Briana Santa Ana, 2024 Alumni Engagement Medal Award recipient
2024 Alumni Engagement Medal Award recipient
Current job and employer: Graduate Engineer, Development Review for the City of Mesquite
Current city: Dallas, TX
Professional background
Briana Santa Ana earned her BS degree in civil engineering at CU Boulder, where she was also active in undergraduate research, a GoldShirt Scholar, a peer mentor in the BOLD Center, and a longstanding member of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. While an undergraduate student, Santa Ana had two internships at the Colorado Department of Transportation and a local construction firm. Upon graduation, she worked for a general contractor and a concrete contractor, before moving to Dallas, Texas, where she is a city project engineer.
Contributions to the Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering department over the past year
In an effort to bring attention and awareness to issues around discrimination and diversity in the construction industry, Santa Ana helped organize the Construction Diversity Summit, which took place in April 2022 with nearly 200 attendees. Briana was fully engaged in the planning process, which included coordinating three breakout session speakers and a panel of industry leaders. She joined two of her peers who represented recent graduates and shared their stories with the audience. The summit enabled participants to learn new communication strategies and skills, recognize the importance of DEI work on the jobsite, and better understand the challenges underrepresented populations face in the construction industry.