Rising Star Awards Past Recipients
2023 Catherine Pastoor, PE, SE is a working mother of three, a contributor to the community, a role model to other engineers of all ages, an award-winning athlete, a dedicated professional, and was recently promoted to Associate at SK&A Structural Engineers. Yet, for all her accolades and achievements, she is best known for her approachability and for generously giving her time to others, both inside and outside the company. In an industry where individuals are often reluctant to ask for help, Catherine spearheaded a cultural shift towards vulnerability. Always one to reach out to new staff as well as aspiring future engineers, she led by example in seeking help when needed and encouraging others to do likewise. The result has been an ever-improving culture of collaboration and inclusion. In addition to mentoring numerous new staff in-house, Catherine has been active in several STEM community outreach programs. She partnered with other women of SK&A to create a structures-building and wind-load-impact training activity for the Washington Architectural Foundation STEM fair event: How Women Work in the Design and Building Industry. 125 girls participated, including several Girl Scouts who were able to earn patches for their gummy bear, toothpick, and play dough creations. Catherine has also been a group mentor in the Phelps ACE Academy program and mentored high school interns in Elizabeth Seton’s Learning Engineering and Design (LEAD) program. Catherine’s broader community service work throughout her career has included involvement in numerous charitable organizations. She spearheads the company’s annual Salvation Army Angel Tree program to provide Christmas gifts to children in need. She has competed in and served as chairperson for SK&A’s team at several JDRF events to fundraise for type-2 diabetes research. She’s even led teams of runners for American Odyssey relay races, benefitting Hope Connections for Cancer Support and Team Red, White and Blue for wounded veterans. Professionally, she serves on SK&A’s Concrete Technical Committee and has contributed to the structural design of numerous notable SK&A projects, including the award-winning International Spy Museum in L’Enfant Plaza, The Ascent Uptown in Charlotte, NC, and 1812 Broadway in Nashville, TN. Her project experience spans residential, office, retail, parking, and specialized structures. Catherine earned her Master of Science in Structural Engineering from Stanford University and her Bachelor of Engineering from Vanderbilt University. While at Vanderbilt, she was on the Varsity Women’s Tennis Team and was the National Winner of the Arthur Ashe Award for Leadership and Sportsmanship. Originally from Greensboro, NC, Catherine and her husband, Devin, now live in Rockville, MD with their little girl (age 3) and two little boys (one age 5 and one just 9 months old), as well as their dog Rex, a Boxer/Australian Shepherd mix. Their favorite family activities include exploring different playgrounds, harvesting local produce at “pick your own” farms, and hiking the many trails throughout the region. |
2022 Scott Kinney is a Project Manager with Walter P Moore’s Washington, DC office. Scott has worked on a wide variety of projects, including in the sports, government, aviation, healthcare, and entertainment sectors. He is driven by the challenge of efficiently incorporating secure design solutions into world class projects. Scott has a passion for combining advanced model-based deliverables, digital project workflows, and engineering principles to collaborate with key stakeholders and designers to arrive at optimal solutions. He is a member of Walter P Moore’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council and Sustainability Community of Practice. Scott received Walter P Moore’s Javier F Horvilleur Outstanding Young Professional Award in 2019. He is the former chair of SEA-MW’s Young Member Group, and is a member of the SEER Committee. Scott has been instrumental in helping to develop and grow Walter P Moore’s Secure Design group, including training young engineers, pursuing business development opportunities, delivering projects, and finding the best ways to collaborate with other disciplines. He has led development of in-house blast design software and has facilitated a data- and BIM-centric approaches to project delivery. Scott's secure design expertise extends to: threat and vulnerability assessments, blast wave modeling, progressive collapse design, finite element modeling for blast and impact applications, and design of structural and facade elements under blast loads. Scott’s project experience has ranged from small health clinics to billion dollar airport terminals and sports stadiums. He has worked on highly secure confidential facilities and awesome theme parks visited by thousands daily. Scott earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Penn State University. His Master’s degree research focused on advanced modeling and full-scale crash testing of vehicle barriers designed to protect United States embassies. After graduation, Scott started his career with Hinman Consulting Engineers and moved to the Metro Washington area. He has been with Walter P Moore since 2016. He has spent the pandemic traveling the country working remotely while his wife, Carly, works as an ICU travel nurse. Scott, Carly, and their border collie Echo have enjoyed exploring the west coast with lots of hiking, camping, skiing, and other adventures. |
2020
Jordan Woodson, PE is a Senior Structural Engineer with Arup’s Washington DC office, where he has helped grow the firm’s local structural team over the last 8 years. In his current role, he acts as the structural design lead of a wide variety of projects and oversees project delivery for larger multi-disciplinary teams. Jordan has a passion for collaboration and integrated design working with other engineers, architects, and artists to deliver efficient and innovative structural designs.
