I grew up in a family of four children. My father had a PhD in engineering. He expected all of us to do well in school and go to college at one of the state schools in Virginia. I really liked math courses and took all I could get until I graduated from Hampton High School in Hampton, Virginia. However, I really didn't know what career I wanted, so although I took a lot of science (including chemistry), I had not yet taken physics when I entered the University of Virginia.

Halfway through my first semester in a liberal arts curriculum, I discovered that I wanted to be an engineer. Fortunately, I was already taking a lot of physics and mathematics courses, and graduated with a degree in Applied Mathematics and a minor in Electrical Engineering after four years.

My first job was with Duke Power Company in Charlotte, North Carolina, mostly because my husband-to-be (I met him at college and he is also an engineer) and I wanted to get married, but only if we could live in the same place. We were both able to get jobs at Duke Power.

There, I was a Planning Engineer, focused on power generation planning. My work emphasized two primary areas: looking at costs and efficient uses of existing power plants; and deciding when new power plants would be required.