| Peruvian water professional finds calling after fleeing paradise
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Peruvian water professional finds calling after fleeing paradise

Ada Liz Gabancho-Soto fled her small community of Uchiza in the Peruvian Amazon in the 1980s when her family was threatened by the violence of terrorism. Joining throngs of other refugees in the capital city of Lima, she and her parents and siblings were fortunate to find housing with municipal services but witnessed the challenges of others living without adequate running water, sewage management and other basic services. This is where she found her calling to work in water. 

awwa-member-spotlight-ada-liz-gabancho-sotoToday, as a service delivery systems administrator with Connecticut Water Company, Gabancho-Soto chairs the Philanthropic Committee of the American Water Works Association’s Connecticut Section and helps raise funds for Water for People and Water Equation. 

“As a witness to all the problems with drinking water in Peru, I told myself that I would help to solve these challenges,” she said. “It’s a privilege to work with the Philanthropic Committee because I’m helping people like I said I would do when I was very young.”

Her professional journey began when she attended university classes in Lima to study environmental engineering. She also attended an institution to learn English. Wanting to progress further, she applied for a program to study in the United States and moved to Connecticut to live with her sister. After several years of juggling work and classes, she graduated from the University of Connecticut in 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering. 

“The transition was very, very hard, because I only had my one sister here and my parents and the rest of my family were all living in different places,” she said, explaining that her parents remained in Peru, and the rest of her family re-located to France, Spain and elsewhere in South America. 

“I didn’t live at the university, I commuted, so I felt like I didn’t have friends,” she added. “And there was so much culture shock – like I didn’t know you needed to buy books and there would be homework on the first day, plus the classes were so huge, enough to fill a whole movie studio.”

Nevertheless, she kept pushing herself. “I told myself that I would finish, no matter what,” she said. “I could not believe that I started from so low, and I was able to reach so high. Everything that you want in your life is reachable.”

After graduation, Gabancho-Soto worked her way up from part-time and interim positions to a job with a national conservation organization and then with Connecticut Water. In six years there, she’s progressed from technician to analyst and now administrator.

“I’m proud that people recognize that what I do in the water sector is important,” she said. “It feels good to contribute and to be fulfilling my goal of helping provide access to clean water.”

In her current position, Gabancho-Soto is impressed by the ongoing progress in technology that helps her team keep up with the requirements of changing regulations, such as those addressing lead and copper and PFAS. 

Because there is so much to study and learn in the water sector, she hopes to explore beyond drinking water into wastewater and construction of new infrastructure. She finds that AWWA is a valuable resource for information, resources and connections. 

“I like that you can learn about topics that are actually occurring right now and get an update on whatever is happening,” she said. “In my local chapter I go to meeting with other Young Professionals who have lots of energy and ideas.”

(Pictured above from left, Gabancho-Soto with Eddy, at a Connecticut Water volunteer event and at a Section fundraising event for Water for People and Water Equation.)
 

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