Most people who understand infrastructure policy have never built anything. Most people who have built things never enter the policy conversation. I’ve spent my career trying to close that gap.
I’m a licensed structural engineer and project management professional. Over the past decade, I’ve designed the seismic retrofit of a nuclear power plant in Taiwan, engineered healthcare and education facilities in the American Northeast, and helped reduce the manufactured cost of affordable housing units by 20 percent at a New York City startup. Then I traded the field for a different kind of problem-solving: federal consulting at Deloitte, where I worked on EV infrastructure policy, data platform development, and the machinery of government programs that shape what gets built — and what doesn’t.
That range is not accidental. A BS in Civil Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology and an MS from Stanford University gave me the technical foundation. An MBA in Social Impact from Boston University sharpened the policy and organizational lens. The PE license — active in California, Washington, and New Jersey — carries with it a legal and ethical obligation to protect the public. The PMP reflects the unglamorous reality that most engineering failures aren’t technical; they’re coordination failures. Each credential represents a domain I had to actually inhabit, not just study.
In October 2024, I co-authored a piece in The Wall Street Journal on equitable EV charging networks — three concrete steps to improve accessibility. It was the kind of writing I want to do more of: evidence-grounded, accessible to a policy audience, specific enough to be actionable. Engineers have a lot to say about the infrastructure debates this country is having. Most of them don’t say it publicly. I’m trying to change that.
That interest is pointing me toward a PhD in engineering and public policy, with a focus on resilient infrastructure. In the meantime, I’m pursuing a BS in Mathematics at Indiana University East to shore up the analytical foundations that graduate-level research demands. I don’t believe in moving fast through intellectual territory you haven’t actually covered.
Currently:
- Structural engineer
- BS in Mathematics, Indiana University East (expected 2029)
- Writing about engineering, infrastructure policy, and the gap between the two
Outside the work: I’m a triathlete and distance runner. I am a AmeriCorps Alumni, having spent a year serving with City Year Chicago, working with ninth graders who needed someone to show them that the math made sense. It still feels like some of the most important work I’ve done.
I’m based in Honolulu, Hawaii.
If you work on infrastructure policy, resilience, or equitable development and want to think through hard problems together, I’d welcome the conversation.
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ccllee
Email: Click Here