RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Seeing the impact on people in rural Nicaragua of what she could do as an environmental engineer made Meaghan McGrath a believer in her chosen field.

As a student at NC State University, McGrath signed up for an Alternative Service Break in a remote part of Nicaragua, collaborating with a local nonprofit called El Porvenir that works to improve water quality and sanitation.

“Just being able to go somewhere and seeing the impact of work that I could do with my degree was huge,” McGrath, now an environmental engineer at RTI International, says in the accompanying video.

“Seeing the value of that kind of work on people with my own eyes really helped connect me with RTI International as well,” she says.

“Seeing the human-driven mission – taking facts, science, knowledge, turning that into something that’s meaningful and usable by many people – I feel like that was really the thing that connected my passions with my schoolwork with my future career.”