WGI Unleashed
A podcast about the people, the projects, and the culture of WGI. We sit down with our team members to see what they do on a daily basis to chase their passions and help our clients become successful.
All Episodes
Pablo Dominguez, Geomaticist
<p>In this episode of the WGI Unleashed Podcast, hosts Dan and Katie head down to our <a href="https://wginc.com/locations/miami/" rel="nofollow">Miami office</a> to sit down with Pablo Dominguez, a geomaticist in our <a href="https://wginc.com/services/geospatial-land-surveying/" rel="nofollow">Geospatial group</a>!</p> <p>If you ask Pablo what he'd be doing if he weren't surveying, he'll tell you archeology without hesitating. He's stood at the Colosseum and at the pyramids in Giza, and the History Channel runs on a loop at his house, much to his wife's dismay. Spend an hour with him, and you'll start to notice that Land Surveying and Archeology are two jobs that are closer than they sound.</p> <p><span><strong>Salt Life: Growing Up in Miami</strong></span></p> <p>Pablo was born in Guatemala and moved to Miami at five. He draws a distinction most Floridians will recognize right away. Inland kids grow up on lakes and ponds. Miami kids grow up on boats and piers. Pablo is firmly the second kind.</p> <p>He and his friends would ride from the inner city out toward Miami Beach, ducking into hotel pools along the way until security ran them off. Then they'd keep going to the bridges and jump in. Swim, climb out, ride back, repeat.</p> <p>He remembers a version of the neighborhood that's mostly gone now. You always knew where everybody was, because every bike on the block was dumped in the same front yard....</p> <p><span><strong>Second-Generation Surveyor</strong></span></p> <p>The career came from his father, a licensed surveyor with his own firm. Pablo went out to the field with him as a kid and held the other end of the chain. As Pablo tells it, his dad had just started a business, needed free labor, and there he was.</p> <p>Everything got written down by hand back then, page after page of field books. Then Pablo started picking up work with bigger firms and saw transits wired to data collectors, recording every measurement as the crew took it. That was the hook. He enrolled at Miami Dade College without much of a plan, but work kept getting in the way. Run the crew. Here's a promotion. Here's a raise. Eventually he let the degree go and took weekend courses in surveying and AutoCAD instead.</p> <p><span><strong>A Year of Phone Calls</strong></span></p> <p>WGI found him through Alvin Santiago in our <a href="https://wginc.com/locations/orlando/" rel="nofollow">Orlando office</a>, a friend and former coworker who wouldn't stop talking about the place. Alvin put him in touch with Roberto Montecon here in Miami. WGI made an offer. Pablo said no...</p> <p>They kept calling. For a year. What got him in the end wasn't the pitch; it was the conversations around it, the ones where people asked about his kids and how his family was doing. He finally said yes. Almost three years later, he's still here.</p> <p><span><strong>The Work: Drones, Crews, and Whatever Comes Up</strong></span></p> <p>Pablo doesn't know what he'll be working on when he walks into the office each day. Geospatial is his home base. He also helps run WGI's UAV program out of Miami with Alvin, alongside Javaro Hampton, Carlos Sotolongo, and Eric Pryor. Drone work comes in from all over Florida, and the team sorts it by who's closest and who's the right fit for the site.</p> <p>The rest of his week goes to people. He oversees the field and office technicians, trains and mentors both, and works alongside Eduardo Asavache, who recently got licensed under Roberto's mentorship. His peers like to tell him he's a jack of many trades and a master of nothing. Pablo repeats the first half and lets the second half go....</p> <p>His favorite WGI project so far took him to Puerto Rico, collecting data for project manager Randy Ortega. He'd never been to the island and pictured it flat. It is not flat... The terrain turned the flights into a real problem to solve, which is exactly why bringing back clean data felt so good.</p> <p>Dan and Pablo first met at WGI's management training out in Austin. What stuck with Pablo is that you never ask someone to do a job you wouldn't do yourself. Treat a crew well, and they'll stay the extra hour to finish the job.</p> <p><span><strong>The Closest Thing to Archeology</strong></span></p> <p>Back to the archeology, because it shows up in the work more than you'd expect.</p> <p>At one of the firms he worked for, crews would pull the old field books for an area before heading back out to a site. One of them stopped Pablo cold. A crew chief had gone out to survey acres of land and never finished, because the locals ran him off the property. He wrote it down, closed the book, and it sat there for decades waiting for someone to read it.</p> <p>The everyday version is quieter. Pablo takes a reference book out to a site, hunts for a monument someone set fifty years ago, and digs until he finds it. Proving that old work still holds is about as close to archeology as a Tuesday gets.