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: Pooja Chari

PoojaChari Pooja Chari is a YP committee member, and a water & wastewater engineer employed by Fishbeck, Thompson, Carr, & Huber, Inc in Cincinnati, Ohio.

WE caught up with Pooja at the AWWA Leadership Day and YP Summit in Nashville, TN.

What were your expectations of AWWA Leadership Day and YP Summit? I wanted to learn the type of events other sections across the country are organizing and see what Ohio section could adopt to involve more students and YPs. The Ohio AWWA Section has grown a lot in the past few years. We were facing some challenges with retention, as well as starting and maintaining student chapters.

Did it meet/exceed expectations?
It met my expectations. It was exciting to learn what the other AWWA Sections are doing. It was also extremely exciting to learn about the panelists and how they got to where they are by volunteering their time to AWWA.

How will this change your interactions with AWWA?
In the most positive way. I spoke with AWWA CEO David LaFrance about getting involved with AWWA India as well as new student chapters in India to bridge the communication gap. Eventually, I will start getting involved with other committees on AWWA.