Judith Nitsch.
Courtesy of Worcester Polytechnic Institute
In many ways Judy Nitsch was an average American girl. Growing up in the small town of Southwick, Massachusetts (pop. 5,000), she played softball, was a Girl Scout, took piano lessons, and helped her dad manage a Little League team. Judy also loved to read.
“I can remember that I often asked my parents to drive me to the library right before it closed,” she says, “so I could return my books and take out new ones—and the thing I am amazed at is that my parents always took the time to drive me there.”
Those supportive parents were Dot and Ed Nitsch. Dot was head nurse at the local hospital, and Ed was a pharmaceutical salesman. Judy was born in the 1950s, the second-oldest child, with an older sister and five younger brothers.
The Nitsch family loved to play cards, especially a game called Setback. Judy recalled, “My sister was always partners with my mom, and my dad got me. They didn’t treat us like kids when we played—they were serious, and we had to be also. It was a lot of fun too! They taught us strategy, counting, and quick decisions as we played. I often wonder what influence that had on my ability to do math and solve problems—a lot, I would think!”
On Saturdays, the Nitsch family always had chores. Judy said, “My sister would always choose to watch our three littlest brothers and I would usually take jobs like washing the car, ironing, or washing the kitchen floor. They were tasks that had a start and an end, and you could see what you accomplished. Makes you realize why I became an engineer and my sister is a fabulous kindergarten teacher!”
In sixth grade, Judy was one of 10 children in a special after-school class on advanced math concepts, which was taught by the school principal. In junior high, she was in a special chemistry lab class that involved writing hypotheses, doing experiments, and documenting the results in lab reports. Judy remembered “ bumping a lit Bunsen burner during one experiment and setting the desktop on fire!”
After reading that Yale University was going coed in 1969, Judy announced to her mother that she would go to Yale one day. She explained, “She totally encouraged it! I’m the second of seven kids, so I knew my parents couldn’t afford it, but I can recall how pleased I was with her reaction.”
In high school, Judy had the same math teacher for three years, and he had a lasting impact on her. Judy explained, “Mr. Perry didn’t differentiate between the girls and the boys regarding their abilities—he wanted to teach math to whoever wanted to learn it! He bought four Wang desktop calculators for his room—a real unusual investment for a small high school. We thought they were fabulous and we were in heaven using them!”
Judy’s favorite class was geometry, and because it was a small school there weren’t many advanced math classes such as calculus. She also liked to doodle house plans. When Judy was a junior, she had another chat with her mom about colleges. When Judy told her that she was thinking about attending a state college because of the cost of the Ivy Leagues, her mother got mad and said, “You figure out what school you want to go to, and if we can’t afford it, then you look at your second choice. Don’t choose your college on what you think we can afford!”
In 1971 Judy graduated as class valedictorian from a class of 119 students at Southwick High School in Massachusetts. She enrolled in Worcester Polytechnic Institute that fall. She said, “I started out as a math major but knew that I’d be switching my major. Math majors either became teachers, which I knew I didn’t want to do; became actuaries, which I didn’t have the personality for; or went into computer science, and I did not like the Fortran programming course I took during my first semester freshman year.”
Judy stood in the middle of the college campus and looked at the different engineering buildings while she was trying to decide. Observing the mechanical engineering building first, she said, “I thought mechanical engineers designed knobs on televisions, so I didn’t want to do that. I wasn’t keen on my chemistry course as a freshman, so I rejected chemical engineering. I was taking a physics course called Electricity and Magnetism, which I wasn’t acing, so I rejected electrical engineering. The next building was the civil engineering building, and I picked it as my major.”
During the summer break in college, she worked for Sanderson & Washburn, an engineering and land surveying firm in Connecticut. Judy explained, “They had about 15 employees, and I worked as a drafter in the office. This was 1973, and the owner of the company did not allow the girls that were in the engineering department to work on job sites. We were only allowed to work in the office. And working there for two summers I was only allowed to go out on a construction site once. That’s because it was an emergency; something had to get checked because something was due to a client that afternoon. So that was the only time I was allowed to go out on a job site.”