</p> <p><span><strong>Life Outside the Office</strong></span></p> <p>Pablo has been married 20 years and has four kids, ages 28, 26, 15, and 13. His daughter shares his birthday. All four still live at home, which he pins on the housing market and doesn't seem too bothered by. Being a devout family man, having everyone close is the ideal circumstance.</p> <p>He had two miniature dachshunds for 16 years and hasn't been ready to replace them, though he thinks a rescue dog is getting close. In the meantime, a stray kitten wandered onto his porch three years ago and never left. She's a Dominguez now. A second stray recently had a kitten in his backyard, and Pablo is looking for a home for her, so consider this the announcement.</p> <p><span><strong>Tune In</strong></span></p> <p>Pablo brought the energy to this one. He also beat both hosts at Two Truths and a Lie, which almost never happens, and closed things out with an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression that Katie hasn't stopped talking about since.</p> <p>Tune into this episode of WGI Unleashed on your favorite podcast platform, and stay tuned for more conversations with the people, projects, and culture that define WGI!</p> <p><em>Visit your favorite podcast app now and subscribe to</em> <a href="https://wginc.com/content/podcast/" rel="nofollow"><strong><em>WGI Unleashed</em></strong></a> <em>to receive alerts every time a new episode drops – You can find us on</em> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5ZrlTvxWrhifkp39cLX4LG?si=rnRCUO3LQg-VZhQ6UaKO7A" rel="nofollow"> <strong><em>Spotify</em></strong></a><em>,</em> <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/unleashed-with-big-red-dog-engineering/id1352819491?mt=2" rel="nofollow"> <strong><em>Apple Podcasts</em></strong></a><em>,</em> <a href="https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-unleashed-with-big-29268592/" rel="nofollow"><strong> <em>iHeart Radio</em></strong></a><em>, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.</em></p>
WGI Unleashed Podcast: David Gerber, Project Manager
<p>In this episode of the WGI Unleashed Podcast, hosts Dan and Katie are back in our <a href="https://wginc.com/locations/fort-lauderdale/" rel="nofollow">Fort Lauderdale</a> office to sit back down with David Gerber, Project Manager on our <a href="https://wginc.com/services/transportation/" rel="nofollow">transportation team</a>!</p> <p>David is a two-time guest, a "two-peat" he happily likens to Steve Martin's SNL record. Last time around, he got a little feedback for being too tight-lipped about his coworkers, so this time he came prepared to fix that, handing out shout-outs across thirteen years and five offices…</p> <p><span><strong>From Miami to Lakeland</strong></span></p> <p>David was born in Miami and lived there until he was about five, when Hurricane Andrew came through and cost his parents their jobs. The family moved north to Lakeland, the Central Florida town tucked between Tampa and Orlando, where he grew up. By his own account, the third-best restaurant in town back then was Publix.</p> <p>He was a classic-rock kid who played the drums and, at a high school too small to have a band, tried to start a drum line of his own. His path toward engineering began somewhere less obvious: a pile of Legos on the living room floor. David says he was drawn to the field partly because he assumed it would involve as little writing as possible, a theory that every report, invoice, and email since has cheerfully disproven.</p> <p><span><strong>Two Business Cards</strong></span></p> <p>David headed to the University of Miami in 2005, but when the tuition math stopped working, he transferred across town to Florida International University and finished his degree while working in the school's structures lab. His summers went to roadway construction, first on a bridge job down in the Keys, then on a turnpike widening up in Orlando.</p> <p>Here's the full-circle part. At his very first college career fair, David walked away with two business cards: one from a construction company, one from WGI. He went with the construction company. Years later, when that firm pulled out of Florida during the 2010 slowdown, he ran into Brett Fuller at a wedding and heard that Fuller's company was interviewing for a position. David wasn't sure about the role, but he thought, "Why not?".</p> <p>A full day of round-robin interviews with the entire West Palm Roadway group later, he finally cashed in that second business card.</p> <p><span><strong>The Work: Interchanges, Depositions, and Five Offices</strong></span></p> <p>David started as a project engineer back when WGI's roadway team was small enough to count the PE's on one hand. The jump to project manager came with a line he still quotes: "I will never pay you more to do less." Get the design down cold, the thinking goes, and you earn the tracking, invoicing, staff-hour estimates, and resource planning that come with running projects. He compares it to learning guitar, where nobody masters it after one song. Design, he's quick to add, is still his favorite part of the job.