Working Mom Spotlight: Nikki Stevens
Name: Nikki Stevens
Occupation: Environmental engineer
Number of kids: 1
Favorite candy bar: Peanut M&Ms
Tell us about your family, and what’s your childcare solution? My husband and I moved to Raleigh in 2018 for my husband to get his PhD in plant pathology from NC State. We welcomed our first baby, Lawson, in December 2020, and a few months later my husband graduated with his doctorate and started his job with BASF. At that same time, my maternity leave ended, and I had to return to work. There were a lot of major life changes happening at once so we decided to hire a nanny rather than find a day care to have a bit more childcare stability in the middle of the pandemic. I currently work part-time (Mon. to Thurs.), which is when we have our nanny, and I take Fridays to have fun with Lawson and get life things done. Our nanny has been the biggest blessing to our family and absolutely critical to keeping me sane and organized through busy work and life seasons.
Where do you work, and what is a typical workday like for you? I work for Stantec, a global engineering and architectural firm, as an environmental engineer for our water division. I am a technical lead for water treatment and biosolids management projects for municipal utilities and industrial facilities. I am also responsible for developing our business in the Southeast region. I travel about 25-30 percent of the year for project meetings, workshops, site visits and client events. Typical workdays include a lot of time on the phone, even before the pandemic, since many of my projects are in different states across the country.
Share some of your goals – personal or professional. My personal goals are to be the best wife and mother that I can be, keeping Christ at the center of everything we do. My professional goals are to never stop learning and to use my skills and talents to bring clean water solutions to my community.
What motivates you to work? Before starting our family my main work motivators were probably 50 percent money and 50 percent the projects I work on building a more sustainable world. After having Lawson, I was surprised to find my motivators completely shift to 80 percent money, 5 percent the projects and 15 percent wanting my kids to see their mom assert her place in the workplace while being actively engaged with them.
How do you like to relax? We don’t live by any extended family so our favorite thing to do is travel to Texas or Tennessee to see them. We also love being outside, so any time I need a mental reset we get out to a park or go for a walk or hike.
What is your favorite part of motherhood? I love the process of Lawson learning new things. It feels like he just won the superbowl every time he picks up a new skill or learns a new word. I’m always enamored by watching his wheels turn in his head as he is processing new information.
What does Restored mean to you? How has it impacted you personally? It has been very challenging for me to build a community of friends with a very busy work and now home life. My friends and family who live far away had always told me it would get easier when we had kids because you make fast mommy friends, but we had Lawson mid-pandemic and even in re-opened world, I found that most mommy activities take place during the work day/week. I also work in a pretty male dominated field, so I have plenty of dads to talk to, but very few women to connect with and lament about pumping at the office! I had been praying for a while for a support network, and Restored has been a fantastic answer as it blends the three most dominant forces in my life: faith, family and career.
What is one of your favorite Restored events to date? Why is it your favorite? I loved the Barre3 class followed by coffee! It was a fun way to break a sweat and then replenish lost calories with lattes, pastries and great conversation!
Can you share how you overcome challenges related to the “mom chaos” that settles in when you feel pulled in 100 directions? I pretty recently hit my limit with being overwhelmed and had to do some serious re-evaluating of how I approached work and family and life in general. I ended up with a note on my bathroom mirror saying, “You are a better wife, mother and person when you take care of yourself and prioritize fun in each day.” Those are two things that I easily loose sight of when things get busy, but that simple note has gone a long way in structuring my attitude toward each day.
We also took the advice of Jefferson and Alyssa Bethke in their Family Teams podcast…every Sunday my husband and I have a “business meeting” where we walk through our week and talk about who is going where, what’s for dinner and who is cooking/shopping, important work meetings/calls and how we can support each other, etc. A key item that is always on the agenda is when is mom getting “her time.” As an introvert, I recharge by being alone, but if I’m not intentional about it, I will spend every minute of “alone” time doing things I think need to be done. So, my time in the week is intentionally planned to make sure I don’t burn out and I spend it doing something that recharges me.
Besides your faith and family, what are you passionate about? This seems a little anticlimactic, but my third passion really is my career. I love being challenged mentally and contributing to the world God created us to work (see Every Good Endeavor by Timothy Keller for a great read about this!). I have been hooked on disruptive leadership lately and the process of building soft skills and emotional intelligence in technical fields and I have a lot of fun mentoring younger engineers around those things. Also, pizza. Very passionate about pizza.