President's Message - October 2026

I’m honored to follow Kelsey Parolini as SEAOC President. Before looking ahead, I want to thank her for the year she just completed. It was a year of real change, and Kelsey led it with patience and a steady hand.

During her term, the Board approved a three-year plan for modernizing how SEAOC and our Member Organizations work together. SEAOC moved from an outside management firm to its own full-time staff. And SEAOC and SEAOSC launched on a shared membership platform. Along the way, we brought membership records from all four Member Organizations together, giving us a single, reliable statewide count for the first time. Kelsey would be the first to say none of that belongs to one person, and she’s right. But someone has to keep the work moving and the people connected, and she did both.

Working alongside her also taught me something. This year, each Board member had the opportunity to focus on communication training, and it confirmed what Kelsey and I had both noticed: we communicate very differently. I tend to move fast and focus on getting people excited about where we’re headed. Kelsey is thoughtful and thorough, and makes sure people have what they need before a decision. Working together, I learned that enthusiasm isn’t a substitute for explanation. Now I try to slow down, ask more questions, and give people the time and detail they need.

Kelsey, thank you. I’m glad you’ll stay on the Board as Past President.

At the Convention in Scottsdale, we celebrated “The Why That Drives Us.” I’d like to share mine, and how SEAOC became a part of it.

I spent the first 10 years of my career in Portland. When I moved to California, I eased in with a few social events and some Existing Buildings Committee meetings. It wasn’t until 2018, when I joined the Legislative Committee and the SEAOCC board, that I really got engaged. Advocacy is what pulled me in.

The reason is personal. Grass Valley is my hometown. It’s a rural community with a small hospital, where my mother and my daughter were born. In rural California, the hospital is often the most important building in town: the community’s only nearby source of care and its largest employer. Over the past decade, there have been repeated attempts to weaken seismic requirements for California hospitals. One proposed bill essentially said life safety seismic performance was good enough for hospitals. As structural engineers, we know the difference. Life safety means a building shouldn’t collapse. It doesn’t mean the hospital can treat patients after an earthquake. The public often doesn’t know that, so SEAOC explained it to legislators and lobbyists, working alongside EERI, ASCE, and ACEC.

SEAOC’s involvement made a difference. After several years of competing proposals, the bill the Legislature passed and the Governor signed kept hospital seismic performance standards in place, gave rural hospitals more time, and provided funding to study what their buildings actually need. 

That’s my why: making sure the buildings our communities depend on are still working when it matters most. I’d ask you to think about yours. Maybe it’s solving hard technical problems, serving a community you care about, or helping the next generation find this profession. Then consider how your involvement in SEAOC could help you pursue it, whether through a committee, a mentoring relationship, or a local event. Next month, I’ll share where modernization and our other strategic initiatives stand for the year ahead.

Thank you for the chance to serve as President of our organization.