President

I started my career in the landscape/irrigation industry in 1975 when I worked for my husband’s landscape contracting company. I did the bookkeeping and helped with some field work. He opened a landscape design company in 1986, at which time I started designing his irrigation plans and drafting the landscape plans. All of our drafting was done by hand back then. In 1990 (at the height of the recession), our business was not doing well and I decided to look for an outside job. Ann Runley asked me if I would be interested in working for her irrigation design company (Brookwater) which she started in 1987. As the recession was not improving, we decided to relocate to Tucson Arizona where my husbands family is from. I worked for a non-profit company and then for a mechanical company doing cost estimating. After returning back to California in 1994, Ann asked if I would like to come back to work for her. From then on I was hooked! I fell in love with all aspects of irrigation design. Ann has taught me so much over the last 20 years. I am so grateful to have landed into this great career. I am now in the process of purchasing the company from Ann, who will be retiring.

I received my IA certification as an Irrigation Designer (CID) in 2008 and as a landscape water auditor (CLIA) in 2010. I am also on the Horticultural Board for Diablo Valley Community College.

When I decided to join ASIC in 2010, little did I know how involved I would become in the industry and the organization. I am the current President of the ASIC Northern California Chapter, a board member on the National Board, and am currently working on several committees.

Treasurer

My initiation into the irrigation sphere was very practical.  It came as I found myself working as an enthusiastic, albeit irrigation unknowing, university summer student where I helped operate and maintain to a very basic irrigation system while taking my turn as the night waterer.  Having quickly realized I knew quite little about the microcosm of “golf course irrigation”—thus the unknowing—I also felt there was an opportunity to continue learning which would lead my to working in the irrigation consulting business some 30 years later.

Realizing that maybe night watering was not for me, I continued to work directly in the golf course sector for 11 years at which point I switched to working for irrigation distributor in Ontario for four more years until forming, with a partner, an independent irrigation consulting firm based in the Greater Toronto Region in 2004. As an independent irrigation consultant, I have continued to design and provide irrigation guidance and services for primarily the golf course and thoroughbred racing industries all the while trying to continue to learn and provide current and relevant advice in an environment where the judicious use of water resources is becoming ever so important.

Having joined ASIC as member and eventually progressing to serve on its Board of Directors, I feel the organization has functions on a practical level as an incredible resource for not only continuing my education on the “hard” skills required of the profession. Furthermore, ASIC provides a formative opportunity to develop the profession’s softer skills through direct interaction with other members and affiliates

While “not advertised” when joining ASIC, these interactions with wide array of other members and affiliates both within and in orbit of the ASIC organization provide an unique forum where I am able to develop the profession’s “softer” skills through access to a “wide net” of critique of both prevailing thoughts and practices resulting in substantive profession development and ongoing friendships.