Jordan has excelled as a structural engineer by combining a strong grasp of first principles with an appropriate use of analysis and design techniques to successfully deliver projects of widely varying scale, typology, materiality and complexity. His experience ranges from airport terminals to art installations, historic materials to modular construction, new build to renovation, and commercial to cultural.
Early project work included numerous developments in Mexico City including Torre Manacar and Torre Virreyes with the late Mexican architect Teodoro Gonzalez de Leon. On the Mexico City Airport, he was embedded in the London offices of Fosters & Partners to execute detailed coordination of primary gravity and lateral systems alongside baggage handling systems and strict architectural constraints. Later he relocated to site to observe construction of the project’s most complex steel elements.
Jordan has delivered projects with rigorous design challenges - including modal vibration analysis of the Capitol Crossing Pedestrian Bridge in Washington, DC and 2nd order buckling analysis on the steel frame of the Chrysalis Amphitheatre in Columbia, Maryland. Current projects include the new campus for Fulbright University in Vietnam, mass-timber and post-tensioned office buildings in the DMV and a modular room design for a Dutch hotel chain entering the US market.
Beyond project work, Jordan is integral to making the firm better, locally by training and mentoring staff and regionally through Arup initiatives toward skill development and operations. Jordan serves as Washington DC’s structural skills leader – charged with collaborating regionally to actively maintain and develop structural skills of Arup staff. He also sits on the office’s Guiding Coalition, a group that taps a cross section of members of the firm to provide feedback to leadership and strategize work place improvements.
Jordan earned his Masters of Architectural Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in December of 2011. Originally from North Carolina, he graduated with distinction from Duke University in 2010. Jordan lives in the District and has an active interest in live music, UNC athletics, and cooking with his Cookbook Book Club.
David Pirnia, PE
2019
From a desire to put his love of math to use by helping others, David selected to major in Civil Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana. Curious about graduate school, he applied and was accepted to a National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experience for Undergraduates at the University of Delaware the summer before senior year. His research project focused on the construction of a tied concrete arch bridge that was at the time being proposed over the Indian River Inlet in Delaware. Senior year found him taking advanced structural courses and gladly taking on the bridge design component of his group’s senior design project.
Those experiences culminated in him applying to the University of Notre Dame for Graduate School to pursue structural engineering. His admission included a full fellowship that allowed him to pursue a Master’s degree while researching and serving as a teaching assistant. He presented some of his thesis, titled Full-Scale Dynamic Characteristics of Tall Buildings and Impacts on Occupant Comfort, at the ASCE/SEI Structures Congress in 2007.
His research in Graduate School led him to Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in Chicago to further pursue his interest in tall building design. In that challenging environment, he developed quickly and was provided the opportunity to contribute to landmark projects such as Trump Tower Chicago, the FBI Biometric Technology Center in West Virginia, NATO Headquarters in Belgium, 100 Mount Street in Australia, JTI Headquarters in Switzerland, the University of North Carolina Genome Science Building, and Ssiger International Plaza Phase II in China.
In 2012, David moved back to Maryland to be closer to where he grew up and joined SK&A DC. Since that time, he has been fortunate to work on numerous projects around the DC area, particularly several projects providing special resources to the local community: Ballou Senior High School, the John and Jill Ker Conway Residence (affordable housing for homeless veterans), Plaza West (affordable housing for grand families), Ingleside at Rock Creek Retirement Community, and the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA Redevelopment (housing for homeless women).
David is now serving as past-chair of the SEAMW YMG board after serving as chair last year and joining as a coordinator in 2014. He also now serves as SEAMW membership chair and has helped with the transition to the new organization management software, WildApricot. Last year, David joined the ASCE Wind Committee and the Performance Based Design Sub-Committee where he found himself again designing tall buildings.
David lives in Capitol Heights with his wife and two cats. He currently spends his free time reading, learning to play the guitar, visiting any venue with live music, and riding his motorcycle.