</p> <p>Over thirteen years he's worked out of five WGI offices, a run almost no one at the company can match. Right now he's wrapping up a brand-new interchange up in Orlando, laying out ramps on ground where nothing exists yet. The project comes with heavy right-of-way work and eminent domain, and property owners entitled to a real appraisal, which means David has answered for his designs under deposition. Ask him what keeps him at WGI and the answer is simple. Dump out a bowl of alphabet soup and you can spell every engineering firm in the country, all chasing the same projects for the same clients. What's different, he says, is the people.</p> <p><span><strong>Life Outside the Office</strong></span></p> <p>Off the clock, David is a self-described foodie who books the hard-to-get tables months in advance and plans trips around them. He married his wife, Kristen, in Jupiter this past December, then the two Floridians spent their honeymoon ice fishing over New Year's in Kennebunk, Maine, huddled in a heated tent, drinking champagne, and photographing the bucket that passed for a restroom. Napa and Chicago are next on the list.</p> <p>Home is a townhouse they share with Bruno, the world's most outgoing miniature dachshund, and two gray cats, including a Nebelung named Charcoal who once relocated to Austin with him. A second doxy, Gus, is on the way.</p> <p>As for hidden talents, David is ambidextrous, which he insists just means he's equally bad with both hands. He also does a John Madden impression that only surfaces after four beers, and in 2018 he talked a group of West Palm interns into learning to juggle, on the theory that sharper hand-eye coordination makes for better drafting.</p> <p><span><strong>Tune In</strong></span></p> <p>For a guy who once got flagged for being too tight-lipped, David more than made up for it this time around.... His episode runs on career advice, road-trip stories, and shout-outs to just about everyone he's worked with. Tune into this episode of WGI Unleashed on your favorite podcast platform and stay tuned for more conversations with the people, projects, and culture that define WGI!</p> <p><em>Visit your favorite podcast app now and subscribe to</em> <a href="https://wginc.com/content/podcast/" rel="nofollow"><strong><em>WGI Unleashed</em></strong></a> <em>to receive alerts every time a new episode drops – You can find us on</em> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5ZrlTvxWrhifkp39cLX4LG?si=rnRCUO3LQg-VZhQ6UaKO7A" rel="nofollow"> <strong><em>Spotify</em></strong></a><em>,</em> <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/unleashed-with-big-red-dog-engineering/id1352819491?mt=2" rel="nofollow"> <strong><em>Apple Podcasts</em></strong></a><em>,</em> <a href="https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-unleashed-with-big-29268592/" rel="nofollow"><strong> <em>iHeart Radio</em></strong></a><em>, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.</em></p>
Rachel Starck, Environmental Scientist
<p> In this episode of the WGI Unleashed Podcast, hosts Dan and Katie head down to our <a href="https://wginc.com/locations/west-palm-beach/" rel="nofollow">West Palm Beach</a> corporate headquarters to sit down with Rachel Starck, Environmental Scientist!</p> <p> Rachel is a Florida native who grew up in Orlando with a childhood reputation for attracting wildlife, and a mother who gave her exactly the right career advice at exactly the right time. Two and a half years into her first job out of college, she's doing the work she set out to do... and loving every second of it.</p> <span><strong>From Orlando to the Atlantic Coast</strong></span> <p> Rachel grew up in Orlando, where both of her parents built long careers at Walt Disney World, her father in Food and Beverage and her mother in Merchandising and Park Operations. It was a fun place to grow up, but Rachel always had one thing on her mind: the beach. When it came time to choose a college, she toured nearly every university across Florida before landing on Florida Atlantic University, which checked both boxes: a smaller campus and easy access to the coast.</p> <p> Her initial studies focused on biology, but she soon made the switch to geoscience in her sophomore year, and the move turned out to be a natural fit. Geoscience at FAU covered earth science, climate, and environmental systems, exactly the direction she was already headed.</p> <p> Outside of the classroom, Rachel stayed busy. She served as president of SEEDS (Strategies for Ecology, Education, Diversity, and Stewardship), participated in student government, and spent a significant amount of her undergraduate years conducting paid research on gopher tortoises with FAU faculty.... As it turns out, this research would come in more useful than she ever expected!</p> <span><strong>Finding Her Way to WGI</strong></span> <p> Midway through her senior year, with COVID-era online classes freeing up her schedule, Rachel began sourcing and applying for jobs to see what may stick. Through these efforts, a director on <a href="https://wginc.com/services/environmental-services/" rel="nofollow">WGI's environmental team</a> soon found her profile and reached out.