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Cindy Sugimoto stands out at Lea+Elliott and at WTS
Involved with transportation since college and during her time in the Navy, she joined WTS to encourage other women in the industry
 Industrial and systems engineer Cindy Sugimoto is an associate principal and VP at Lea+Elliott, Inc (Arlington, TX). Lea+Elliott is an employee-owned firm of consulting engineers, architects, planners and management experts. It specializes in planning, procurement and implementation of transportation systems, with special emphasis on automated and emerging technologies. Sugimoto is based in Lea+Elliott’s Southern California office in Cerritos.
WTS: spotlight on great jobs
Sugimoto believes in encouraging women in the transportation industry. That’s why she joined WTS (formerly the Women’s Transportation Seminar), and why she takes a special interest in increasing participation in the association’s scholarship program. The program is not designed just for techies-to-be, but also for career women in transportation who seek further professional development.
Sugimoto wants to spotlight “a lot of great jobs in transportation” that, she says, “are there for the taking.
“There’s a predicted shortage of technically qualified engineers in many industries. I believe that if our industry is going to meet the shortfall, it has to tap into the large, underutilized resource of women and get them more involved in engineering and technical fields,”
Sugimoto says.
Project management
Sugimoto, a U.S. Navy veteran, is an industrial and systems engineer by training and a licensed professional engineer in the state of California. In fifteen years of work on transit projects at Lea+Elliott, she’s been a project manager on a wide range of urban transit and airport projects.
On a typical project, she supervises engineers, planners and architects and coordinates with sub-consultants and owners’ representatives.
WTS: help with problems
Sugimoto’s approach to management began during her military career. “Naval officers tend to be involved in their people’s lives and problems. It’s part of the job, and it’s expected. It’s not too often that way in the civilian world, but I think it’s still important. If someone is having a problem, I want to help them,” she says.
That’s one of the reasons she was attracted to WTS. She joined the group in 2002. Last year she became scholarship co-chair for the Los Angeles chapter, and inspired the chapter to increase its undergrad and graduate scholarships from two to six.
Sugimoto also initiated a brand-new professional development scholarship at WTS-LA. Its aim is to help mid-career women in transportation-related fields complete certificate or professional designation programs.
This year Sugimoto became first VP of programs for WTS-LA, and next year she’s in line to be president of the chapter.
ROTC in college
Sugimoto grew up in Los Angeles. She received her BS in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Southern California in 1983. In high school a captain recruited her for the Navy’s ROTC program, which helped fund her college career.
After college she did five years active duty as a surface line officer in the Navy, followed by eighteen years as a naval reservist. While in the reserves she became an engineering duty officer, which included project management for design, procurement and repair of ships and their subsystems. She retired as a captain in 2007.
Civilian career
Sugimoto pursued her civilian career during her time in the reserves. From 1989 to 1992 she was with Pacific Planning & Engineering Inc. One of her projects was an automated people mover (APM) system for the Honolulu International Airport.
She worked on the planning, procurement, and oversight of the system’s design, but because of the 1990s recession it was never implemented. Now the airport is again considering an APM, and Lea+Elliott, her current firm, is working on it.
Pacific Planning gave Sugimoto “a good opportunity to learn about consulting in the civilian world,” she says. She went on to a year with Parsons Brinckerhoff Construction Services
(New York, NY) as assistant office engineer in the San Diego, CA office, working with the
city’s Metropolitan Transit Development Board on the San Diego Trolley Santee LRT
extension project.
On to Lea+Elliott
In 1993 Sugimoto joined Lea+Elliott, working on planning and procurement projects for airports and urban transit systems. In 2003 she became an associate principal and VP at the company.
She loves the firm’s integrity and professionalism. It’s similar to her Navy experience, she says. Women make up nearly 20 percent of managers and professional staff members there, and more than 15 percent of the managers are women.
“I’m proud to be associated with the best,” she says. “This is a mid-sized firm. I know most of the people, and I like everybody here.”
Lea+Elliott, she declares, “has given me great opportunities for increased responsibility and varying work experiences. I might not have gotten so much at a larger firm.”
Learning at the WTS leadership program
This year WTS International sponsored its eighth annual leadership program, focused on leadership in the transportation industry. The program was presented at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ) in cooperation with the National Transit Institute of the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center. Participation was limited to fourteen mid-career women; Sugimoto was one of them.
The idea of the continuing program series is to let attendees meet established transportation leaders and learn about their leadership styles and activities. “It’s partly about leadership and partly about getting you to think at a higher federal policy level,” Sugimoto explains.
The program expanded her views. “I was hoping to improve my performance for the next project for my firm, and I think I accomplished that goal.” |
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