Career Paths Spotlight: Kate Mignone
At AECOM, employees are encouraged and supported to pursue career paths that best fit their unique capabilities, interests, and aspirations. Our Career Path Spotlight series takes you through the rewarding career journeys of our employees who have stepped out of their comfort zone and taken on new challenges to chart their own successful careers and growth.
This time, we caught up with Kate Mignone, associate vice president, New England water resources market sector lead, to learn how she chose the path she’s on today.
Hi Kate. What do you do for AECOM?
I’ve been with AECOM for 19 years and currently contribute across a range of roles. I am project manager on combined sewer overflow (CSO) and tunnel projects, project director on stormwater, resiliency and conveyance projects and the market sector lead for water resources in New England. I live in New Hampshire with my husband, two kids, a cat, two fish and eight chickens.
Tell us about your journey and how you got here.
My first role out of college was staff engineer for VHB on the site development team. However, I aspired to help the environment and communities, not to develop land for office buildings and malls. I then joined Dufresne-Henry and worked for five years as a staff engineer on stormwater and sewer models and CSO programs.
In 2005, I joined AECOM via Metcalf and Eddy as a project engineer. At the time, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay in engineering. I pursued my master’s degree in business administration in college and always had an interest in the business side of things, but guidance from my mentor in the CSO field and being exposed to many different projects helped me decide to stay in engineering and continue to develop my modelling skills.
In 2012, I was promoted to project manager and asked if I wanted to help on a small project to oversee hydraulics modelling. I said yes and that small tunneling project, the South Hartford tunnel, turned out to be the catalyst for many future tunneling projects. I learned so much about tunnel sizing, surge and other technical considerations for tunnels and consolidation conduits.
After my portion of the South Hartford Tunnel finished in 2014/2015, I continued working on different CSO projects and helped to grow our presence with several projects in Maine. I managed a couple of my own projects for Hartford Metropolitan District (MDC). I continued supporting stormwater projects and designs for Massachusetts Department of Transportation and Rhode Island Department of Transportation and at one point even managed stormwater projects for Water, Transportation and Environment business lines.
I also got more involved in business development and marketing. I helped with the Hartford MDC one-time on-call proposal and found I enjoyed working on marketing pursuits.
In my current role, I’ve enjoyed using my MBA and focusing on strategic client growth opportunities as well as continuing to manage additional tunnel projects. Looking back, I did not expect one tunnel project in 2012 would lead to these additional opportunities years later. I didn’t go into my career choosing to tunnel, tunnelling found me.
What was a career defining moment for you?
I was relatively shy and reserved until college. During college, I made an effort to be more outgoing. Now I embrace that I am an ambivert. It is the best of both worlds and really reflects both aspects of my extroverted side as well as my introverted time.
Tell us about any learning opportunities or development programs that helped you grow.
In 2021, I was asked to participate in the LIFT program — an internal AECOM leadership program, which is now called Elevate — where I attended seminars with other AECOM leaders and had career coaching. This coaching gave me the confidence to ask to be a market sector lead for water resources.
What was one of your proudest moments?
I really loved math and science growing up, so as part of one of my high school Girl Scout projects, I helped set up my town’s recycling program. That experience helped me realize I wanted to incorporate my love for the environment into my civil engineering career.
If not this path, then what would have been your Career plan B?
This is a topic we discuss often at my house. My husband is creative and has so many ideas. Me on the other hand, not as much. I could see myself getting into a business combining yoga and baking!
