Nebraska Women in STEM talked to Anayeli Martinez Real about finding her career in construction engineering and inspiring the next generation of engineers.
As the daughter of a single mom, Kiewit Corporation Project Executive, Anayeli Martinez Real didn’t imagine herself in a STEM career. As an Omaha Northwest High School senior, she assumed she’d go straight to finding a job after graduation to help support her family.
Anayeli’s life changed when she decided to take a few classes at Metro Community College’s (MCC) South Campus while still in high school. One of the faculty asked about her future plans and what subjects she excelled. Anayeli shared that she was always good at math and science.
The instructor said, “you see that metal thing there in the ceiling? That’s called a beam. A structural engineer had to figure out the width and the length and the thickness of that steel to make sure the building doesn’t collapse .”
Anayeli couldn’t believe people get paid to do that type of mathematical work and left energized by the conversation. She went home, thumbed through the phone book, and started calling engineering firms asking to shadow them for a day. Through those experiences, she gravitated towards construction engineering.
After graduating from high school, Anayeli entered University of Nebraska Lincoln’s engineering program at the Peter Kiewit Institute in Omaha. While there, she realized the gap in Latina and lower income students in engineering. She once again picked up the phone and started calling schools asking for permission to talk to students about being a Latina pursuing a career in engineering. Then after graduating from UNL with her engineering degree, she joined more organized efforts to recruit underrepresented youth into engineering and construction.
Anayeli often talks to groups of girls, most of which have never heard of engineering, and if they had heard of it, it was from men. She is able to tell the girls, “I went to a public school, was raised by a single mom, and was low income. I graduated. I am doing this. It’s a real thing.”
“The really, heartwarming part that I’m starting to live now is that some of those young girls I talked to early on chose engineering and are going to college and graduating college because they heard me talk to them. And now some of them are asking me to mentor them as they enter the field.”
Anayeli was fortunate to have inspiring mentors of her own. When she was a student, a recruiter at UNL told her she should connect with Dee Oswald at Kiewit, then a project manager at OHDZA Dessert Dome and now Vice President of Quality. Anayeli called Dee and she was willing to answer all her questions. Today, Dee continues to be a mentor that she can call to work through problems.
“Within our organization, there is that sisterhood. There are things we go through in our industry and there is someone I can call. We don’t work in the same department. We don’t work in the same business divisions . It’s the same organization and we are all going through similar challenges in our careers, maybe at different times and in different ways, but we are able to support each other in that way.”
She’s also had amazing male mentors and says having both is key. “When you talk to people who think differently and have different perspectives, it can help you think through a challenge in different ways.”
Her advice to other women in STEM is that if they see something in their industry that needs to change, don’t wait for someone else to do it. Be the change agent.
“If people feel the passion, the desire to make change, then just do it. People will support you. People typically follow passionate leaders. You won’t be doing it alone. You just need to start it.”
Today, Anayeli is 17 years into her career at Kiewit. She is the only woman, the only person of color, and the youngest building group project executive in her business division. She has worked on over $2.3 billion in projects in half a dozen states.
She says her favorite projects include her very first out of state project working on Denver’s Union Station underground bus terminal, the recently completed Orangutang Forest at the Henry Doorly Zoo, The Joslyn, and additions to the MCC Fort Omaha Campus.
She especially loved working for MCC, because she feels like she owes her professional life to them.
“If I wouldn’t have been sitting in at MCC South Omaha Campus as a high school student, I would have been lost in the hustle with everyone else. There are so many kids who are in my situation who are lost and struggling for the rest of their lives working minimum wage and not financially stable. I have stability and a career I love.”