What are Karen Gleba’s thoughts on the word “strength?”
I think you have different kinds of strength in different parts of your life. Being a woman in engineering, I’m very often the only woman in the room, and I need to be confident in myself and my voice—that to me is my strength. Having strong values and relationships with family and friends—that’s more of a personal strength, a strong sense of community and doing the right thing. I guess it all adds up.
Karen Gleba’s work may have touched your life—or a loved one’s—without you ever knowing it.
A lifelong architectural engineer, she designs electrical systems for the healthcare industry, including Central Pennsylvania hospitals. Her work, like everything else in our lives, was greatly affected by COVID-19. In a nutshell, her job was to ensure that hospitals could support the pandemic’s increased electrical loads from ventilators and other machines.
“A key point in our design is to remind people these systems are designed to support lives,” says Gleba, 49, of York. “With Covid, our firm had greater demand to evaluate exhaust and HVAC systems to provide better circulation and filtration. Now, we’re proactively designing the mechanical and electrical systems to handle any future pandemics.”
As a senior associate at WSP USA, she has a passion for projects.
“I love, at the beginning of a project, getting into a room and looking at a blank slate, whether it’s a renovation or construction … getting to know the team, digging in and trying to find the solutions to make this project the best it can be for our hospital clients,” says Gleba. “I love the figuring it out.”
But there’s one aspect of her job she’s had to figure out completely on her own.
“When I was younger and first promoted to management team in 2002, I was the only woman. I was the first woman to earn the professional engineer certification and the first woman project manager,” she explains.
After dialing her career back to part time status while her two children were young, she returned to management in 2019—and was still the only female engineer. “I’m trying to retain and get women on upward mobility pathways … I’m trying to be a mentor to younger women because I never had a mentor—I had to create my own path,” she says.
In addition to mentoring, she enjoys touching the community with her talents: She serves on York’s Appell Performing Arts Center’s facilities committee, and she’s volunteered with Bring On Play since it was founded in 2008. They’ve rebuilt 10 York City playgrounds.
If there’s such a thing as an engineering gene, it just might be running through her family: Her husband has worked at the same firm his entire career, and their son is a freshman at their alma mater—Penn State—studying (you guessed it) engineering.
