Episode 1: Playing With Dirt

Amy Steiner was going to build rockets and go to college anywhere but Alaska. Neither of those things happened, and Alaska is better for it.Today, Amy is the Chief of Geotechnical and Materials at the Alaska District Army Corps of Engineers, and one of the very few engineers on Earth with hands-on experience designing and installing ad freeze piles in frozen ground. When McMurdo Station in Antarctica needed someone to review a foundation design driven into 180 feet of pure ice, the qualified-reviewer list was exactly one name long. It was hers.In this episode, Amy tells Shelly about drilling boreholes in Kaktovik at 20 below with a polar bear guard, getting stranded in the Arctic when the airline just stopped flying for three weeks, and the quiet worry that keeps her up at night: that the frozen ground expertise she's spent her career building might have an expiration date as the Arctic warms.She also has an unpopular opinion about engineering education that every college and hiring manager needs to hear. 🎙️