2023 YPT Changemakers in Transportation Award: Taylor Novitsky

Taylor has nearly 4 years of experience working as a Civil Engineering Specialist. Although she is based in Philadelphia, she has contributed to highway design and reconstruction projects for not only PennDOT, but also New York State Department of Transportation, Connecticut Department of Transportation, and Oklahoma Transportation Authority. She has experience with both Design-Bid-Build and Design-Build Projects. Some notable projects that she has worked on include the I-95 Betsy Ross Interchange in Philadelphia, the Van Wyck Expressway Design-Build for Capacity Improvements in New York City, and Route 8 Improvements Design-Build in Connecticut. Through her career so far, she has gained experience in multiple specialties within the Civil Engineering world and become an early career master of all trades instead of focusing on one specific discipline, which she finds extremely valuable. Some of her specialties include highway design, drainage design, traffic control layouts, safety studies, stormwater management, and she has also been dabbling in some proposal development from a marketing standpoint. Getting her hands on each aspect of a design has been an extremely useful learning tool and will help her achieve her goals of both becoming a Project Manager in order to lead teams of engineers to complete effective and efficient designs for projects that will benefit our community, and working on her company’s Business Development teams. The more aspects of her job that she gets to focus on, the more of an understanding she has of the importance of what she does, which is going to help her bring better ideas to the table and contribute to the growth of the transportation industry. Additionally, she volunteers for her company’s Client Service Teams in order to win work, her Employee Activities Committee, and runs the onboarding for her Philadelphia team. 

When she is not at work, Taylor is the Chair of the YPT Philadelphia Chapter. Her leadership and organizational skills as well as her confidence in a bright future for both herself and her members has contributed to a successful 2 years as Chair. She is running for the position again this October and hopes to connect the young minds and future leaders in the transportation industry that her city has to offer. She is one of 30 members of the 2023-2024 WTS Emerging Leaders Program, which contributes to the professional development of women and minorities in the transportation field. This year, WTS received a record number of applications, so she is humbled to be a part of this cohort. In 2023, she was a member of the planning committee for TransportationCamp PHL, an unconference style event that sparks conversation and ideas about the pros and cons of our industry, and plans to serve on the planning committee for 2024 as well. Lastly, she will be a part of the planning committee for the 2025 American Society of Highway Engineers National Conference held in Pennsylvania. She believes in work life balance, so when she is not working and networking, she is teaching dance classes to kids in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, snowboarding, fundraising for charities such as Penn State THON, traveling to visit family and watching football and baseball. 

When you are early in your career, it’s sometimes difficult to imagine having an impact on the industry you work in, but she doesn’t see it that way. Young minds bring a whole new categorization of ideas to the table, and we are hungry to not only prove that we can be leaders, but also to help the transportation industry thrive to improve life for our generation and for future generations. The efforts we put in and the connections we make early in our career are just as much, if not more valuable than the ones we are going to make when we are more experienced, because bonds take time. And the people we are meeting through clients, projects, and professional organizations today, are going to be the CEOs and Presidents of the companies who can change the world tomorrow. She doesn’t think you can put a price on that, and that is why she values her work so much at only 3.5 years in. She has unfortunately experienced more than one tragedy in her life involving motor vehicle accidents that could have been avoided due to safer roadway conditions as well as preventing distracted driving, which is where her love of transportation improvements comes from. She is grateful to play even just a small part in making the transportation and infrastructure of our country safer and more user-friendly.