Crossposted from Clean Water Stories

International Women in Engineering Day, observed every June 23, traces its roots to 1919, when a group of women who had stepped into engineering roles during the First World War refused to step back out when it ended. They formed the Women’s Engineering Society to fight for their place in the profession and to hold the door open for others. It took nearly a century for the world to formally mark what they started: the day was founded in 2014, received UNESCO patronage in 2017, and has grown into a global celebration ever since. The tenacity of those founding women is not a historical footnote. It is a living thread. More than a hundred years later, women still hold just 15.4 percent of engineering occupations in the United States. (Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024; Society of Women Engineers, swe.org/research/2026/us-employment.)

King County Wastewater Treatment Division (WTD) is filled with women engineers, at every level, across every discipline, doing extraordinary work every day. The seven women featured here are a handful of them. They agreed to share their stories: of how they got here, what they have built, and what they want the next generation to know. These are not tidy success narratives. They are real ones, full of detours, persistence, encouragement from unexpected places, and the deep satisfaction of work that matters. Read more.

Pictured: Top row, left to right: Lauren Burch, Wastewater Engineer, Crystal Fleet, Project Resources Unit Manager, Mary Beth Gilbrough, Unit Manager of the Project Engineering and Technical Resources Unit, and Liz Matson, Offsite PMOA Lead. Bottom row, left to right: Samayyah Williams, PE, PMP, Process Control Supervisor at Brightwater Treatment Plant, Rebecca Gauff, PE, PMP, Project Manager and Mechanical Engineer, and Karla Guevarra, Wastewater Process Engineer III.