 There can't really be a geotechnical engineering podcast. Can there be? Yes, there is. And in this first episode, I'm going to introduce you to your host, Jared Green, and hear about his geotechnical engineer, hear about his goals with this podcast, and he's going to give us some great career advice for geotechnical engineers. Let's do it. All right. So now it's time to welcome the man himself here, Jared Green, who is going to be your host for this podcast. But today, we're going to start by getting to know a little bit more about Jared. Jared, how's it going, man? Welcome aboard. Hey, glad to be here, man. We've been talking about this for a little while. Pretty excited. Yeah, we've been doing some planning for this podcast. I mean, I've been thinking about this for a long time, just because of course, my wife worked with Jared for some time. Jill is a geotechnical engineer. And I kept telling her, like, there's really definitely room in the space for a podcast that's really focused on geotechnical engineering just because there's so many different avenues of it that you could go down that really deserves its own podcast, in my opinion. Yeah, now you're absolutely right. There's a pretty diverse field. There's a lot that happens here. When you said podcasts, I was like, man, is that going to be boring, though? Is geotechnical? Is it going to be interesting? Well, I hope it's interesting to geotechnical engineers. Well, it's interesting to me. I love this stuff. So, you know, what we're going to do here for this first episode, of course, is we're going to get to know Jared a little bit better, and he's going to be taking the reins over and he'll be your host going forward. And he's got some great guests that he's lining up for you, some great topics. And really, the whole goal of this podcast, and Jared and I talk about this on a regular basis, is we want to bring geotechnical engineers the topics and the guests that they want and that they feel like they need. Yeah, I mean, that's that's what we're here to serve you, you know, that's right. And we've been putting it on social media, we're already getting some great guest ideas, some great topic ideas. And so, you know, you can always go to geotechnicalengineeringpodcast.com and you can always request topics and guests. Or if you think you'd make a good guess, you got an interesting story, you got an interesting project, come to the table. That's what we want you to do. So, as I said, for today, we're going to learn a little bit more about Jared and Jared. We're going to jump in, we're going to talk, of course, about your career and, you know, some of your valuable career experiences and things of that nature. But I think like one of the things just to start with, because I think it's pretty relevant in today's world is, you know, just talking about kind of like, you know, what's going on in the world today. I mean, we're dealing with a lot of things right now. We're dealing with this pandemic where people have been working at home for a while. Unfortunately, we have, you know, more bad instances of racial inequality that we're dealing with. And I know, you know, that that's something that, you know, at EMI, we've tried to help however we can with our platform. But, you know, just kind of what's been going through your mind as an engineer working through all this? Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you know, you go to school and you say you're studying engineering. So, you know, you focus in on calculations and solving problems and tests and quizzes. And then you start to work as an engineer and you're problem solving. You got your head down, you're at your desk. And now 2020 kind of blew all that up, right? I mean, it's just been a different type of year. And over these last six months and called the last three, it's been pretty wild. You know, with COVID-19, it's really forced us to stay inside for the most part. And people have had the challenge of trying to find ways to stay productive, whether you're in school or whether you're at home as a working parent, or whether you were employed and now you're not employed anymore and you're trying to figure out what that means. Or if you're employed and trying to make opportunities for people. So that's been a challenge. You've had, you know, this concept of what an essential worker is. And if you're not working, are you truly essential? If you're not essential, are you still important? So there's a lot of things going on there. Mental health has been something that even as engineers, we're toying around in that space of talking about what it means to be a whole and really checked in at work. So there have been a lot of challenges. And then all that coupled together with there's a worldwide pandemic going on, right? So with the worldwide pandemic, you know, sometimes you survive and other times you strive. So it's been a challenge altogether. And thankfully, we've, you know, we're moving in the right direction as a nation as a world. And then, you know, when you're getting used to all that, now we're talking about things that we really don't usually talk about at work. And this question of racial injustice or this, you know, and it's something that one of the challenges I've seen is that, you know, talking to folks within my organization outside my organization, a lot of us come to the realization that we might not have all of the vehicles or the vocabulary to even address what's happening right now. But I think the reality is that you talk about a lot of folks that want to do the right thing, we want to have spaces that are equitable spaces, we want to have spaces that are fair and we want to see justice is something that's applicable to everybody, right? So even as engineers, you know, who use math and science to solve problems, we realize that it's important as leaders to still have those soft skills to be able to acknowledge what's going on around us and what that means for our workforces. So in short, 2020 so far, everything has changed. Everything has changed. But just like with COVID-19, a lot of us that are looking at what this means, it means that we have to have better hygiene, we have to pay attention to what social or physical distancing means and what that means for the way we work and play and live and exist. And, you know, things will get back to eventually some type of normal. But the idea is that it'll probably be a better version of what we were before. And I think that in the same