2024 WWD Industry Icon: Growth through cultivation

"Everybody makes mistakes. Be glad you found yours.”

This single adage informed and defined a pivotal professional moment in the life of Susan Moisio, global vice president of water for Jacobs. It is a statement her father, a teacher who also ran a land surveying business, told her in childhood when she was raised on a cattle farm in Arkansas.

Decades later, she would recall that line after being tasked with a problem that she said was beyond her current capabilities. She had just started working at CH2M Hill, an engineering firm that would later be acquired by Jacobs. Despite having access to a spreadsheet, she was faced with the prospect of completing the work by hand because she could not figure out how to get things to work right.

She sought out help from her coworkers who told her she was better suited to other roles given her project management experience, and that she should not have to complete this kind of work.

She, however, had a drive and a determination for something grander.

“If I’m going to work and do the fun work — the techie work —for CH2M Hill, [I] have to show them [I] can do it,” Moisio said, “but I was stuck.”

Stuck until a Sunday morning when she worked on the problem as her family went to church. She realized she had introduced a rounding error which had thrown off the entire sheet. It drove her to call her father and tell him, “I found my mistake. I’m going to be OK.”

Since that day, this moment has stuck with Moisio, and it represents a great deal about her personality and the character that has elevated her to the position she is in today. It instilled a trust in herself and over time that trust has blossomed to include those with whom she works.

Joseph Danyluk, One Water market leader for Jacobs, reports directly to Moisio. He said her degree of trust is exemplified with how she values every contribution on the team.

“She kind of plants the seed and she lets us run with it,” he said. “She’s not micromanaging. She’s not saying, ‘This is what I want.’ She’s giving everyone around her the autonomy to really discover what the best path forward is and then she really empowers you.”

Moisio shows her employees the planter box in the yard. She hands them the seeds, and sometimes will plant them herself. But then she leaves the cultivation to those employees. They gain an ownership over that planter box. They get to experiment and play within its boundaries. And when those plants start to bud or bloom, that is when they notice the bigger picture of how their planter box integrates with the others in the yard to form a holistic garden.

“I always say it’s like she’s playing a chess game where she’s 10 moves ahead,” Danyluk said. “Once I start going through the effort or the exercise or the activity, and then we present it to so-and-so, I’m like, ‘Ah! That’s why she had me do that!’ It’s like she already knew.”

Jenn Baldwin, digital one water lead for Jacobs, expanded on this point by highlighting her vision. Moisio, she said, can look many years down the road for her goals. And once those goals are set, she can work backward and set up the steps necessary to reach them. This long-term vision provides the stability needed to cultivate success.

Seeds, roots and stalks

Before even entering the engineering sphere, Moisio was an art student. Throughout her youth and into her adult life today, she finds deep enjoyment in sketching people. This artistic quality of hers is one that Baldwin pointed to as a foundational characteristic of her problem solving skills.

“I think just the fact that she has that creative part of her brain helps her,” she said. “A lot of times we tend to get lost in the details as engineers.”

Moisio also hinted at this ability, noting that many times she can be analytical and detail oriented, but as a leader she must also issue directives. The creative side of her brain allows her to tap into experimentation and consider out-of-the-box solutions.

Throughout her career, Moisio said her abilities have changed and shifted. In her first job, she worked in the wastewater collection division of the metropolitan sewer district of Greater Cincinnati, a position which had her developing and calibrating system wide models, conducting sewer backup investigations, and managing large projects.

But when she had kids, her vision for the future of her personal life changed.

“It was at a point with the MSD where we were finishing a big program … and my kids were at an age where my husband and I said, ‘You know what? We would really like to raise them like we were raised, and we would like to not be in the city anymore,’” Moisio said, noting her husband grew up on a crop farm.

The pair moved from Ohio to Indiana, and she began a job with CH2M Hill in the conveyance and storage department. In 2017 Jacobs acquired CH2M Hill, and she continued to climb the ranks to her position that she holds today, global vice president for Jacobs.

Over time she became renowned for her work across the sector. Pivotal projects included the $5.7 billion, 11-year program for Miami-Dade County Water and Sewer Department Ocean Outfall Legislation Program, which aimed to eliminate all wastewater discharge to the Atlantic Ocean by 2025. She also played an instrumental role in the $2 billion Baton Rouge wet weather program, the $100 million SSO tunnel in Northern Kentucky, and the Las Virgenes Pure Water Program in California.

On the international stage, she is deeply respected and recognized for her work on the Thames Tideway tunnel program in London, a project taking up the charge to reduce overflows into the Thames River.

For projects of this magnitude and size, problems and challenges always arise. How Moisio responds to those problems and challenges, however, is a point of inspiration for both Danyluk and Baldwin.

Calm in the storm

If problems, challenges and chaos of a project were to form a tempest at sea, Moisio is the captain of the ship calmly directing the crew while holding the rudder on course.

“Definitely what inspires me is just her ability to kind of keep that calm leadership mentality,” Baldwin said. “She’s like, ‘It’s super chaotic but here’s what we’re doing and here’s why we’re doing it.’”

Danyluk explained how internally the team may follow a path only to realize they need to make significant changes to reach the goal for the project. Moisio, he said, embraces that change calmly, and in some cases, she will even push back. But even in navigating conflict, she is reserved, respectful and open minded.

“It’s just such a diplomatic way of engaging with people,” he said. “I’ve never worked with someone like that in my life. It’s just this level of independence that she gives to people. She’s always got that sort of end purpose and vision in mind and she’s making sure that we’re all collectively on that path together.”

Another word Danyluk used to describe this characteristic was devoted. She has profound respect for everyone she works with. Moisio said this particular trait was influenced by her daughter as she was pursuing a degree in humanitarian engineering.

“At that time, she was evolving and telling me, ‘Mom, you’ve got to look bigger you’ve got to look at what happens to the people side of it,’” Moisio said.

It was those kinds of conversations that extended Moisio’s perspective and gave her the tools to incorporate contributions from everybody on the team, regardless of their status within the organization or industry. Moreover, Moisio is able to distill those perspectives into simple actions for her team.

“I was always impressed with Susan and her ability to just sort of boil information down for us and simplify it so we could really quickly figure out the projects.” Baldwin said.

In the past two years, that boil down has been represented in her work on One Water.

It is all connected

Growing up on the cattle farm in Arkansas, Moisio’s father taught her many lessons about taking care of the land. He told her about rain and erosion. He taught her how to be a steward to her environment by mitigating pollution and making decisions for a long term future. These lessons are just as important now in her role in the water sector.

“We are stewards of the land and we have to look at it [that way],” she said. “Not only do we build something that can be maintained but what does it do to that community?”

This community centric perspective aligns with the movement called One Water, a framework developed by the US Water Alliance, of which Moisio is a board member. So important is this mindset that Moisio ensured both Danyluk and Baldwin had One Water in their titles to keep that perspective ingrained in their day-to-day work.

One Water follows three simple principles: all water is connected and all water has value; the challenges before the industry are complex and interconnected and there is no one-size-fits-all solution; solutions must be sustainable inclusive and equitable.

Upon hearing these principles for the first time, Moisio recognized how her prior work in Cincinnati follows these principles. She recognized how the vision and values of One Water echoed the values her father taught her on the farm.

That initial seed of an idea planted by her father has matured, and Moisio now sows the seeds of those values and ideas with a long term vision for water in mind.