On this month’s edition of the WGI Unleashed Podcast, we head over to Arlington, VA, to chat with Ashley Orr, an experienced Engineer in our Mobility division. As part of our Mobility division, Ashley focuses on proposing creative-but-feasible solutions to improve mobility methods and promote growth while also preserving and enhancing the unique characteristics of a given community.

Now happily living in Virginia, Ashley grew up in the heart of the Amish countryside in Southeastern Pennsylvania, where she enjoyed a slower, more peaceful pace of life. As she thinks back on her time in Pennsylvania, she reflects fondly on her time spent outdoors hiking and visiting national parks with her family.

Beyond her peaceful upbringing, in this episode, Ashley shares about her time at Penn State University, where we were shocked to learn that she was an enrollee in the NROTC program with plans of joining the Navy and majoring in Aerospace Engineering with the hopes of fulfilling her childhood dream of becoming an astronaut. However, she quickly realized that while she enjoyed her studies, she preferred to shift her focus to something more tangible, where she could see her works’ direct impact on communities as opposed to going to space. This epiphany is what ultimately led Ashley to obtain her Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering.

Ashley initially joined the WGI team out of our Tallahassee office upon her graduation from Penn State University. She has since taken a leap of faith and journeyed northeast to help establish our new Arlington, VA office, where she recently celebrated eight years of service with our firm.

Although now a staple of WGI’s Mobility division, you’ll be shocked to learn that Ashley’s focus in engineering wasn’t always on Mobility. We found out that when she initially joined our firm, her focus was more geared toward transportation engineering, where she learned that her interests lay more in how transportation networks connect communities as opposed to how actual roadwayw are constructed. This revelation is how she found herself gravitating toward a focus on New Mobility + Connected Communities.

Ashley joked with us, calling herself a “plangineer,” as she explained that most of her role now consists of coordinating, advising on Traffic Impact Analysis, reviewing technical reports, and managing WGI’s existing clientele.

On top of everything that we learned about Ashley’s professional life, we also discovered that she is married to her high school sweetheart, whom she shares a three 1/2-year-old daughter with, as well as a very fat cat (her words, not ours) by the name of John Pierre. She enjoys spending weekends with her family exploring their new quaint hometown of Alexandria, where her idea of a perfect lazy Saturday consists of lounging at a local coffee shop with a good book and sprinkled with a side of people-watching.

She also spoke about her love of travel and shared her experiences visiting several unique destinations such as Algeria, Peru, Spain, Qatar, and France, where she had the rare opportunity to live abroad as a perpetual tourist for nine months, having since labeled herself a Francophile.

And if that’s not enough, tune in now to find out about the most exotic food that Ashely has ever eaten, what professional sports team she had the exclusive honor of naming, and what the heck a shoofly pie is!

Like, Comment, Subscribe!

Visit your favorite podcast app now and subscribe to WGI Unleashed to receive alerts every time a new episode drops. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart Radio, Google Podcasts, or wherever you tune into your favorite podcasts!