It all started with her mother.
Growing up, Kayla Nelson would often watch her create complex, three-dimensional drawings. Fascinated by these intricate works, she wanted in.
"I thought she was a genius," she remembered.
"I'd go to my mom and ask her how to draw that, and she would teach me how to draw in 3D, which was not normal for a kid," she said. "Anytime I wanted to draw something, I was always drawing it in 3D, and I wanted to do as much detail as I could."
These experiences solidified Nelson’s lifelong passion for design. Movies like Robots and Meet the Robinsons drove her to combine her knack for art with science, and as she grew up, it became clear that civil engineering was the career for her.
She also discovered that her mother was a civil engineer, and that her creations were a part of her job.
"Thinking about it now, she learned all that from what she did at work and in school," said Nelson.
Despite the importance of design in civil engineering, abstract, math-heavy core classes were challenging for Nelson, a visual learner. But her passion and drive to succeed carried her through school.
"It's a matter of, are you going to accept that you can't do something, or are you going to do something about it?" she said.
What brought everything together for Nelson was geotechnical engineering field work, which allowed her to bridge the gaps between her coursework and the practice itself. Now, deeper into her career, she wants to help others navigate the twists and turns of a civil engineering path.
"Since I struggled so much finding my place in this profession, my goal is to share what failures I've had and what I would have told myself to do," she said.
Entrenched in Nelson’s work is participation in professional societies and a passion for mentorship. In college, she joined the Society of Women Engineers and eventually became president of its Widener University Chapter. She joined ASCE in 2017 and has since held a wide range of leadership positions within the organization. Along with helping students navigate academic struggles, she also focuses on the challenges faced by women and people of color in the engineering field.
ASCE has honored Nelson as a 2025 New Face of Civil Engineering.
She recently discussed her career journey with Civil Engineering Source.
Civil Engineering Source: What’s the accomplishment or aspect of your career so far that you’re most proud of?
Kayla Nelson: The biggest thing for me was passing the FE Exam because it took me five attempts.
I had one attempt while I was still in school and didn't pass. Then, I did one more the summer after I graduated. Didn't pass. And then the pandemic hit, so things got a little bit crazy.
When you start your professional career, at least in geotech, you're doing a good mix of field work and office work. A lot of that field work can be over 10 hours a day, sometimes 12, so studying on top of that just gets really difficult.
Most times when I found out that I didn't pass, I was in the office. I'd have it pop up in my email. When I finally passed it, I was actually in the field on a job in Ohio. Not a single person on that site was an engineer, I had little service, and it was really early in the morning.
I opened the link just like usual and I saw I passed, and I was so excited to tell everyone, but I was up so early, standing on this site, freezing, thinking, who can I tell this to? Who will care? So, I found a random guy on this site and told him. But that was my favorite part.
What made it feel very real was that once I had told my team leader, he was the first person who responded. He said I was very driven, that I'm not a quitter. I have trouble quitting things, if anything.
There were multiple points in college where I was very close to not making it through my major. A lot of the core classes in engineering use a lot of theory-based learning. I'm a more visual person when it comes to learning.
Once I started having more labs, especially with geotech, working with soils and things, it just made so much more sense to me.
Source: What kind of impact do you hope to make on the profession?
Nelson: I try to provide people with resources that I didn't have so they don't have to struggle to find a place in the profession.
When I was a freshman, I joined the Society of Women Engineers, and that was the first professional society I was a part of.
I really only got involved because my mentor in college, Hannah, said there was an opening on the board. They just needed someone to go to the SGA meetings and tell them if they needed to fill out forms, but it got me in the door with the society at my school. I ended up staying in it the entire time I was in college and being president for two years.
I still go back and participate in student events there, so they contacted me and asked me to participate in the “I Look Like an Engineer” panel.
It wasn't even really us talking about ourselves as much as it was students asking those uncomfortable questions. I was brutally honest with them about my experiences as a woman in engineering. I always leave those things feeling really good.
I know it's easy to get people excited about civil engineering, but you also don't want them to be shocked about certain things when they go into it.
The only person I knew that was a civil engineer was my mom. Being able to represent both women and people of color in civil engineering and allowing people to see themselves in those professions is what makes it worth it.
Source: You've highlighted several important connections who have inspired and supported you in your engineering career. How have professional connections, colleagues, and organizations influenced your career path?
Nelson: When I think about all the professional societies that I've been involved with, the connection I think of is my coworker, Kirsten. I met her at an engineering camp we did at my college, and we were both in the geotechnical lab. It was a chocolate asphalt lab, so you got to make asphalt out of chocolate. High school students love it. I loved it. It was delicious.
Later, I participated in the regional GeoWall competition at the ASCE Student Symposium, and she just so happened to be a judge for that competition. Then she said, "I'm running into you a lot. I feel like we should talk."
That summer, she met me for lunch on my campus. We talked about my coursework coming up and how much I liked geotech, but I hadn't taken a lot of my core geotech classes yet because most of those are toward your senior year. She told me, after I take foundations engineering, to contact her if I liked it.
Once I had taken the class, our ASCE chapter had my current company, Schnabel Engineering, come in to talk. It was also the day that our college had our engineering career fair. Schnabel was tabling at that, so I went to the presentation to get to know a little bit more about the company.
I told her I was interested in interning if they had any winter break internship opportunities, which isn't normal. But she said it might be something they were interested in.
I filled out the application within a few days. I had an interview, and then I interned for about two weeks, so I'm their shortest intern ever. They talk about it still.
They were able to plug me into things right away. I’d had so many internships in construction and project management, but nothing applying design. It was the first time I was really thinking back to a lot of my coursework, and it felt really good to use what I was paying to learn.
I got an offer when I was closer to graduation, which was great. That relationship is really what I think molded my career. Even now, Kirsten is my informal mentor at work.
I often think about how when you meet a civil engineer, none of us do the same exact job. I've never met someone who does exactly what I do, and you can't really take guesses as to what other people do. Everyone does a different range of technical material and creative processes.
I had a professor who called it a range of art and science. So, if you're just doing drafting, you need to maybe see it as an art, but there are technical components to doing details too. I feel like we have so much to learn from each other since we're all so different.
Source: Can you talk about how your inclination toward visuals and design has led you to the type of engineering that you do now?
Nelson: I'm very detail oriented, and I went to a magnet school for middle school where I was focused on visual arts.
I was a very serious student. When I was about to head into high school, I thought art couldn’t be my career, so I had to think of something else. I started looking into engineering and was going to go into biomed, but then I got interested in concrete and bridges. I told my mom, and then I found out she was a civil engineer. I had no idea.
She did drafting for a bit, so I saw her doing drawings all the time, but I had no idea what it meant. And as I was reflecting on that the other day, I remembered wanting to draw doodles, but wanting to draw them accurately.
I would also play The Sims a lot, but I'd only build the houses in Sims. Same with Minecraft. I was just building things in Minecraft. I enjoyed doing that stuff. And then I found out it’s an actual type of engineering I could do. I think that's what led me toward it.
Originally when I went to college, I thought I’d go into construction because I wasn't really good at math. But I think I was almost quitting on myself sometimes.
So, I got good at math and took a lot of math classes in high school. I did part-time classes at our community college through dual enrollment and found out most of the people in the math class I was taking there were engineering majors.
That got me thinking about engineering more. It combines that creative side of art. I still get to do drafting, but I also get to do fieldwork and design and then see that stuff in person, which is really cool.
