers in the world. We're gonna help solve really large problems or really complex problems in the power world that are niche, that are very specific. We can help do it. We can help facilitate this. So that's where I started. When I started looking at government contracts and some of these other things, something just didn't feel quite right. I knew that I had made a reputation of myself by being that. but I wasn't sure that that's how I wanted the transaction to happen in terms of government hires us. We have five people, five people that need to be sitting in the government facility and we're the subcontractor or the contractor and da da da. Something just didn't feel right. So I started exploring alternative energy systems, which I've always been interested in, and I found something called microgrids. Turns out I've been working on microgrids for a long time, but that's just not what we call, that we.
Carrie:Surprise again.
Katherine:Yes. Yeah. we called it islanded systems. At that point, microgrid, the name was all the rage and it was the marketing buzzword and I was like, okay, well we've done that. I've done that. Let's do this. Started getting into it, started working on developing microgrids. One of our contracts was actually to help with microgrid development, which means we're talking to government, we're talking to industry, we're talking to the community, and we're figuring out how all of these pieces come together so that we can build a microgrid that's solar powered and that can help the community. That's how I ended up getting into specific alternative energy. I want what I work on to be good for the planet, to be good for people, and to actually make a difference. It meant all of those criteria. Until I realized that big companies were in it. Not all of'em. But what I saw is that a lot of times, it was the bottom line was the money more than the impact. And so I started to, yeah, ask myself, well, how can I really make an impact when, you know, if there's a risky situation and we can't install the panels and we've done all this work, what can we do so that these people still have a system that they can rely on if there's a storm or if the power goes out? That led me into specifically working with communities that are underrepresented. And that through alternative energy, can gain more visibility, can attract more funding, and can create programs through the alternative energy that allow the community to learn vocational skills like installing solar panels. Maybe there's education around health and food and other aspects of life. So I started becoming really well versed in that. And that was already a part of me. Actually before I started engineering, I remember I told my dad, I'm gonna go be a missionary. And he's like, Nope, you're gonna have a skill first and then you can go do whatever you want. So I was like, oh yeah. That's what led me to that. And that's our slogan now is that we connect communities to power. And it's power in the form of alternative energy systems and empowerment. That led us to another client and another contract. It was helping in Africa with electrification and doing exactly that, working with a community, working to expand, working to connect. So I like to think of myself and my business as like Dr. Strange for Marvel. Maybe not in personality, but the fact that he can open up portals of opportunity. And if people are wanting to jump through the portal, we keep it open so that they can do that. That's what we're doing now. We're empowering communities. We're still working with power in so many different senses of the word.
Carrie:I love that you framed it that way about telling your dad you wanted to go do mission work, because I think it's so important for students to think about that. Like, let's say students are out there thinking, you know, I wanna do mission work, or I wanna be a social worker. I wanna make an impact in my community or in a particular community. And there are so many ways to do that, other than the obvious, you know, to go be a missionary there. That is what we think about. Or becoming a doctor and doing Doctors Without Borders. There's some of these very specific things that we all know about, right? But there are all of these different needs within those communities that require professionals, right? Mm-hmm. that have particular skills and experience and understanding of what is needed and how to make it happen. Mm-hmm. there's a lot of paths. An electrical engineer is such a great example. When you think, oh, I'm gonna major in electrical engineering, a lot of people will not automatically connect that with meaningful community impact, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. But there are so many ways that you can think about these career paths and how you can connect it to meaningful community impact. So if you have that on your heart and you have that as something you wanna do, try to sit down and think about, okay, the community I wanna impact, what are all the things that they need? First of all, ask them. And do some research about it. Mm-hmm. and not just do what you assume they need. There's so many different ways to do that. So I love how your path has brought all of these things together in the end that you can do this, but maybe not in the way you were originally thinking when you told your dad, I wanna go do mission work, right?
Katherine:Mm-hmm. Exactly. Yeah. It's so much more fulfilling. When you have the skillset, you're able to show up in a very different way. If you're interested in leadership, that's really important. Having the knowledge, having a wide diverse set of experiences can really help you. And I think one of the things that especially now has become really, really important is emotional intelligence. Being able to work with others. Make sure as you're living your school life, that you're also allowing yourself to experience all of these things and grow personally in the way that you communicate. Whether or not you wanna be a leader. Just having that skillset makes the workplace so different to be able to have the ability to communicate that if emotionally something shows up because someone maybe hasn't done inner work in that area, but you are able to understand that and you're able to then translate it for others. That could be the difference between meeting a deadline and not. It can be the difference between success in your project and not. Even if you have all of the knowledge, having the ability to really work with others is what's going to give you that extra edge and set you apart.