Judy learned that the male college students working those summers were only allowed to work in survey crews and be on construction sites. They resented the fact that they didn’t get the office and computer experience that she got. They were just as disappointed by the arrangement as Judy was.
“They wondered if I could use a chain saw and they wondered if I could handle working with the men on job sites. They didn’t realize that I have five younger brothers.”
Judy graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1975 with a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering. First hired at the Framingham, Massachusetts, office of Schofield Brothers Inc., she was the only woman engineer in the firm, beating out 10 men because she had two years of summer job experience. They almost didn’t hire her because of her lack of experience on-site. “They wondered if I could use a chain saw and they wondered if I could handle working with the men on job sites,” she recalled. “They didn’t realize that I have five younger brothers.”
Her first job was to widen Wellesley Street in Weston, Massachusetts. The task required designing sidewalks and drainage, as well as lowering the hill to make it safer for drivers and pedestrians. One day while inspecting the construction, Judy parked her car at the bottom of the hill because the road was closed, and a policeman told her to move her car. Judy says, “As I explained why I was there, he didn’t believe me and insisted that I move my car. At that point, the contractor saw me and yelled, ‘Hey, Judy, come on up here!’ so the cop let me through. He didn’t expect that a woman would be an engineer, but he especially didn’t expect someone 22 years old would be doing this kind of work!”
After three years, Judy was promoted to branch manager. When she passed the national exam and became a professional engineer, she became the firm’s first woman vice president. At just 26 she joined the firm’s board of directors. In 1982, Judy joined the firm of Allen & Demurjian, and two years later she became a stockholder in the company. The firm was then renamed Allen, Demujrian, Major & Nitsch.
In 1975, Judy was asked to serve on a committee of the Boston Society of Civil Engineers Section (BSCES) of ASCE to plan the national convention. When she went to the first planning meeting, she found that she was the only woman engineer. The other women were engineers’ wives, who had come to plan the program for the spouses. She eventually chaired several BSCES committees and was asked to run for the board of directors, which led to her eventually becoming their first female and youngest-ever president.
During this time, she also did graduate work toward a master’s degree in civil engineering. In 1982, she received the Society of Women Engineers’ Distinguished New Engineer Award.
After Judy and her business partners sold Allen, Demurjian, Major & Nitsch, she decided to open her own firm in 1989. Centered in Boston, the firm grew quickly. In 1996, the company earned a ranking of #172 on the Inc. 500, the list of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the United States. Legislation at the time allocated 5 percent of federal contract dollars to women-owned businesses, and with the firm’s status as a woman-owned business, Judy won numerous public contracts in the early 1990s. Despite the possibility of increased business opportunities, though legally she was still a women-owned company, Judy changed the company name to Nitsch Engineering in 2006, dropping her first name off. She explains, “We didn’t want to be known as a good woman-owned engineering firm. We wanted to be known as a good engineering and land surveying firm.”
Currently, Nitsch Engineering provides civil engineering, land surveying, traffic engineering, and planning services, as well as GIS (geographical information services) to clients up and down the East Coast, in 18 states and six countries. It does site development projects—parking lots, roads, drainage, sewer, and water system designs. An architect does the building design, and Nitsch Engineering designs the site.
Judy met her husband, Tony Magliozzi, when they were working on a bank project together. Judy explains, “Tony was the project manager for the architectural firm and I was the project manager for the civil engineering aspects of the project. It was ‘hate at first sight’ for me. But as we worked on the project, I gradually got to like him, and he asked me out after my last construction visit. I said yes.”
Judy says she gets her drive from visiting famous architectural marvels: “I would always drag my husband to visit buildings by my architecture clients, like buildings by Frank Gehry. I would also make sure that we visited Frank Lloyd Wright buildings and Santiago Calatrava structures if we were in the area.” Sadly, Tony passed away in 2012.
