2022 40 Under 40: Sara Richardson, PE, 37

Coming from a family of electrical engineers and electricians, picking a technical career path was an easy choice for Richardson. Spending every summer working with her parents at the family’s century old electrical construction company, taught her how to layout lighting in the eighth grade. While earning her degree in college, she served as chief of relations and an emergency medical technician on the student-run ambulance service. Post-graduation she worked for TRC and assisted in the design of high-voltage substations throughout southern Maine. In 2008, while working under other senior level engineers at CDM Smith, she designed projects ranging from water and wastewater treatment plants and pumping stations to manufacturing facilities and streetscapes. In 2011, she decided the time was right was to transition to her parents’ company as a project manager and engineer in support of their design-build projects. In her first few years there, she obtained her PE while working on the design and construction of two 1.5-megawatt wind turbines and an associated 115-kV substation at the Joint Base Cape Cod (formerly Massachusetts Military Reservation). In 2017, seeking a new challenge she started Richardson Engineering and has been grateful for the variety of projects and customers she has been able to support. Tackling the variety of challenges these projects have provided has forged her into a better engineer and person. She and her husband are most proud of their two boys and hope to teach them that anything you are willing to work for is possible. She is an animal enthusiast, owning two dogs, a cat and seven chickens —and is consistently trying to talk her husband into more.

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