Sam Kottoor, EIT
Design Engineer
Education
M.A., Education Policy and Administration, Loyola Marymount University | BSc, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois -Urbana-Champaign
sam.kottoor@graylingeng.com
My background is in both education and engineering. I studied Civil Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and took many courses focused on water resources. During much of my time at college, I was heavily involved with an organization called Engineers in Action (EIA), which at that time was constructing bridges with communities that were isolated from necessities due to impassable rivers. After obtaining my degree, I was extended the opportunity to teach high school, and proceeded to teach high school math for the next five years. Now, five years later, I’m excited to begin my career as an engineer with Grayling.
With Grayling, I aim to build my technical skills in conjunction with the values I take with me from my time in education. It is important to me to work in fields that are truly necessary for human society, water resources, and education; both, in my opinion, satisfy this requirement. As I develop further as an engineer in the water resources field, I hope I can use my voice to stand up for what I believe to be right, as is necessary in the often contentious realm of water politics. Additionally, I hope to volunteer with EIA, as they now also do various water resources projects globally.
In my time away from the workplace, I find myself exploring new places, going on road trips, reading, walking, or simply sitting and talking with a friend.
Where would you take a month-long road trip?
Norway, Sweden, and Finland.
In a parallel universe, what is your profession?
I would roam the planet, working odd-jobs here and there, with my only possessions limited to what I can carry on my back, writing and publishing books in my spare time, all the while hoping one of the books gains traction in the public eye, until finally one does, and the money that comes with it ushers in a new chapter of stability in my life, with a set of walls that I call home, one of the walls adorning a backpack that rests on a hook, serving now only as a decorative piece, its utility, no longer utilized, for I now got what I wanted, so it seems.
If I could have any superpower, I would…
Never tell anyone what it was, use it to my own discretion, and take the secret to the grave.
What’s your favorite place on Earth?
The desert or my go-to cozy coffee shop.
What is the strangest question you’ve ever been asked in an interview?
How do you poop in the desert?