Albany Business Review 40 Under 40 Brennen Parker

In 2020, Lindsay Zefting Vera '02 was named one of the "40 Under 40" in the Albany Business Review for her work as a civil engineer and urban planner. Her tardily father was a traffic engineer and although Lindsay's brain was geared the same mode and all signs pointed to this type of work, she tried to fight it. Every bit a teenager, no one wants to do have the same career equally a parent, but for Lindsay, it was destined to happen.

At Harley, Lindsay excelled in math, simply she perplexed her Center School math teacher, Lee Sherwood Allen McDermott '64 (Math, 1973-nowadays) considering she wasn't very fast at the foundations of math similar adding, subtracting, multiplication, and division. For these issues she would need pencil and paper and extra time to detect the answer that many of her classmates could solve in their heads. But, if y'all gave her complex math with formulas, powers, modules and operations, she could quickly solve the equations and leave some of her classmates in the grit.

When Lindsay was in Upper School, her engineering science encephalon continued to push her frontwards and Harley's math and scientific discipline teachers reinforced this by giving her academic freedom and the tools to trouble solve. Harley did not just teach to the examination, and, in fact, sometimes Lindsay taught her teachers. One time, JAM (James Aldrich-Moodie) called home to speak to Lindsay's mom nigh that day's math grade. When her mom answered, she assumed the call was virtually her son Brett '98, the rowdier of the two of them, those calls were usually almost him. She was surprised that the call was about Lindsay. That day in math class, JAM was doing a complicated problem on the lath and Lindsay raised her hand and said, "I got the same respond, but I did information technology a totally different way." She showed her class the mode she had solved the problem and JAM was impressed and had to permit her mother know.

Her senior twelvemonth at Harley, Lindsay was accepted to Rensselaer Polytechnic Found (RPI) and she planned to major in structural engineering (like edifice bridges and buildings), but on a ride home with a friend, her plans inverse. "We were sitting at a cease light and my friend was asking questions about the timing of traffic lights and what triggers them to change, time limits, etc. and I started going into infinitesimal details about traffic, traffic control systems and lights, why they office the mode they practice and right then and there, I decided to stop fighting the inclination and merely declare that I was going to be a traffic engineer like my dad."

Her time at RPI was an extension of the problem-solving mentality that she gained at Harley and post-obit her graduation, she worked at a traffic technology firm, Bergman and Assembly (there is besides one in Rochester) in the Albany expanse. She is at present an engineer at Alta Planning + Design, an "active transportation company dedicated to creating agile, healthy communities through planning, landscape architecture, engineering and pedagogy/encouragement programs." For the last 10 years, she has been working on some pretty incredible projects, including the recently finished Empire State Trail, a cycle and pedestrian trail that runs across New York State from Manhattan to the Canadian edge, connecting the Hudson Valley Corridor, the Erie Canal Trail, due north to the Champlain Valley and the Adirondack Mountains. While these three existing trails are swell on their own, her job was to connect them and fill in the gaps betwixt the iii sections. She leads the projects for the Northeast team for Alta and works all over the state.

Lindsay's kids on the Empire Country Trail

The Covid-19 pandemic affected a lot of industries, but Lindsay says there were a few projects paused due to budget constraints, only for the most office, their contract work connected due to a renewed focus on bicycling and walking in the community.

On top of her work at Alta, Lindsay is besides instruction a graduate and undergraduate student course on bicycle and pedestrian planning at SUNY Albany. She took the class herself as a graduate student at SUNY Albany where she graduated with an MA in Urban Planning and Regional Planning. She took the grade with her recently retired dominate, Jeff Olsen, Earlier she worked at Alta and continued to accept classes while working. She said it took her quite a chip of time to earn her degree. She said she was somewhat "hated" while taking the class due to her relationship with the professor/her dominate. Sometimes when he was unable to teach, he would inquire her to fill in and that didn't always sit will with the boyfriend students. He trusted her piece of work and knew she was more capable, which is why he nominated her for the "twoscore under 40" and asked her to teach the class after he stepped downwards.

Since the shut downwards from the pandemic, Lindsay and her husband have been working remotely from their home in Troy, NY with their two kids, Sophie (ii ½) and Miles (four ½). Lindsay tries to involve her kids in her piece of work as much as she can and they have actually explored parts of the Empire State Trail. She wants to show them what she's so busy working on.

Lindsay got her traffic engineering science mind from her dad, but what about her artist mom, Susan Zefting-Kuhn? She says thanks to her mom, she is a really skilful planner (more than than a traditional engineer) and she "has an centre for what volition work" meaning she can look at something, get an idea, and quickly make up one's mind if it's a feasible idea before the project even starts. That saves a lot of time and money when information technology comes to making these projects happen.

She attributes much of her success to Harley's Stem (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) curriculum and the flexibility that the teachers had in fostering her interests. Lindsay says that is what is so wonderful about Harley: teachers have that freedom to give students an avenue to help their interests grow. She knows she is ane of many, many students that have been given this opportunity and for that she is very thankful.

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Source: https://www.harleyschool.org/alumni-news-lindsay-zefting-02/

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