Bridging Cultural Gaps
Date Posted: June 25, 2020
Posted In: People, Workforce,
by Chitra Foster, Civil Engineer, Burns & McDonnell
Growing up in India and southern Africa, my career path was shaped by the world around me. A desire to help provide basic services to the poor was a primary motivator. I had an affinity for science, and my father was a structural engineer. So, when it came time for me to pick a career, I tried to find the most effective way to apply my talent to improving underserved communities.
This ultimately led me to earn my master’s degree in engineering with a concentration in water and sanitation. Soon thereafter I began my career working on development projects in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Because of my nomadic upbringing and early career, I learned to be multicultural and multidisciplinary. I had to learn to rapidly read the business and cultural norms and find ways to bring consensus on sometimes highly political and contentious water projects. Having fluency in bridging cultures has helped me transition to new geographies as well as career paths.
A decade of working on foreign-donor projects came at the cost of missing out on experience in construction, as most donor aid in that era was focused on master planning and capacity building. Since I really desired hands-on construction experience, I made a mid-career switch to work in construction — primarily on design-build projects, a project delivery method that was gaining popularity in the early 2000s in the municipal water industry.