way of when we talk about I saw a really good acronym the other day, Jedi, talking about Star Wars, which I love, but a discontent of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. So that an article thought piece through the American side of civil engineers just talking about what's going on right now. And I think that, you know, it's like businesses as usual, it's not really business as usual, we still have to think about, you know, what it means to be working at a company and what it means to be a part of an organization. And as we get bigger, and as we get larger, we realize that we come to work, we still have to be ourselves. And what is being myself feel like? What does that look like? What is it? What is that? Right? So I think that's my long winded way of saying that we're inside, a lot of us are slowly transitioning to being back in physical work spaces. But we're home, we have time to think about things, we have time to read things, we have time to contemplate things. And I think that we're coming to a realization that there are still things that we can improve on, as a nation, as a society, and as our individual companies, right? Or did you know, you know, most of these folks who are listening right now are engineers, and we think that, you know, geotechnical engineer, what can I do, right? Right. But there's still things that we could do as far as making the world a better place as, you know, as crazy as that may sound. But we do have impact, like a little project we work on, we're actually changing the world, we think about it. Yeah, no, for sure. You're moving earth, we're moving earth, we're changing the world. Literally. Yeah, I mean, I think it's important and, you know, just to just to go back to this for a minute, in terms of the, you know, having equality, especially in the engineering world, you know, at EMI, we're building up a platform that's pretty big. And, you know, I think we want to use that platform in positive ways. And I know on our one of our other podcasts, we had one of the leaders of the National Society of Black Engineers on, you know, I think it was a couple of months ago, not around this, obviously it was earlier, but, you know, getting back to like the idea, you know, everyone talks about promoting STEM and we've been talking about that. And also it's about like, you know, promoting like equity in STEM. Right. And so like, you know, for someone like you, you've got a platform, I mean, to begin with before the podcast, I know you're very active on LinkedIn, like people look up to you. So, you know, does that mean that you feel like, you know, you need to be involved in terms of leading the way on that? Or are you just kind of like, let's see what happens type of thing? That's interesting. I mean, I think that I found that the best way for me to do what I do is to kind of be myself. And, you know, I'm not going to say that I'm going to get a bullhorn and, you know, take on the mantle of social justice. I don't think that that's, you know, my calling. But I do think that what I have been doing all these years does kind of align with some of the conversations that are happening right now. And what does that mean? I mean, I'm an African American male from Southwest Philadelphia. And I am a part of an engineering consulting firm, a worldwide engineering consulting firm, Langan Engineering, and the owners. And, you know, when I talked to students at schools, I looked at a lot of students that looked the way I did when I was in, you know, four or fifth grade or ninth or tenth grade. And when I tell them what I do and why I think that math and science is cool and why I think that it opens doors and why I think that it makes opportunities for you to do pretty powerful stuff that's important. I think that goes a long way. And when I see the eyes kind of light up when I'm talking to these young students, I think about where I was when I was younger. And I didn't have a lot of folks that looked like me, they were saying anything about engineering. So I didn't know about engineering. I kind of just landed in this field. And I would say that, you know, from an equity standpoint, I think that, you know, as we talk to people that may not have grown up around engineers and we're sharing with them what an engineer does, I think it's a pretty attractive sale. Pretty attractive sale that you can use math and science to solve problems, right? Yeah. I think that when I was in school, I liked math and science and I did it because it made sense to me. But I never really knew what happens with that math and science outside of that final exam or now that pop quiz, right? So I think that, you know, to answer your question, I think that as I continue to speak to people that are young in their career that are trying to move up within an organization or to find ways to give back to their communities, I think the things I've been saying, I'll continue to say those things. You know, being, I'll say, underrepresented within my field, I mean, there are not, I mean, there are black engineers, there are, there's not a large amount of them in a lot of spaces that I'm in. So it ends up that I'm usually the one of the minority. So I think that that comes with a set of challenges. And, you know, there's so many thought pieces this as far as like the concept of the imposter syndrome. And it just goes on and goes on and goes on, right? It's anything that I've learned to cope with these challenges. I mean, I'm pretty transparent in sharing those when people want to know. But I'm not the guy, anybody that works with me like in those, I'm not the guy that stands in the copy machine and says, Oh, we need to, it's not me, right? But I'm going to strive to continue to be excellent. And, you know, when I'm working on a project, I'm going to still continue to give opportunities to people that work for me and with me to, you know, make a difference, right? That's great. So, you know, what that means for justice, what that means for equity, what it means for diversity, what it means for inclusion, it really depends. I mean, I'm within my firm, I am on a number of corporate corporate task force or corporate committees that take their tackling some of these things, what it means for my firm. So I am responsible for that, which again, is a different different set of muscles to flex, right? I'm not, I'm an engineer by training. So, you know, these other things, it's like, how do you do these things outside of engineering? And