Steve Mitnick is Editor-in-Chief of Public Utilities Fortnightly and author of the book “Lines Down: How We Pay, Use, Value Grid Electricity Amid the Storm.”
PUF’s Steve Mitnick: What were you doing at the AABE conference?
Laron Evans: One of the members in the Kansas City chapter had been nudging me for quite a while to become a member of AABE, and I did so last year.
However, that was not my first encounter with AABE. When I was graduating from high school, my math teacher was familiar with AABE’s Kansas City chapter and recommended me for the William Grant Pinkard Scholarship. I received that scholarship, which supported me through two years of college. I’ve been familiar with AABE for about fifteen years.
I was asked last month to be the Burns & McDonnell diversity manager for Exelon projects. That was another reason I was at the conference, to network with members from Exelon but also with representatives of diverse businesses that were present at the conference.
PUF’s Steve Mitnick: How did you get into engineering from high school, to college, and then into a career?