72 - Ashley Orr, Mobility Engineer

WGI Unleashed

For our latest episode of the WGI Unleashed Podcast, we got to chat with Ashley Orr, a Mobility Engineer in our Arlington, VA, office. Ashley is a part of our Mobility division, where she is focused on proposing creative-but-feasible solutions to improve mobility methods and promote growth while also preserving and enhancing the unique character of communities.

Ashley grew up in Southeastern Pennsylvania, deep in the heart of Amish country, where she enjoyed a slower, more peaceful pace of life. She reflects fondly on her time spent outdoors hiking and visiting national parks with her family.

We listened intently while she talked about her time at Penn State University, where we were shocked to learn that she had originally enrolled in the NROTC program with plans to join the Navy and major in Aerospace Engineering with the hope of fulfilling her childhood dream of becoming an astronaut. She discovered very quickly that while she enjoyed what she was learning, studying something more tangible that she could actually see people utilizing daily was far more important than going to space. This epiphany is what ultimately led her to obtain her Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering.

Ashley joined the WGI team in our Tallahassee office right after graduating from college but recently made the move northeast to help establish our new Arlington, Virginia office, where she just celebrated eight years of service with the company.

We found out that when she originally joined WGI, Ashley's focus was more on transportation engineering, where she learned that her interests lie more in how transportation networks connect communities and less about how the actual roadway is constructed. This revelation is how she found herself gravitating toward a focus on New Mobility + Connected Communities.

She joked with us as she called herself a "plangineer" and explained that most of her role consists of coordinating, advising on Traffic Impact Analysis, reviewing technical reports, and managing WGI's existing clients.

In addition to everything we learned about her professional life, we discovered Ashley is married to her high school sweetheart, whom she shares a three 1/2-year-old daughter with, as well as a very fat cat (her words, not ours) named John Pierre. She enjoys spending weekends with her family exploring their new quaint hometown of Alexandria, where her idea of a perfect lazy Saturday consists of lounging at a local coffee shop with a good book to read sprinkled with a side of people-watching.

She also spoke about her love for travel, having been to several unique destinations such as Algeria, Peru, Spain, Qatar, and Paris, France, where she had the rare opportunity to live abroad as a perpetual tourist for nine months and has since labeled herself a Francophile.

Listen now to find out what the most exotic food she's ever eaten is, what professional sports team she had the exclusive honor of naming, and what the heck shoofly pie is!