Leadership

Student and Young Professionals Programming

Water Equation assisted in funding Leadership Day for over 100 AWWA Young Professionals in Nashville. That was followed up with nearly 300 AWWA/WEF Young Professionals attending the 2019 YP Summit. This was the largest gathering to date of premier water and wastewater young professionals!

AWWA has 3,500+ student members, 80 student chapters, and 3,000 young professional members throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and India. Our newest student chapters include Florida Atlantic University, University of North Florida, Purdue University, University of California – Berkeley, University of South Carolina, and AWWAIndia – Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

Funding for students and young professionals helps us provide webinars to student chapters for free, it helps us create programming at our conferences, such as conference mentoring, networking receptions, job fairs, poster competitions, committee speed networking and much more.

YP Spotlight: jenny doyle

Jenny Doyle is a Civil Design Engineer with Black & Veatch Water in Kansas City, MO and attended the 2019 AWWA YP Leadership Day in Nashville, TN, sponsored by AWWA Water Equation.

jenny doyle Why did you decide to attend the Leadership Day?
My first-time attending was very impactful and launched my involvement with the Section years ago. From what I learned during my first Leadership Training Day, I found a confidence and affinity for the structure, honesty, and mission of AWWA. Now, as a trustee for the MO-AWWA Board as well as a YP, this particular training includes a lot of the information and networking opportunity I need to be more effective at the Section level and inspire the next group of YP leaders to have the same confidence and understanding.

Did the event meet/exceed expectations?
Overall, yes! The volunteer panel was very insightful and encourage participation both locally and nationally. Networking with repeat attendees was amazing, and I learned so much from the newcomers as well. Following the conference, I’ve kept in contact with multiple attendees with questions or other encouragement. I would have liked to see more 2019 specific goals being rolled out to the YP level, whatever they may be.

How will this change your interactions with AWWA?
I now aspire to sit on a technical committee at the national level.

Where do you see future opportunities in AWWA?
I have one more year as a trustee in my Section, and would like to be invited to continue as an Executive Committee member when my time as trustee is done. With this goal in mind, I need to attend more conferences, including ACE.