We recently connected with Malory Atkinson and have shared our conversation below.

Malory, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. When you were first starting out, did you join a firm or start your own?

I started my firm with two partners. I feel like having business partners who have the same skin in the game as you can be an invaluable resource. Having two people to bounce ideas off of; elevate your strengths; and balance out your weaknesses.

We had worked together previously and realized that we wanted to try something new and bold in our industry so we came together to become the first all women-owned and women-led structural engineering company in the state of Georgia (and one of only a few in the nation).

It was scary to be the first at some, but also exciting – we wanted to prove to others that we could run a successful (and profitable) engineering company. Over all industries, less than 4% of woman-owned firms ever reach $1M in revenue and we hit that before our first anniversary. It was a pretty incredible time to be running the business.

Malory, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I co-founded Georgia’s only all women-owned and managed structural engineering firm in 2017.

We are one of the few women owned firms in our entire industry, and are doing all we can do to not only show that women-led firms can be successful, but also help inspire young women and minorities to consider engineering as a profession. It is our mission to be a strong force (the definition of ‘Shear’ is ‘a force in structural engineering’), evolving the profession by positively impacting our community and influencing the built environment for the next generation.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I hit a ceiling (or maybe a wall) in the industry about 7 years into my career. I felt stagnant, unchallenged, and didn’t know what that next big step was in my career. I had finished my MBA and decided to use that opportunity to leave the engineering world and go do something totally different: a technology start up.

Entrepreneurship had always been on my mind, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I felt that working at a start up (and earning equity) would be a great opportunity to feel a piece of that “making something from scratch” kind of feeling. It was a new technology, with big clients, fast-paced, challenging, exciting. It gave me the confidence I need to be able to say to myself, “I can do this”.

So I used that experience in the high energy tech startup world to bring to the structural engineering world – being flexible, agile, and fun to a typically slow-to-change industry.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

We want people to “love their structural engineer”, and we mean it. Engineers are incredibly creative individuals, working in a challenging and complex field, that all people interact with each and every day. We just forget that – we take for granted that we drive on roads, live in houses, work in offices, shop in stores, exercise in parks, go to schools… the built environment is such a part of our lives. It impacts so many aspects of our lives in both positive and negative ways.

We are relatively new (less than 5 years old), but we have tried our best to tell our story to everyone – not just our clients, but our communities, schools, students, and kids. We spend a lot of time with the next generation in the kindergarden to high school level, sharing about engineering and the built environment. We’ve committed our resources to community organizations; we started the first ever lifetime endowment for women studying structural engineering at Georgia Tech; and we’re also a goBeyondProfit member which is a commitment to donate 10% of our profits to our community.

By giving back, we get back, and we drive purpose to our work and to our team and to our clients.

Contact Info:

• Website: shearstructural.com
• Instagram: @shearstructural
• Facebook: @shearstructural
• Twitter: @shearstructural