Carrie:That's awesome. So with your company right now, just to give us an idea, can you tell us about some kind of project from start to finish. Are you reaching out to communities? Are they reaching out to you? Is it a government entity? Like who exactly is reaching out to you? And then what is the course of a project kind of look like? Just to give us a condensed version of what that means?
Katherine:Yeah. So I'll give you an example of a community project happening now. I went to a conference where someone was being honored, given an award for their humanitarian work. I remember, I just loved what she said. I approached her and I said, Hey, I love what you're doing. Have you thought about doing this and this and that with your center? I was talking about solar panels. And she liked the idea. We kept in touch and she asked me and invited me to contribute towards the project. At the beginning, I think we were really working just on the ideas and what was available, and I was really just like, Hey, this is what you can do. You can try this, you can try that. This is what's gonna work. This is what's not gonna work. To answer your question about it, you know, being approached, I think that also has to do with each person's design. One thing that I've discovered in mind is that I show up and bring value and almost like from the, well, right? Like this infinite amount of resources available to me. I show up and I give that. What ends up happening is the people that resonate with my message or my approach, or, with who I am, then show up and they ask me or invite me into what they're doing. So that's how it has happened a hundred percent of the time for my business.
Carrie:Wow. A hundred percent of the time?
Katherine:Yes.
Carrie:That says a lot.
Katherine:Yeah. Everybody's different. Everybody's has a different approach. But if you really think about every single time in my life I have achieved something that was fulfilling and just so worth it, it was through invitation. And again, that's not everybody, but that's where I really wanna invite the students that are listening to start listening to how life happens for them and where they feel most fulfilled. Because as much as the school is gonna give you knowledge, your experiences, and understanding who you are, give you that much more knowledge as well. For me, the producer was like, I would love to do your CD. That was an invitation, right? Every single client through invitation, all of those big major moves that I've made. There was an invitation, somebody seven years before, had my resume and they invited me to interview seven years later. A company I hadn't even had in my mind at that moment. Look at the patterns in your life and just see when things work out for you. When you feel the most fulfilled. What has tended to be true about that? Is it that you're responding to something that shows up in a billboard and a radio, right? That could be a thing too. Or is it through personal invitation? For me it's been that. So I show up, I bring knowledge, wisdom, I really care. And of course I'm doing that with things I actually care about. And then that's how we get involved. So for that project specifically, worked for about a year really just working through what those ideas could be, how they could turn into something, and then was invited to do the feasibility study. A feasibility study is where you look at the location, the roof of the building, you look at how much power they consume, and then you build an analysis around is it worth putting solar panels on there? How much are you gonna save? Is it gonna be able to cover the total cost of purchasing this? Are the savings gonna cover that? Mm-hmm. Is it in a flooding zone? What time of day is the sun at what location? How much sunlight does that area have? So once we do the feasibility study, we move into the design phase. What do we need next in order to design the system? In the terms of alternative energy, you've got inverters, you've got solar panels, you've got all the components in between that help to create that system. You have your choice. We are in a competitive alternative energy market where there's a lot of demand. And because of Covid, there's been delays in production for certain components. So that's been interesting in the project. But it's part of like working with the client, working with the community, working to make sure that you're making the best decisions for that. And in between all of that, also continuing to offer value that's not engineering related. Like have you thought about doing hydroponic systems? Have you thought about teaching this type of class? Have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? More consulting around the general objectives of the project. Finally once you've designed it, then it gets installed. And the installation usually happens with an installer that is hired, that then does all of that work to install, to commission. In between all of that, because we're working with underrepresented communities, there's also events that we attend to help support and maybe help fundraise, right, for that community. So as a result of that, we actually started a nonprofit that is called Morua Power Foundation to help bridge the gap in situations when the project is done, but it still needs some funding in order to finalize some of the objectives. We like to use the model of the for-profit does the work. The nonprofit make sure that the entire project continues and that there's a real legacy there that transcends the original work that we do.
Carrie:When you say that you're serving underserved communities? Is that on an international scale?
