In our second podcast episode in partnership with Westcoast Women in Engineering, Science and Technology (WWEST), we welcome Sheryl Cumming, P.Eng., Metro Vancouver Regional District’s Planning and Environment Department.

Sheryl Cumming works as a professional engineer at Metro Vancouver Regional District’s Planning and Environment Department in the Air Quality and Climate Change Division. Growing up with an engineer Dad and heeding his paradoxical advice to avoid the engineering field, she started her university experience with a major in psychology. Her inclination towards STEM apparently ran deep that soon after her family emigrated to Canada and with only a couple of months of Jung and Freud under her belt, she couldn’t help but register for UBC’s engineering program.

Her experiences combined led her to her current work, trying to save the world (or at the very least, help prepare the region) through her role in the development of Metro Vancouver’s regional climate action strategy called Climate 2050.

Sheryl believes that women engineers demonstrate ‘she-roism’ on a daily basis. One of four daughters and now raising her own, she witnesses the strength and resilience women can bring in various faces of adversity. She sees it in this pandemic. In her own small way, when she is not dabbling in Pinterest-esque cake-decoration, enjoying the chemical wonders of processed grapes, or mourning the 2011 Canucks Stanley Cup upset, she volunteer her time and skills in the advocacy for and empowerment of women in STEM; serving as an individual champion with AWET and as co-chair of Metro Vancouver’s staff-led initiative called AWSTTEM (Advocates for Women in Science, Technology, Trades, Engineering and Math).

Visit Sheryl’s LinkedIn profile.