Careers don’t always follow a predictable path, and that’s OK. Sheryl Guglielmo of DiPrete Engineering Associates Inc. may argue that it often works out better that way.
Promoted to senior project manager earlier this year, Guglielmo is a successful team member at the civil engineering firm. But she’s not a civil engineer. She’s an architect, one who has been with DiPrete for 14 years. In that time, she and the firm have evolved, grown and excelled.
“We know what we are good at,” said Guglielmo.
The road to empowering realizations for both Guglielmo and the company has been paved with a healthy combination of opportunity, education, open-mindedness and industry involvement. But initially, Guglielmo wasn’t quite sure where her education or her role with DiPrete might take her.
A Warwick native, she earned a bachelor’s degree in architectural engineering technology from Boston’s Wentworth Institute of Technology. Guglielmo tells of being met with a lackluster response from the architecture field right out of college.
“I wanted to go into the design field when I got out of school in 2006,” she said. “But there were not a lot of architectural jobs. I remember printing a list of architectural firms from the Yellow Pages, mailing them letters and then getting letters back saying that they weren’t hiring.”
‘It’s faster-paced in terms of deadlines. That tends to be my thing.’
SHERYL GUGLIELMO, DiPrete Engineering Associates Inc. senior project manager
There was, however, a civil engineer/land planner opening at Cranston-based DiPrete, so she applied.
“I got the job,” said Guglielmo. “That changed the trajectory.”
Where her skills may not have been an exact fit with the land-planner opening at DiPrete, the company was a match with what she sought in an employer.
Guglielmo said the firm was growing and getting noticed for projects, fitting the bill as a company where she could have a career, not just a job.
She knew AutoCAD, design software used by architects, engineers and construction professionals. For many other parts of the job, however, “I didn’t know what I was doing,” she said. At least not at first.
There were very few other women at the company when she started.
Dennis DiPrete, company founder and president, has been a supportive mentor, she said. Colleagues were able to learn from her perspective, and she from them. The firm was doing a lot of residential work at that time, such as master planning of neighborhood subdivisions.
But when the housing crisis hit in 2008, the company, like so many others, had to pivot.
Residential work went away. Guglielmo said that about half of the company’s 60 employees were laid off. DiPrete began taking on commercial developments.
“With most commercial developers, there is a whole process they have to go through, with financing involved, other engineers involved, going from one point of contact to another. It’s faster-paced in terms of deadlines,” said Guglielmo. “That tends to be my thing.”
In this way, she found work that speaks to her: projects with lots of moving parts.
As it turns out, Guglielmo – and the company as a whole – have set the standard with not only commercial projects but now industrial projects as well. Guglielmo, who earned her Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification in 2009, said that commercial projects are now 80% of the company’s portfolio.
On the industrial side, Guglielmo worked on North Kingstown’s Infinity Meat Solutions LLC, a 200,000-square-foot food manufacturing facility, as well as Broadrock Renewables LLC, a landfill-gas-to-energy project at Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corp.’s Central Landfill in Johnston.
For Broadrock, DiPrete provided site and civil engineering, regulatory permitting, surveying and construction administration. Guglielmo tells of being at a project meeting, and someone saying, “Oh, Sheryl is our landfill and gas expert,” prompting reflection on how far she, and DiPrete, have come.
She estimates that there are now about 12 female engineers in the office, 25% in leadership roles.
DiPrete added an office in Newport in 2010, and another in Dedham, Mass., in 2013, where Guglielmo is now based. Representing the firm’s brand in southern New England, she is now a resident of Attleboro, and has joined the Attleboro Planning Board.
Being involved is another tenet of Guglielmo’s success. She is or has been a member of groups such as the International Council of Shopping Centers Next Generation, having worked on the Garden City Center shopping hub in Cranston and other retail projects. She was chosen as the American Planning Association Rhode Island President’s Award winner for Distinguished Service in 2013.
Guglielmo said women need to be empowered, even if they find they are the youngest one and the only woman in a conference room full of engineers whose experience may not line up exactly with theirs. There is room for everyone.
“I went to school for architectural engineering and I’m in a civil engineering world. Everyone I work with has a civil engineering background,” she said. “And I love it here.”