I think that as a leader, you talk a lot about this at EMI, that it's more than just solving problems as you start to grow within an organization, whether it's a small one, or a large one, you start to take on responsibility that ties back more to things like the soft skills. How do you interact with people? How do you communicate written verbally? How do you share a difficult message? How do you share a good message? Right? How do you assess how you are doing? Right? Sure. And I think that all those things are important for leadership. And I may be strained from the question of it, but I think that I mean, this is what comes to mind when I think about, you know, how do I fit into all this, right? Right. Sharing my experience, and then having compassion on others that for me, and I imagine it that a lot of the folks are listening, you want to work, talking about professionally, you want to work an organization where you can come to work and you can be, you know, your whole self. And what that means is that if you come to work and you feel like you're just in this bubble, you put your head down, you do your work and you leave, it's a missed opportunity, right? And it's not that when you go to work, you have to feel like you're with a family and you're hanging out all the time. But, you know, if you feel like you can, you know, raise your hand and give an opinion regarding a situation with a project, even though you've only been at the company for a year and a half, right? And somebody pretty high up in the company listens to you and says, you know what, that's a pretty good idea. Let's let's check out what she's saying on this or what he's saying on this, you know, that makes you feel like well, you know, they've invested something in the ad. This is a place where I want to stay, as opposed to just being, you know, the proverbial cog in a wheel, right? Do your job and do it well and come back tomorrow and do it again, because that's what's expected of you. There's an element of that in engineering. But I think that there's a missed opportunity if we don't feel that we can truly be ourselves because, you know, when you're attacking a problem, if we have 10 people in a room that all think differently, it might be some, you know, not confrontation, but it might be a little uncomfortable at times because we don't all see together the same way. But I feel like you're going to get a better solution. If you have 10 people that think exactly the same way, say, yeah, let's just do it that way. We've always been doing it that way. Yeah. I think over the weeks when we start to talk about some of the things that are going on in geotechnical engineering, we're going to see that, you know, doing it the way we used to always do it might not be the right solution for now, you know. Yeah, that's for sure. If that's I think if there's one thing we learned about everything going on right now, it's that, you know, things are going to change and people that are adapt to it and are innovative are going to change. And you know, to your point, there's a there's a great quote by Bill Walsh. She was a great NFL coach. I just read a book about him. He said, if we're all thinking the same, no one's thinking. So, you know, no one's really thinking because, you know, someone's got to think differently and people have to do a little different things kind of to challenge things and keep things fresh. It's also said that if you know, I've heard it said not echo it that if I go in a room and I'm the smartest person in the room, I'm in the wrong room and that's not to say I'm not smart. I'm just saying like, I want to make sure that we're all thinking together, right? It's not just, yeah, you said it will do that. Right. Right. No, for sure. I mean, getting getting input advice and you know, we're trying to do something different is a good thing. And, you know, to that point, Jared, getting into your career a little bit, obviously, you know, our listeners here are geotech engineers and I'm sure they want to be the best they can be, which is why they listen to a podcast like this. You've had a, you know, a good career. I mean, you've been doing it for a while now. You've had success. So maybe you could talk a little bit about, you know, some of the most valuable experiences that you've had in your career that have contributed to where you are today. Sure. I mean, you know, when I came in, I had a master's degree from top engineering school. And, you know, I literally graduated and I think I started working like three weeks afterwards or something like that. So I was like, oh, yeah, I'm freshly mentored engineer. I'm ready to just do this. Right. And you get out in the field as a geotechnical engineer. And, you know, it was wintertime. So it was cold. My feet were wet. And I'm like trying to figure out like, you know, why don't they want to do what I'm saying when I'm in the field? Right. It's like, why is everybody so much older than me? Why are they referring me as the little kid, right? So you got all this stuff going on in your mind, right? But I think that for me, I was keen to listen to folks that were more seasoned than I was. So mentorship has always been something that was important to me. So I listened to people that had been through the ranks and and and we're able to make it, right? And I listened to them. I was willing to do that. And especially early in my career, I was big on, you know, saying yes, if somebody said, you know, we have this other opportunity, this project, we're looking for somebody this qualification, you know, do you want to take this project? A lot of times, I would say yes to those opportunities because I wanted to learn what it's, you know, it's like a sponge wanted to learn. And even if I was on a long term project, the geotechs understand sometimes you're on a project for four, five, six months or longer. And you're seeing the seasons change out there. You're seeing what you're responsible for. And there's sometimes a downtime. It's like, well, how do I make the best of that downtime? So I would ask, you know, my bosses or the people more seasoned, and I would read geotechnical reports, I'd review calculations, I'd do that other stuff outside of what I'm responsible for during my downtime. And I think that that was helpful for me. I call it kind of like cross training mentally. So it kind of refreshing things that we saw in school. And I did that when I was, you know, studying for my EIT when now the fundamentals