</p> <p> Upon learning that Rachel was already available and working remotely, he invited her to start as an intern in February rather than wait for summer. She graduated from FAU, transitioned to full-time, and the rest is history as she now closes in on two and a half years with WGI.</p> <span><strong>The Work: Puzzles, Permits, and Smoothies</strong></span> <p> Environmental science at WGI covers more ground than most people expect. Rachel's day-to-day spans protected species surveys (including gopher tortoises and burrowing owls), wetland and mangrove permitting for roadway projects, tree surveys ahead of development, and contamination work on sites being redeveloped from prior agricultural or commercial use.</p> <p> For example, when a former golf course or farm is being converted to residential use, Rachel's team assesses soil and groundwater for pesticide contamination, develops a remediation approach, and works to bring the site up to residential standards. She describes it as a puzzle, figuring out what's wrong with a site and then solving it.</p> <p> But that's not all. Beyond her day-to-day, Rachel is also a registered FWC Gopher Tortoise Agent, or as Dan put it on the episode, <strong>Agent Starck.</strong></p> <span><strong>Life Outside the Office</strong></span> <p> Beyond the office, Rachel is most comfortable outdoors. She paddleboards, hikes, swims, and logs long walks regularly, including a recent appearance at <a href="https://wginc.com/event-recap-2026-lexus-corporate-run/" rel="nofollow">WGI's West Palm Beach Corporate Run 5K</a>. At home, she shares her space with Kiwi, a calico cat who has zero interest in being taken on walks.</p> <p> In reflecting on what she would do if she weren't an environmental scientist, Rachel shares that she would probably be captaining a sailboat somewhere across an ocean. And while she doesn't sail just yet, plans are certainly in motion.</p> <span><strong>Tune In</strong></span> <p> Rachel's story is a great reminder that sometimes the clearest path is the one you find early. She set out to work in environmental science, found a team that trusted her to run with projects independently, and landed somewhere she's genuinely glad to be, but don't take our word for it.... Tune into this episode of WGI Unleashed on your favorite podcast platform and stay tuned for more conversations with the people, projects, and culture that define WGI!</p> <p><em>Visit your favorite podcast app now and subscribe to</em><em> </em><em><a href="https://wginc.com/content/podcast/" rel="nofollow">WGI Unleashed</a> to receive alerts every time a new episode drops – </em><em>You can find us on</em> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5ZrlTvxWrhifkp39cLX4LG?si=rnRCUO3LQg-VZhQ6UaKO7A" rel="nofollow"> <strong><em>Spotify</em></strong></a><strong><em>,</em></strong><strong><em> </em></strong><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/unleashed-with-big-red-dog-engineering/id1352819491?mt=2" rel="nofollow"><strong><em>Apple Podcasts</em></strong></a><strong><em>,</em></strong><strong><em> </em></strong><a href="https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-unleashed-with-big-29268592/" rel="nofollow"><strong><em>iHeart Radio</em></strong></a><strong><em>,</em></strong><em> </em><em>or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.</em></p>
Susanna Coleman, Administrative Assistant
<p>In the latest episode of the <a href="https://wginc.com/content/podcast/unleashed-podcast/" rel="nofollow">WGI Unleashed Podcast</a>, hosts Dan and Katie head back to South Florida to sit down with Susanna Coleman, an Administrative Assistant in WGI's <a href="https://wginc.com/locations/fort-lauderdale/" rel="nofollow">Fort Lauderdale office</a>!</p> <p>Susanna's story is one of curiosity, reinvention, and an unshakable love of learning. From the south side of Chicago to the shipyards of Scandinavia, Susanna has lived what she jokingly calls "several lives" — and each one has shaped the curious, people-loving teammate she is today. This is one conversation you won't want to miss.</p> <span>From the South Side of Chicago to South Florida</span> <p>Born and raised in a tight-knit, blue-collar suburb just south of Chicago, Susanna grew up as a self-described "total '80s kid." She and her sister walked to school, rode bikes around the neighborhood, and stayed out until their mom called them in. Family and culture were at the heart of it all. Her father immigrated from central Mexico in his twenties, and with both sides of her family rooted in Mexican heritage, Susanna grew up immersed in the culture, the language, and the food. Each year, the family made the epic three-day drive from Chicago to Celaya, Guanajuato — armed with coloring books, crayons, and a lasting appreciation for the great state of Texas, which never seemed to end.