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Environment | Engineering
Trendsetters: Environment, Engineering
The Highland Life
Jennifer Porter |
Those summer career-exploration opportunities for high school students really work. Aspiring architect Jennifer Porter went as a high school junior to the University of Florida for a summer class in the field. She found that architecture didn’t do it for her, and today, she’s an engineer. “When I heard about environmental engineering, I knew that was it,” she says.
Evidently she was right. Porter was the Florida Engineering Society’s Young Engineer of the Year for the Miami chapter in 2005. The 35-year-old works in water and wastewater engineering for LBFH, a Palm City unit of Newport, Calif.-based Boyle Engineering.
While not working the water or volunteering for the engineering society, she’s raising money as a Team in Training cyclist for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. She has a goal of raising at least $4,100 for her 100-mile ride in Tucson, Ariz., in November. She’s selling her cookbook of recipes from south Floridians to reach her goal. She also kayaks, camps, scuba dives and hikes and is a devotee of Scottish Highland dancing. Porter, whose mother is a native of Scotland, fell in love with it as a kid after moving to Dunedin in Pinellas County and danced competitively for 25 years, including at the national championship level. She taught in Miami, but with two children under 4 hasn’t resumed teaching.