of engineering exam, same thing for PE, just try to keep my brain sharp while I'm doing things. I think that in addition to mentorship, like being mentored, it was big on also mentoring others. So there's a number of organizations I was tied to where they had mentorship programs where I could talk to, you know, high schoolers and folks still in college to kind of just share what I was doing. I remember as a freshman, I was at an Esby conference, National Society of Black Engineers. And I heard this quote that kind of resonated with me. I said, if you think you're too small to make an impact, try sleeping on a mosquito. And, you know, for whatever reason, it's, you know, I guess it was a dad joke before I was a dad, right? But like for me, it's like, yeah, you can make a difference even now. So even as a staff level engineer and senior staff level engineer, I was still talking to people about what my experience has been and how to help others. That's great. And I think that, you know, saying yes before you truly know how to do something, hold you accountable to figure it out. And I think that, you know, there's an element of humility that I think was important for my career. Yes, you want to be the best, but you still need to acknowledge when you don't know something or when you need to ask for help. And I think that that was instrumental in my growth as well. That's great. And it's funny because I think we did a video together the year or so at a conference and I asked you, like, what was one of your key career moves? And I think it was similar. You said, you know, saying yes to things, which just goes to show it's really on the top of your mind that it's really having a big impact on your career, you know, really jumping in opportunities, which I think is great. And you really make a good point there that I think is really important to capture on this first episode of the Geotechnical Engineering podcast, which is I think one of the challenges for geotechnical engineers, especially early in your career. And I know this because, you know, my wife, of course, is a geotechnical engineer. And she went through this is you do get thrust out into the field often and you're with contractors. You're with, you know, more experienced professionals. You know, you're with owners reps and you're in high pressure situations sometimes by yourself. And, you know, that requires a lot of confidence and that requires, you know, and a lot of times you get confidence from experience. So if you don't have experience and you don't have that confidence yet, it can be a very, very overwhelming situation. And one of those things where you say kind of like Jared said earlier, like, what am I doing? You know, you know, engineering sounded really cool. This is not that cool right now. So I do think that, you know, all the things that you said there in terms of asking for advice, jumping in opportunities, you know, mentoring, finding mentors and then mentoring as soon as you can can all be very helpful and very important in this field because of that reason, because you do really need to ramp your confidence up kind of quickly as a geotech because you're going to be in those stressful situations most likely. It's kind of just the nature of the progression of this profession specifically. So, you know, it's good to hear you kind of highlight that and talk about that. So, you know, along those lines, Jared, what's a project that stands out for you that you can think of that, you know, was kind of big for you in your career, whether a milestone or just had a real big impact on you? It's interesting. I've worked on a lot of projects. I think as a geotech and this is something that especially the folks that are younger in their careers, depending on what type of organization you work at, you can end up working on a lot of projects in a little bit of time as far as, you know, a day here, day two here, or a week here, month here. So, it's kind of tough to say, but when I think about projects, I think the ones that really stick out to me are the ones where I kind of had the flex muscles that I didn't think I had. I was working on a project in the South Bronx and this was the Monhaven School. So, it's a seven-acre, about a seven-acre site that was transformed for public school. And before the project could move forward, there was an aspect that had to be addressed. So, there was an existing retaining wall, about 30-ish feet tall, over 500-foot long and over 100 years old. So, this wall had to be assessed. It had to be reinforced. And this had to happen before an excavation could happen underneath it. So, during the actual implementation, there were some challenges. As far as getting the wall to, you know, you're reinforcing a wall that doesn't want to be reinforced. So, there were challenges with that. And as a young engineer, you know, they called upon me, my boss was calling upon me, what do you think about this? And I was a part of, you know, figuring out what that solution was to successfully reinforce the wall, excavate underneath it and adjacent to it. So, the school could be constructed. And, yeah, I worked on a lot of projects where everything goes perfect and everything's great. But I think when you have those kind of challenges, that's when you start to say, wow, so this is how this all goes together. So, Ralph Peck, Professor Ralph Peck, was big on talking about the observational method, you know, in real life. I learned about it in grad school. And on this project, I'm talking with Tom Allen Popol, who I've worked for many years, many years of lying in and saying, well, we got to use the observational method. It's like, yeah, that's why you learned it. But for those that may not know, the observational method is basically you're increasing the amount in language terms. You're increasing the amount of monitoring effort and slowly changing variables. And you're basically letting the ground tell you what it likes and what it doesn't like. And in that way, you're able to, and then in order to do that, you have to have a contingency plan for things go left instead of going right. And doing that in real life, explaining to a contractor and seeing what they're able to do, what they're not able to do, explain to an owner what all this means, and then watching it in real time. And it's exciting and stressful at the same time. But as a geotechnical engineer, you realize that you're dealing with soil. Soil is not reinforced concrete. It's not