Katherine:Yeah. We have a project in Columbia right now that is a really small community. Is this almost a village, you could say? And so with that specific project, we didn't start with the solar panels, we started with the building itself because it needed a lot of improvements, including the roof. Working through different programs there to make sure that we can move to the next phase, which is to have the solar panels. But adding solar panels can become a political project as well, because we have to get permits to do that. Another one of our clients has already been providing electrification electricity to villages, it's called R E I C, and they're in Cameroon. We're working with them now to fundraise for the next phase of the project. We're doing a pilot program, and we're doing this through, U S T D A, which is a government entity, and through a grant that they provided. And then also some seed funding from IEEE, which is the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers, which I a hundred percent can testify to that engineers, if you're thinking about getting into engineering, definitely get involved with IEEE in some capacity. Specifically Smart Village, is the program that I got involved with and I was volunteering with as well. So anyway, so R A I C, with the help of funding from these different entities has been able to really scale up their operations. Again, the reason we partnered with them is cuz we really care and they have similar values, right? They don't just wanna put electricity and leave. They wanna make sure that the people that are in those villages, Get the education are educated as to how electricity can help them and their families move forward. How it can provide for them and really change the socioeconomic landscape of their village and their community.
Carrie:That's huge.
Katherine:Yeah. I feel honored to be a part of it.
Carrie:Looking back over your journey, I just love all of these different pieces of your journey that on paper may seem disjunct, right? Mm-hmm. But as you talk about them and how you've grown as a person and what the trajectory your career is taken, it's so interesting to see how everything fits together and kind of feeds each other and like we were talking about earlier. As we look back over that, do you have some big picture advice that you would wanna give to students, whether they're thinking about going into engineering or not, that you feel like you haven't had a chance to say throughout our conversation?
Katherine:It's okay to get input from someone that's outside your circle. Make sure that you're reaching out to other people that have done it. Take the opportunity as a student. I didn't realize how much leverage I had to be able to just go to a business and say, Hey, can I shadow you for half a day? I mean, that's huge. I never thought to do that. But again, it's one of those things that hindsight, right, because it's actually something I'm wanting to do now. There's still fields that I'm so curious about. I'm like, Hey, can I shadow you for a day? So there's nothing wrong with doing that. I think especially as a student, you have so much leverage to be able to ask that question. And I know that you are so busy because there's so many things that are up in the air. You're still finishing school, you're still deciding what you wanna do next, right? So I understand that maybe that's at the forefront of what you're thinking about, but you can help save yourself a lot of time by asking that question. I was so shy to do that when I was in school. But if I had only understood how much, people love that. They love for you to ask them, Hey, what do you love most about what you do? It's okay to have those conversations and to ask the question to drop by a building and say, knock on their door, talk to someone to say, Hey, I'm a student. I'm making my way through school. I would love to understand what it is that one of your engineers is doing or one of your people are doing, and ask the question. Just allow yourself to be curious.
Carrie:Well, and since you just said it, what do you love the most about what you do?
Katherine:Hmm. I love that I still get to dabble in engineering calculations when, when I want. I also love that I get to expand my impact and solve real root cause problems. That's been really, really big for me. I'm not just gonna give you money so that you feel better. I'm going to do something like put solar panels on your house, which then give you running water, which save you time, which allow you to feel more secure at night, which then allows you to have another skillset that allows you to then provide for your family. That's what I love the most is that I get to, as a company, really focus on things that are gonna make a real impact and not just create band-aid solutions.
Carrie:Yeah, that's huge. Seeing a very tangible effect of the work that you're doing and how it's so meaningful to people's lives. Yeah. Well, Katherine, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate you sharing your story with us and telling us all of these important and valuable experiences that you've had and the advice that you've given. I appreciate your time so much.
Katherine:Thank you so much. I really appreciate all your beautiful questions and revisiting that story. It's not always I get to do that, so I appreciate that.
Carrie:Yeah. Thank you.
Do you know someone I should interview? Please DM me on Instagram@pathsinprogresspodcast and let me know who I should talk to. I would love to hear about how these stories are impacting your journey. Please follow Paths in Progress wherever you download your podcasts and leave a review to let me know what you think. You can also follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn at Paths in Progress Podcast. Our music is by John Grimmett and the artwork is by Edgar Alanis. Thanks again for joining me today.