Olivia Olsen

I attribute my success to my parents and the way they raised us to work hard. They taught me that you gotta do hard things to do hard things, and failure almost isn't an option - of course you can fail, but you can only dwell on it for point-three seconds, then you learn from it, move on, and do the next thing. Once you achieve what you set out to achieve, you set a new goal and keep going. That mindset has carried me through everything - taking honors and AP classes in high school was hard, but that prepared me for college. I showed up to college engineering and was like, oh wait, calculus and physics? Not that bad, actually having a fun time, because I had struggled through it in high school first. The same applies to athletics, staying fit, doing hard workouts - it's hard, but you come out stronger with a stronger mindset and you're healthier. Even now at work, it's tough to find the right questions to ask and point yourself in the right direction when things aren't going quite right, but you gotta do hard things to do hard things. That constant cycle of pushing yourself is what leads to being great.

To never be afraid to ask questions. I believe curiosity is one of the biggest strengths a young professional can have, especially in an industry where every project and every job site is different.

I would say that asking questions and building personal relationships is so valuable. In the dredging and marine construction industry, you're working with people across a very wide range of backgrounds - some of the most experienced captains who have been on the water for 40 years and know everything there is to know about dredging, and also guys like the shoremen who might not have much more than a high school degree. Asking questions and learning from all those different people and building those personal relationships will make it that much easier. I know that there's a stigma of women in construction and women in engineering, but I think if you present yourself confidently and genuinely interested in asking questions, it makes it a lot harder for people to discount you. Don't let intimidation or that stigma stop you from pursuing these careers - confidence and communication are key to earning trust and succeeding.

One of the biggest challenges in dredging and marine construction is that coming in as a brand new engineer, there's a huge influx of information all at once. There are so many moving parts, and it's really hard to fully wrap your head around the full picture because you're still focusing on the pieces and not the sum of it all. Another major challenge is that every day and every job is different - this is my fourth beach job at this point, and every single beach job has been so drastically different that you almost have to relearn and then creatively use your knowledge from other beaches to remold it to the current one. But that's also a fun challenge. On the opportunities side, in a personal sense, the work rotation has afforded me the ability to travel and connect with so many more of my friends and family than I would have if I just moved away to a different city for a new job. I can go see friends in Chicago, Minneapolis, LA, and make it to important life events. I've also been able to see the world - we worked on the West Coast and took a trip to Japan. From a professional standpoint, I see major opportunities in looking at the little things and figuring out where we can increase production. Coming from an industrial engineering background, there's a lot that I have yet to explore in terms of improving processes and helping the company overall.

Personal relationships, curiosity, and asking questions are the values I hold most highly in both my work and personal life. I think they go hand in hand. I could talk to a brick wall if I had to - I think asking questions of the people around you and showing genuine interest in learning things benefits you in so many ways. People like to be asked about themselves, and the more that you learn, the more you can relate to them. What you take from them adds to your knowledge base, and then you can relate to someone else, and it just becomes this awesome web of more experiences, more stories, more knowledge that helps you connect with people better. Having people feel valued, especially at work on a more personal level, makes work easier for me. I didn't know the operators that much at first, but I got out there, talked to them, and being able to joke around and chat with them on a regular day-to-day basis helps so much when I need to crack down and be like, no, this is what we need to get done. Then they're like, oh yeah, of course, and it just makes everything easier. When you're traveling around, it makes it that much more fun to chat with strangers and get better insight into the world, what other kinds of jobs are out there, what everybody's doing. There's so much you don't know, and asking questions, staying curious, and building relationships helps in every sense.