ACEC/MA National Director Lisa Brothers Receives ACEC Distinguished Service Award

ACEC/MA National Director Lisa Brothers Receives ACEC Distinguished Service Award

Lisa Brothers, PE, accepting the 2024 ACEC Distinguished Service Award

The ACEC National Distinguished Service Award recognizes someone who has provided exemplary service to ACEC. 

The American Council of Engineering Companies of Massachusetts is delighted to congratulate ACEC/MA National Director and Past President Lisa A. Brothers, PE, (President and CEO of Nitsch Engineering) for receiving the 2024 Distinguished Service Award at ACEC's Awards Luncheon on October 22, 2024 at the ACEC Fall Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Lisa gave us permission to share excerpts of her remarks accepting the award:

I’m honored to be recognized by the past chairs for this Distinguished Service Award highlighting my commitment and service to ACEC and the volunteer work that I am passionate about and enjoy doing! 

I have had the ability to be engaged in many community and industry activities because we have an amazing Nitsch Team supporting all that I do and TOGETHER we have built an amazing company. We all know that no one achieves success alone.

I love our industry and have enjoyed being involved in ACEC for over 30 years—being allowed to participate as a younger engineer really helped develop my leadership skills.  I encourage everyone here to reach down and expose the next generation to ACEC. I have learned a lot and have made friends for life.

Those that know me know that I always use any platform I am given to highlight industry challenges that I am passionate about such as these two challenges.

1. Bringing in more underrepresented people to the engineering and land surveying industry. As you all know, we don’t have enough engineers and land surveyors to do all the work that  our industry has. There are lots of things we need to do but one piece that I am passionate about is we need to understand the correlation between having underrepresented people in senior leadership and on our boards—with attracting and keeping them in our industry. It’s important for the underrepresented to see themselves in leadership.

If you don’t have any underrepresented people on your boards or in senior leadership—I challenge you to reflect why?

2. Pay Equity. There continues to be wage gaps in compensation. Confirm your company’s compensation policy is equal pay for equal work for everyone, but especially for underrepresented employees. We are making small progress in base pay equity…but studies have shown that underrepresented employees tend to get smaller bonuses. So when you combine total pay—the wage gap widens. Please consider conducting a compensation audit to see how your company is doing and make the necessary equity adjustments.

As our speaker, Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi, noted during his remarks yesterday, we all get a lot of help along the way. I have had so many people support me during my career that I can’t mention them all but I would like to thank a few of them.

I would like to thank Robin Greenleaf, past chair for nominating me and Abbie Goodman, ACEC/MA Executive Director.  Both of you have provided unwavering support to me over many many  years!

I also have to thank my family for always supporting all that I do. I am fortunate to have an amazing husband, Tom, who has always supported my career and was an equal partner raising our two children while both of us worked full-time.

My children, Ryan and Colleen, are amazing adults who make me proud to be their mother each and every day!

Thank you again for this honor.