Love of Auto Racing

One of my favorite father-daughter memories was taking a pillow and laying down on the floor in front of my dad when he watched the Indy 500 or another IndyCar race. Those lazy hours on a Sunday ultimately led me to where I am professionally today.

My dad had a fair interest in IndyCar racing in the '80s. Several years, we'd drive all the way to Elkhart Lake to watch the race their. My sister and I weren't so interested... we'd just run around. One year, we're clearly visible rolling down a hill in the race broadcast before or after a commercial.

In 1993, racing became my passion, too. That year, we drove to Milwaukee to watch the race at the State Fair grounds. We all decided to put a few bucks down on a few drivers as a bet. I picked Nigel Mansell because he was British (it was his first year in the series). Halfway through the race, things weren't looking so well, but ultimately, Mansell won. I was hooked. I started following the series religiously. I clipped the race results and articles out of the paper and put them in scrapbooks. I subscribed to IndyCar Magazine (even getting two Letters to the Editor published). This high-level interest continued through high school, when I decided that I wanted to be a race car engineer when I grew up. I had written to the chief engineers on several teams and asked their opinion about how to get a similar job. They all said Mechanical Engineering. So my path was set. I was accepted to the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering right out of the gate.

My freshman year, I joined the Formula SAE team. I didn't have a very large role, but I definitely learned that it's a boys club. I kept at it, but that fall, one of my favorite drivers, Greg Moore, was killed in a race and that numbed me to the sport a little. The following year, I did a bit more with SAE, and got interested in aerodynamics. Some of the testing I did was enough to interest Ford Motor Company when I interviewed for a summer internship position. I accepted and that lead to two more internships and eventually a permanent position with the company. Unfortunately, my interest in racing had almost completely faded by the time I quit Ford.

I wanted to find something similar but different professionally, which is how I ended up with a MS degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering with an emphasis in traffic safety.