timber, it's soil. So understanding what is happening before a project starts and then during a project, during the excavation, could be two totally different things. And that's what makes it challenging. Then other milestone projects and I worked on some projects that were back in my day. They were very tall, but now we have mega tall. So they're not mega tall. The tallest building I worked on was let's see, Four Seasons Hotel in Lower Manhattan. So that project was 926 foot tall. So it's still the tallest residential structure in Lower Manhattan or Financial District. Well, residential. But yeah, so those are the kind of things that come to mind. Yeah, no, one thing that you said there that was really, I'm sure it must have been really important to you at the time, which was when as such a young engineer, your boss kind of asking you, you know, what do you think, you know, that's really empowering for someone to do that, which I'm guessing is part of the reason that you really recall that of the many projects you worked on. I mean, you know, that's, that's, you know, it's one thing to go through engineering school because we learn a lot of different concepts and we've got all these, you know, fancy textbooks with lots of equations in them. But to get out there in the field and have to start to apply some of that stuff and have the opportunity to do it. And you know that some, you know, real stuff hangs in the balance, like, you know, people's lives potentially. Yeah. I think that's where you kind of understand that maybe this is the really cool thing about engineering and the reason that I wanted to get involved in it, you know. Yeah. And when you think about it, you're you're young, let's say I was 23 when I started to lying in and it's like, you're out there, you're in the field, you're observing things and you're taking measurements and you're you're observing things. And what happens is that you have someone that's more senior that it comes in and they're not just going to look at the reports, they're not just going to, you know, take a look at the photographs they're going to ask you, the engineer that's been out there for the last eight months, what do you think about what you're seeing? And you realize if you don't, if you're not able to answer that, then, you know, you almost question what's your value, right? Yeah. So it's important to take it seriously. And I know I definitely have and I definitely do take what I do seriously. And I think the young engineers that are able to do that, you start to differentiate yourself from others that are just like, I'm just doing my job. It's like, no, you're not just doing your job. You're like, you say somebody's going to live here. Like somebody, like kids have graduated from that school, right? Yeah. And it's because of the math and science we use way back when, you know? Yeah, that's awesome. So switching gears a little bit here, Jared, you're very active on social media, especially LinkedIn, really. Why is that? Good question. I, you know, I can remember. I remember there was somebody used to used to work with me way back when and I remember she told me that she was she was leaving to go try something else. And so what are you going to try? She said, I was going to be responsible for the social media for this company. And I was like social media company like what is that? Are you going to be on Facebook all day? And she's like, well, not necessarily. And I was like, I didn't really get it. And I was like, and it was like probably 10 plus years ago. So whoever that company was they were kind of cutting it. So I think that for me, I think the social media is something that I've kind of avoided for quite some time because I didn't really get it. And I just used to go on LinkedIn and just I was curious, right? And when I looked at it, I said, wow, this is a platform where I can actually see what people are talking about. When I said people are talking about me and the clients that I work for, the colleagues that I work alongside and in my industry partners, right? The other consultants that I sit in meetings with when I sit on Zoom calls with, it's pretty cool. So I started to just follow companies that I work with or work for or work alongside. And then, you know, individuals I went to college with with the grad school with that I work with. And for me, I started to go through the feed. It was just a great way for me to see what people are doing and what is important to people, right? And and then it got to the point where it was like, then companies start to do a little bit more of that about talking about a little bit more about their outward facing culture and the things that are of importance and value to them. So I said, wow, this is a really good thing. So I became a little bit, you know, the engineer, I mean, I became a little more systematic because you got to be careful. You can sit on that for 10 hours. I don't have 10 hours to sit on social, I just don't. So I said, you know, I'll start my day just, you know, poking in and seeing what's going on. Lunch break, I'll pop in and see what's going on in the day. I'll do that. I start doing that for some time. And I said, you know what, I don't see why I can't put some content out there. And so I just put a little thing, you know, and for me, I guess I've always kind of people usually sound pretty optimistic, positive. So I just put a little something out there. And I realized that because it kind of opened yourself up, you're vulnerable, right? Like, what if people don't like this, right? What if people say, oh, what are you doing? And so I kept doing it. And I kept getting feedback from people that hair really appreciate what you shared that that was really powerful. So I've just been doing it. And sometimes I question whether or not I put too much out there. It doesn't really take me a lot of time, because I have a system for it. We're like, Oh, you have you have workers to do this. It's like, no, I do that myself. I don't get to hire people to do social media for me. I'm not at that level, right? We don't we don't get down like that. But people seem to people seem to like it. And for me, I found that through it, I've been able to interact with a lot of people that I might not have been able to interact with otherwise, especially from a mentoring standpoint. So I like it. And it's two ways, right? I give, but I also receive as well. I mean, there was a time I was watching the podcast the other day. I really like