</p> <p>Even as a kid, Susanna sensed that Chicago wasn't her forever home. Standing at a bus stop in negative-degree weather, she remembers thinking, <em>"There has to be something better."</em> That instinct would eventually carry her south.</p> <span>Several Lives, One Common Thread</span> <p>After heading to Southern Illinois University, Susanna earned a degree in photo production technology, the technical, chemistry-driven side of photography. A professor's recommendation led to her first career with Noritsu, a company that manufactured one-hour photo lab equipment. For the next nine years, she traveled the world installing and balancing photo equipment, covering Central and South America and even outfitting brand-new cruise ships in the shipyards of Finland and Sweden. She filled two passports and visited nearly every country in Central America along the way.</p> <p>When the photo industry went digital, Susanna took a leap. A lifelong lover of teaching and the outdoors, she found her place at Camp Live Oak, operating out of Birch State Park in Fort Lauderdale. What began as an on-site director role grew into 18 years as associate director. She did a little of everything, from canoeing and archery to art and science, and shepherded the camp through its rigorous American Camp Association accreditation every three years.</p> <p>Ready for a change after nearly two decades outdoors, Susanna spent three years as a clinic manager at a health and wellness practice, sharpening her operations and HR skills before realizing healthcare wasn't her long-term fit.</p> <span>Finding Her Place at WGI</span> <p>The throughline in every chapter of Susanna's career is simple: she loves to learn. <em>"If the subject interests me, I will dive in headfirst,"</em> she says — reading, asking questions, and digging into the "why" behind everything. That same curiosity is exactly what she brought to WGI. This August will mark three years with the firm, and Susanna says she's finally fluent in the acronyms and the surprising amount of work that goes into building a road (IYKYK).</p> <p>No two days look the same. Susanna keeps the office running while managing events and conferences across WGI's Customer Support Manager, supporting HR initiatives, helping plan Engineers' Week, and lending a hand wherever her teammates need her. As one of WGI's busiest hosting offices, Fort Lauderdale always has something happening, and Susanna is often the person behind the scenes making sure it all runs smoothly.</p> <span>Life Outside the Office</span> <p>These days, much of Susanna's time is happily spent at the ballfield, cheering on her daughter's softball games and her son's travel baseball. When she carves out time for herself, she returns to her first love: <strong>photography</strong>. She's an active member of 52 Clicks, an Instagram community of photographers who shoot a new themed prompt each week and trade feedback. Her medium of choice is black-and-white portraiture, and she's planning a portrait series of her book club friends, complete with a small gallery opening at the end of the year! At home, she's joined by Lupita, a 12-year-old boxer mix affectionately known as "Lupita La Loca."</p> <p>And her hidden talent? Susanna is a gifted party host — a skill she credits to her mother. She has a knack for making everyone feel welcome, connecting guests who might never have met otherwise, and bringing the energy the moment the party starts.</p> <span>A Few Fun Surprises</span> <p>True to WGI Unleashed form, the episode is packed with games and a few great reveals. Susanna is fully confident she'd survive a zombie apocalypse (camp-director skills, a trusty sword, and all), and she nearly stumped Dan and Katie with a round of Two Truths and a Lie. Did she go to high school with a young Kanye West? You'll have to listen to hear the rest.</p> <span>Tune In</span> <p>Susanna's journey is a reminder that there's no single path to a meaningful career. Sometimes it's the curiosity to keep learning and the courage to reinvent yourself that lead you exactly where you're meant to be.</p> <p>Listen to this episode of WGI Unleashed on your favorite podcast platform and stay tuned for more conversations with the people, projects, and culture that define WGI. </p> <p><em>Subscribe to</em><em> </em><em><a href="https://wginc.com/content/podcast/" rel="nofollow">WGI Unleashed</a> to receive alerts every time a new episode drops.</em></p> <p><em>You can find us on</em> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5ZrlTvxWrhifkp39cLX4LG?si=rnRCUO3LQg-VZhQ6UaKO7A" rel="nofollow"> <strong><em>Spotify</em></strong></a><strong><em>,</em></strong><strong><em> </em></strong><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/unleashed-with-big-red-dog-engineering/id1352819491?mt=2" rel="nofollow"><strong><em>Apple Podcasts</em></strong></a><strong><em>,</em></strong><strong><em> </em></strong><a href="https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-unleashed-with-big-29268592/" rel="nofollow"><strong><em>iHeart Radio</em></strong></a><strong><em>,</em></strong><em> </em><em>or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.</em></p>