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MARIYA (MARS) OTTEN-ANDREW P.Eng., PTOE, MIEAust CPEng. Current Employment WSP, Principal Consultant City of Residence: Vancouver, BC Education B.Eng., Civil Engineering with Honors, 1997 Griffith University, Gold Coast (Queensland, Australia) First job in transportation Graduate Engineer, Queensland Department of Main Roads, Gympie, Australia Family: Longsuffering husband of 19 years, Taco Otten (Taco is his real name! Traditional Dutch name from the 1400’s!) Things I like to do: Kiteboarding, mountain biking, skiing, ski touring, cross country skiing, hiking, running, paddle boarding – anything that keeps me moving in the great outdoors
CITE INVOLVEMENT What was the first ITE event you attended? A Southern Alberta Section luncheon in Calgary in 2014. I was new to Canada and missed being involved in a professional transportation engineering organization. I was very active in Australia with the Australian Institute of Traffic Planning & Management (AITPM) and wanted to find something similar. ITE and CITE were just what I needed. I started to attend regularly and get to know the local transportation engineering crew. What is your ITE involvement (past and present)? Being a member of the TLC has been my primary focus since joining ITE. It is super rewarding. I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside Irini Akhnoukh on improving integration for CITE members with ITE which has been very positive. I have also presented at local section and ITE International Annual Meetings.
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TRANSPORTATION TALK | SUMMER 2021
What positions have you taken on as a member of ITE? • CITE Technical Liaison Committee (TLC) Member (2017/18), Vice-Chair (2019/20), Chair (present) • ITE Coordinating Council (CoCo) Member (2019–present) • ITE Pedestrian and Bicycle Standing Committee Member (2020–present)
In 2019, I was privileged to be selected for LeadershipITE. This was an utterly amazing experience. I can highly recommend this program. What do you value most about ITE membership? The network of professionals who love transportation as much as me —a wealth of knowledge, experience and enthusiasm. GETTING TO KNOW YOU What attracted you to the transportation profession? I stumbled into it and haven’t looked back. I studied engineering because I liked maths and science and was a degree available at my local university. I loved it immediately but had visions of building sky scrapers and dams. Massive infrastructure. There was only one transportation subject in my degree and it didn’t excite me, but then I spent a summer