what the professor said. I said, let me just see. I just went on LinkedIn. I saw him. And I just sent a little invite and said that, you know, I really like what you said on this podcast. And then I gave some feedback for what I thought and he connected with me. And we were shooting text back and forth. And this is like 30 minutes after watching the podcast. I was like, man, look at the power of social media. Like back in the day, if you think about like if you wanted to in the thing about LinkedIn, a lot of people think about it as a way to get your next job. And that's another reason why I didn't do a lot with it in the beginning, because I was like, I'm at a company. I don't want to leave. But I realized that I'm through it. I'm able to connect with people on a on a kind of bigger net. And especially now that we're working away from office, you know, I'm able to connect with people that I haven't done business with for a very long time that we're just we're reconnecting through it. So I think it's been a win-win. And as long as people don't get sick of hearing when I post, I guess I'll keep posting, I guess. It is good. I agree with you. I mean, listen, I mean, you and I have known each other for a while, but you know, we have kids, we have careers we haven't really got to talk or really from time to time we see each other. But I think because, you know, I kind of see what you're doing on social media and kind of feel like I'm keeping in touch in a sense and like understanding that, you know, what you're working on, you know. So it's really a way for a lot of us that are busy to at least put a little bit out there, maybe what we're working on, maybe what our company is working on, maybe information that we find that could be helpful to others. Again, with this podcast, if we, you know, I'm sure Jared's going to do some great interviews, we could share and we're other geo-technical engineers and that may impact their career. So I think social media can be really positive in that way. As long as you're like Jared said, you're smart about it and productive about it. So, you know, it's not taking you away from your engineering work that, of course, you need to focus on. A lot of people say that you're an influencer in the geo-technical industry. Would you agree with that? It's the engineer in me. I'd have to say, you know, what is an influencer? Right? Because in some of these Twitter-averse or, you know, IG, I think it's like, I don't know, 10,000 followers or 100,000. I don't think I have anything that's gone viral. Maybe I'm an influencer in my circle, maybe. I don't know. What do you think? What are you hearing? I don't know. No, I mean, I think you're obviously you're active. Like we just talked about you're active and putting some things out there. And I think, you know, based on the some of the stuff that we posted about the podcast, for sure, there's been tons of reactions to it, which is great. And I guess along those lines, you know, let's say you are an influencer in the space. And of course, now you're kind of adding the podcast kind of to your platform, so to speak. You know, what do you hope to do? Like, what would you hope to do with this influence? Because I think that there's value in it and it could be used in different ways. And I'm just wondering, you know, what some of your initial thoughts are on that. And as the first thing comes to mind is a quote, you know, to whom much is given, much is expected. So that's that's pretty heavy. I would say that I'm not going to pretend to be something I'm not. I'm kind of a simple guy. I would say that, you know, I'd want to continue to inspire people to do great things. So I mean, there's a number of folks that I'm literally just kind of seeing their faces now that have kind of reached out to me on LinkedIn with the direct message or DM as the as the as the young folks say. And it's like, you know, just asking a question about what it's like to be a civil engineer. I say, you know what, if they took the time to send this, I don't know if they sent this to 30 people, I also know if they sent the five people. I'm in the middle of doing, you know, it's probably late at night and I'm finishing a report or something. I say, you know what, I could take two minutes to respond to this person. I sent a response back. And I just it's like, they really appreciate it. Right. And it's like, that could be the difference to somebody going into this field and not going into this field. So as far as if I have any influence, I would like to continue to point people that are interested in STEM fields to engineering or to stay in a STEM field. I can remember as a as a young engineering student, I remember I was told by somebody pretty influential that I would never be an engineer. And you know, I think about that and I go back to that moment. It's like, man, I was crushed. Anthony, I was crushed. I was like, oh, I guess I can't do it. He said, I can't do it. And I remember talking to people this before we didn't have LinkedIn or Google back then. I think it was Ash Gives or something. But like, you know, we didn't really have much outside of, you know, talking to people I looked up to. And I remember in one of my mentors, he was like, you know, if this is what you want to do, take the time and get it done. Right. Don't let anybody tell you you can't do something you want to do. Now, yes, engineering is hard. Yes, it's complicated. But by all means, if you want to do it and you're willing to make whatever sacrifices are needed, you can do it. And so I think that any influence that I have, you know, and I don't want to speak in grandiose terms. But if you want to do something, you're willing to put the sacrifice in, you should be able to do it. And the reality is that everybody everybody's listening has a different skill set, everybody's different strengths and weaknesses, but also everybody has different gifts. And if you're able to figure out what that means for you, and you're able to find a career path because we're focused on professional things here, if you're able to find a career path that aligns with your passions, you really can do some powerful things. Like I have a job, yes, I have a job, but I really look at it as more like a career and a calling. And I think I'm lucky, I think I'm blessed that I could say that. But I think that everybody should be able to do that. And if I can point one person in that direction, then I would say it was a success. So with the