INNOVATION November-December 2018

P R O F I L E

DR. KATHERINA TARNAI-LOKHORST, P.ENG. , FEC Engineering Positive Relationships Through Collaboration

P HOTO : R OOP J AWL D ESIGN & P HOTOGRAPHY

A fter declaring to her father at a young age that she wanted to be a singer, Dr. Katherina Tarnai- Lokhorst, P.Eng., FEC, the new president for Engineers and Geoscientists BC, followed his advice and identified a profession to support her singing hobby: engineering. And, her connection with a fellow engineer who also happened to be a musician would play a key role in launching her aerodynamics career. After graduating in 1988 during a recession, when engineering companies across the country were not hiring, Tarnai- Lokhorst moved to Toronto to ‘pound the pavement’. She landed an interview with KYLIE WILLIAMS

the lead aerodynamics engineer at Boeing Canada, de Havilland Division. Although the company was in a hiring freeze, the two connected over the instruments they played and a shared love of music. Eventually, Tarnai-Lokhorst was hired as one of seven new engineers at the company when the freeze was lifted. The process taught her an important lesson: “It’s not just the math and physics and your marks that get you a job; it’s how we connect and build relationships, and sometimes that is through the extra-curricular things we do.” After several happy years at de Havilland, Tarnai-Lokhorst was ‘desked’

and assigned research projects while expecting her first child, because the working conditions on the shop floor were not considered safe at the time for a pregnant woman. “It was difficult because I loved being on the shop floor and I loved interacting with the assemblers, the supervisors, the inspectors,” she says. Soon after, Tarnai-Lokhorst and her husband moved to Victoria, and, after a brief period as a stay-at-home-mom, she set out again to find work as an engineer. Despite her qualifications and experience, at the time companies were not hiring engineers on a part-time basis.

1 4 N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 8 I N N O V A T I O N