The green roof at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Alfredo DiMauro, WPI, Assistant Vice President for Facilities, WPI
One of the highlights of Judy’s career was chairing the Board of Trustees Facilities Committee at her alma mater, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, for 16 years. She helped guide the school through several major facilities projects. Judy and Tony contributed to WPI’s East Residence Hall’s green roof. The roof not only provides thermal insulation, but also implements a storm-water monitoring system to measure the amount and quality of runoff controlled by the green roof. One-third of the roof is planted with sedums (a large flowering plant) that provide students and faculty with opportunities to study the storm water benefits of such roofs. The green roof was the last step needed to make the building LEED certified, a national rating for high-performance, sustainable buildings.
Judy’s company implements green techniques into its projects, and is in the forefront of sustainable design. She works with world-renowned architects in the United States and throughout the world. Some of her firm’s projects include the New England Aquarium, Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Connecticut Science Center, Boston’s Big Dig, the Princeton University Campus Plan, Acadia National Park, and the award-winning MetroWest Water Supply Tunnel project.
“We look for the best-qualified candidates of both genders, but I think women seek us out because they see women at all levels of our firm, including three women engineers as shareholders.”
About her company, she said, “About one-third of Nitsch Engineering’s engineers are women— compared with 10 percent nationally. We look for the best-qualified candidates of both genders, but I think women seek us out because they see women at all levels of our firm, including three women engineers as shareholders. They realize they would have a good opportunity to get ahead without discrimination.”
Judy helps other women engineers through her participation in many organizations, including the Society of Women Engineers. Nitsch Engineering organizes Boston’s annual Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day. She said, “I will speak with any woman engineer who calls asking for career advice, because as a young engineer I had no women to talk with professionally. For the first eight years of my career, I was the only woman engineer at my workplace.”
She tells young girls, “Remember, all of the rookies—male or female—on every construction site get teased and embarrassed by the old-timers. And usually the newbie is asked to get coffee. That’s just a rite of passage. Being the only woman
As we build for the future, architects, engineers, and landscape architects face challenges in the sustainability of our current lifestyles and environments. These architects and engineers must pay attention to critical global environmental issues such as energy, pollution, transportation, agriculture, land use, construction, water access and use, and ecological destruction.
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is an internationally recognized green building program, which can be applied to individual buildings and homes as well as to entire neighborhoods and communities. LEED certification for commercial buildings and neighborhoods must satisfy all LEED prerequisites and earn a minimum of 40 points on a 110-point LEED rating system scale. Currently 135 countries around the world have LEED-certified projects. Among these prerequisites are:
With more than 35 years of engineering experience, Judy is a registered professional engineer in 21 states. She has received many prestigious awards, including the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Parcel-Sverdrup Engineering Management Award, the Boston Society of Architects’ Women in Design Award, the Patriots Trail Girl Scout Council’s Leading Women Award, and the Women’s Transportation Seminar Boston Chapter’s Woman of the Year Award.
“Remember, all of the rookies—male or female— on every construction site get teased and embarrassed by the old-timers. And usually the newbie is asked to get coffee. That’s just a rite of passage.”
On June 19, 2010, Judy was awarded an honorary doctor of science degree by the Massachusetts Maritime Academy at its 167th commencement, recognizing Judy for her contributions to the engineering field and her efforts to encourage others to pursue engineering careers.
In 2011, Lisa Brothers was named president and chief executive officer at Nitsch Engineering. Her 29 years in design, construction, and management of roadways; site development; sustainable design; and infrastructure-related projects began when Lisa first heard about engineering from her typing teacher in high school. Her teacher knew that Lisa was good at math and science and asked, “What about engineering?” Judy now serves as founding principal and chairman of the board, and continues to work full-time, focusing on client relations and business development.
Judy said, “Oh, I love what I do, no doubt about it. The thing I like about engineering—and civil engineering in particular— is that it is tangible. I can drive down roads I designed. I go into shopping centers and office parks that I know the building is there because I put it there.”
LEARN MORE
Changing Our World: True Stories of Women Engineers by Sybil E. Hatch (American Society of Civil Engineers, 2006)
Profiles of Civil Engineers: Judith Nitsch, P.E., by Sloan Career Cornerstone Center, www.careercornerstone.org/civileng/profiles/nitsch.htm
Women in Green: Voices of Sustainable Design by Kira Gould and Lance Hosey (Ecotone Publishing, 2007)