podcast, I think about when I was a young geotechnical engineer, what would I like to hear on my commute from trying to get revved up or ready for the day? What I like to hear, right? So I want to keep it interesting. I want to have guests and topics that are of interest to our listeners. I think that, like I said, I think there's a lot of cool and exciting things that are happening in the industry. And I think that I know there are a number of people that are experts within the field that would like to get on a mic and chat. Yeah, no, that's great. I love that idea. You know, that's why I started doing what I do in terms of all the training and the coaching and the podcasting is to help people inspire people, give them the tools that they maybe thought they didn't have access to or the skills that they didn't think they could build for whatever reason. And I think a lot of engineers, you know, there's misnomers that you can't speak effectively. You can't be a good public speaker. You know, we're only good at math and science. And I totally disagree with that, which is why, you know, we've done what we've done at EMI. And, you know, it's a real opportunity for you as a listener to go to Geotechnical Engineering podcast.com, click on the submit topics and guests button and tell us what you need. I mean, if you're struggling in your career to master this one technical topic in Geotechnical Engineering, let us get some people on to talk about it. Yeah. You know, if you're thinking about, should I get a master's degree in Geotechnical Engineering or, you know, with a specialty in that, put the question in. I'm sure we can pull together a panel of people that have it and they can talk about it and how it's benefited them. So we really want to make this podcast, you know, helpful to you and you could be an experienced geotech, you could be out there working for 20 30 years and you step questions, right about new technologies coming out. You know, great, let's get, we'll get ahold of that person and we'll get them on the podcast and they could talk about this new technology. And that's the whole point of this is that, like Jared said, you could be, you know, out there in your career wondering about something and now you can get answers on it. And that's something that, you know, we were hoping to provide. And that's why at EMI, we wanted to start the podcast. And you know, I think we found kind of the best person to do that here with Jared. So Jared, before we jump into our end segment here and start to wrap this one up, one last question for you. Right now you've been doing this for a while as a geotech. Right now, what excites you today about Geotechnical Engineering? You know, honestly, it's the same thing as what excited me before that. I never know what's coming. I was telling somebody the other day, because they were asking, what is it like to be an engineering consultant? I say, you know, people don't usually pick up the phone and call me and say, hey, how you doing? Just wanted to see what's going on. They're usually like, I got a situation. Can you help me out? And that could be, you know, I just bought a parcel land and I want to build a school here. It could be when I add another floor to this building or it could be, you know, like I water my basement. What do you think? So I think the excitement of the unknown is that's that's what excites me. There are areas where I'm thinking of some areas right now in the city where in New York City where it's a full city block with six buildings. And I was the geotechnical engineer for five or the six buildings, right? And each one of those was different based on the conditions, right? The soil and the perimeter conditions. And that excites me. And I think another thing is just how many opportunity to grow a team and to kind of lead people through their careers. That's the kind of stuff that excites me. And sometimes I think about the projects that I like. I start to think about the staff that I hired and, you know, trained and saw them kind of grow in their careers. So they're at the point where they're speaking on a podium about a project success or something like that. So I mean, those are the things that excite me. I like, you know, going into work will now not physically going into work, working right from office, but going into the day and knowing that the unknown is going to be there, but just the pursuit of finding the solution. I think that that's what excites me about engineering and especially geotechnical engineering. Awesome. Awesome. All right. So stick around. We'll be back in just a moment. We're going to come back and wrap it up with our end segment, which we're calling the career factor of safety segment. Stick around for that. All right, we're back. Anthony Fasano here from the Engineering Management Institute. I'm thrilled to be helping to launch. This is the inaugural episode of the new Geotechnical Engineering podcast that we're publishing and I have with us, of course, your host for the podcast, Jared Green, who's been a very successful geotechnical engineer and he's passionate not just about geotechnical engineering, but as he's been saying, inspiring other geotechnical engineers, which has, of course, kind of gotten him to be in this in this hot seat of the host, which I know he's going to do great in. And so we've had a good conversation so far we've learned a lot about Jared and really just about kind of being a geotechnical engineer and how that's now and how that may look going into the future. And in this segment of the podcast, we're calling the career factor of safety segment because in geotechnical engineering, like many disciplines of engineering, it's important to incorporate, of course, a factor of safety into your designs. But how about your own career? Right? I mean, we're talking Jared about pandemics. We're talking about, you know, maybe the economy is not so great right now. You've got failures that happen in engineering. So really, like when you think about your career, you need to think about the long term sustainability of your career as well and have a kind of a factor of safety if you will. So I'm just wondering in terms of your career so far, you know, what is maybe something or a couple of things that you think you've done to help you to be flexible in your career when you had to be or, you know, to be adaptable where you needed to be. What jumps to mine for you? I think that I guess what jumps to mine to me is just willing to