Leading Through Challenges Featuring Karen (“KD-A”) Durham-Aguilera, Executive Director for the Army National Military Cemeteries – Ep 005

Photo Credit: Elizabeth Fraser, Arlington National Cemetery In this episode of The Geotechnical Engineering Podcast, we talk to Karen Durham-Aguilera, more commonly known as KD-A, who is the Executive Director at the Army National Military Cemeteries. We talk about her career and her role at the Army National Military cemeteries. KD-A also talks about effective leadership and how you can break it down into the four C's of leadership. Engineering Quotes: Here Are Some of the Questions We Ask KD-A in This Episode: Can you talk about the journey you have had in your career and what you do on a daily basis? Do you believe that your career path has equipped you to be who you are now? With the amount of responsibilities that you have, how do you manage work-life balance? How have you been able to overcome hardships over the years? What is one of the biggest myths about your profession that you would like to debunk? Can you talk about the 4 C's in becoming an effective leader? What advice would you give to someone who is new to a leadership role? What qualities and characteristics come to mind when you think of a good engineering leader? Here Are Some of the Key Points Discussed About KD-A's Career and Work She Is Doing at the Army National Military Cemeteries: How KD-A's Career Journey Started: KD-A completed both her bachelor's and master's degrees in Louisville, Kentucky, at the B. Speed School of Engineering. She worked a co-op year to get her master's degree at an AE firm, which was her introduction to working in the field. KD-A also worked at the Tennessee Valley Authority during this time. She then joined an AE firm in Alabama, where she designed the foundation for a water tank. A year later, she joined a geotechnical engineering firm in New Orleans, Louisiana, where she worked mainly offshore on projects like jack-up barges and drill rigs. After a few years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was looking for engineers who had deep foundation experience, and they hired KD-A due to her experience in this field. Joining the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: This led to a 34-year career in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. She worked on many national and international projects during this time as project engineer, resident engineer, and area engineer. KD-A worked as the area engineer in Anniston, Alabama, where she worked on chemical demilitarization facilities that were built to dispose of mustard gas and nerve gas agents that had been stored in bunkers since the early days of the cold war. This project caused civilian unrest, which led her to take courses to successfully communicate with the public. She spent several months at the Army Corps of Engineers Headquarters, where she learned how government works in terms of what it takes to get a project through, the different wickets of appropriations, the various federal agencies that are involved, and the network. She then became the Chief of Construction Operations in Sacramento, California, where she operated across several states for a variety of missions like civil works and flood-control She also got involved with flood fighting and responding to other disasters during this time. KD-A completed another detail with the Army Corps of Engineers Headquarters as an acting senior executive, which had never been done before by someone from the field. She gave them ground truth of the impact of the policies that they were trying to propagate. In turn, she learned what a senior executive could do and that she was capable of doing the job. She then became the full-time senior executive and has held that position for the past 17 years. A Journey to Iraq: The United States has been deploying engineers to the battlefields for many years.