Colleen S. Smith, Past President Tampa Chapter, 1999 - 2000 Interview by David Henry, Chapter Historian and Dan Herrera, P.E., Chapter Historian & Treasurer

ASHRAE Historical Leadership Recall Interview with Colleen. S. Smith (P.E., First Woman President of the Florida West Coast Chapter ASHRAE, ASHRAE Technical Committee Chair. Condensed from interview, notes, and resume' furnished in 2003.) Colleen Smith's first experience with ASHRAE was at a chapter meeting in Tampa, where she had planned to attend the social hour, but ended up staying for the whole meeting. She quickly saw the potential for networking was tremendous and enjoyed meeting people in various aspects of the HVAC industry in a social setting.

For a few years she attended meetings and then was asked to chair the TEGA committee. She enjoyed serving in that role and found the activities of TEGA complemented her position at Florida Power in the energy efficiency programs department.

Not long after, she was nominated to the board and eventually became president of the chapter. She doesn't see anything particularly impressive about being the first woman president of the FWC chapter, "Just the first locally of many female Florida West Coasters that will get the opportunity to serve our wonderful chapter as president," Colleen says. She admits that attending engineering school during the early 1980's had its interesting times. "This was before many women had discovered the wonderful world of engineering," as she was often the only female enrolled in many of the engineering courses. And it was especially interesting coming from her high school in New Orleans - an all-girls Catholic high school, where she played varsity sports and was captain of the basketball team. She credits her interest in science and mathematics back to her teachers and the high school, which maintained very high academic standards and focused on those areas.