try things that you may not feel comfortable with. Some people call it, you know, thinking outside the box or coming outside of your comfort zone. But I think that's crucial. I mean, I often tell people and people don't believe me, but I always tell people, my wife will agree that I'm actually an introvert. So I find myself in situations where I have to do things that look like extrovert stuff, right? i.e. hosting a podcast. But I'm an introvert, right? But I find that if you really want to stretch yourself, you have to do what's uncomfortable. And in doing so, that's that's a part of that factor of safety, right? Making yourself a little more resilient. I think that for myself, trying to find ways to become not necessarily a better public speaker, but a better communicator. I think that that was important for me. I think that learning just learning new things is important. So at Langen, we're big on our core disciplines are geotechnical, site civil and environmental engineering. And as I've learned and grown at the firm, I've learned that I can provide the most value if I understand more than just what I'm supposed to know as a geotechnical engineer, understanding how that ties in with the rest of the developer. And I always tell young engineers, learn your job, but also make sure you understand what your peers are doing as well. It allows you to be more valuable. And if you think about longevity of your career, whatever you could do to increase the value that you can provide, I think that's the best way to protect or guard or to provide that extra factor of safety you need for your career. So having more value for some people, that'll mean getting an advanced degree in the geotechnical world. If you have a bachelor's degree, that's awesome. After you get some real world experience, I would say it's prudent to go back and get a master's degree, just because most schools, even the best schools, you don't get a lot of exposure to what it means to be a geotechnical engineer in those four years of undergraduate education. So getting an advanced degree, advanced certifications, going to lectures and going to talks that provide PDHs, professional development hours, is something that you have to do once you get your license. But even before your license, if your company allows you to go to a conference, it's good to do that so you can get a better idea of how people are applying new technologies to solve problems. As you do that, you increase your understanding of what you can even recommend as a geotechnical engineer in a local area. So I think those are the kind of things. So just trying to expand yourself. Don't, you know, don't limit what you can learn. Sometimes I know when I graduate, I was like, oh, done with that. It's like, but you still want to continue to learn. Reading technical papers, that's something you want that to be a part of you and your development, reading industry publications to know who's doing what. Those are important things. And hopefully, listening to this podcast will fall under your list of things you could do to increase your factor of safety for your career. Yeah, for sure. No, that's awesome. And, you know, that really kind of speaks to me as well, because my career started out doing some structural, did a little geotech and then ended up in civil kind of site design. And I think it was having the knowledge in those different areas throughout my career as a civil engineer really helped me because, you know, I could talk to the geotechnical department and understand what they were thinking. I could talk to the structural engineers and understand what they were thinking. So I think that's a good kind of message from what Jared said there is, you know, learning about all that stuff is good. I mean, you know, don't feel like, oh, I tried something and it didn't work out. You're probably going to need that knowledge somewhere else down the road. So, you know, it's not a bad thing to kind of learn a lot of different things and jump on different opportunities, because often it just helps you to be more valuable and have, you know, more depth to your experience kind of going forward. So I think that that's great. And yeah, like Jared said, I think that we really want this podcast to be one of those things that you can say, hopefully, you know, it was a career game changer for me. You know, I found this podcast, the geotechnical engineering podcast, I was able to learn about different technical topics, different technology trends. And those are all the things that I know, you know, Jared's going to be focused on growing this and the whole team here at EMI, we're going to be helping him to do that. And we're really excited about it. And so with that, I just want to kind of thank Jared, of course, for, you know, just agreeing to host the podcast and coming here today to kick it off and sharing kind of his background with us. And I want to thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this first episode of the Geotechnical Engineering podcast. We would love to hear your feedback, your comments or any of your questions. You can leave them at geotechnical engineering podcast.com there. You'll find a link to all of the episodes. Of course, this is episode number one, but we'll continue to post them there so you can leave comments on them. Jared and our EMI team will be kind of really on top of those pages. And we'll mention or we'll link to any of the resources or websites or books that are ever mentioned during the episodes. And there are also links there where you can click to Apple podcast and subscribe or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. And really in my opinion, the most important button on the whole page there is request the topics and guests because you're the podcast really the listeners are the podcast because it's whatever you need is what we need to be putting out there on a very regular basis. So with that, Jared, you have any last last words here for the listeners? Look forward to seeing you soon, right? Make sure to tune in. And by all means if there's something you think that we should address or someone we should talk to, let us know. But hopefully, there's be a podcast that you can lean on and depend on to help you to do great things. Awesome. And with that, of course, we're going to be handing this over to Jared going forward. And until next time, we do really wish you the best in all of your geotechnical engineering career endeavors. See you next time.