Kristi has extensive experience as the Process, Automation, Controls, & Electrical (PACE) Team Leader, with a background spanning petrochemical, oil & gas, pipeline, and industrial processing sectors, including cane and beet sugar, as well as food & beverage facilities. Â In her leadership role, she manages a multidisciplinary engineering team delivering integrated plant performance solutions, coordinating process modeling, pressure relief design, automation strategies, controls selection, and electrical system reliability. Â She works closely with owner representatives, project managers, and multidisciplinary leads to develop project schedules, scope definitions, budgets, and technical specifications for instrumentation, control, and electrical systems, overseeing detailed design packages including control system architecture, I/O point lists, process control diagrams, loop drawings, and hazardous area classification plans.
As a consulting engineer, Kristi performs calculations and evaluations of electrical systems across all phases of power system lifecycles within process industries, with a focus on safety, reliability, standards compliance, and identifying performance improvement opportunities. Â Her recent project work includes multi-site electrical safety and reliability audits for petrochemical clients applying NEC and NFPA 70B risk-based methodology, development, and review of electrical engineering practice standards for oil and gas pipeline clients, and a forensic engineering investigation of an arc fault event at a medium-voltage motor control center. Â Kristi also served as a technical presenter at a symposium on AC-induced pipeline corrosion, demonstrating how electromagnetic coupling between high-voltage transmission lines and metallic pipelines generates corrosion-accelerating interference currents, and describing mitigation strategies including optimized grounding and AC discharge devices.
Kristi actively represents Equity Engineering within the broader industry through technical leadership and outreach.  She is Vice Chair of API SOEE and attends codes and standards committee meetings to contribute to the development of industry-guiding practices.  She authors technical articles for Equity’s monthly Industry Insights publication covering electrical safety, reliability, and equipment evaluation.  She has also performed volunteer work within IEEE, including serving as Director of the Board on IEEE-USA and IEEE – Educational Activities Board, providing input on Tech Policy, government relations, university accreditation, professional development, and pre-college education.  For six years, she served as Director on the IEEE Foundation Board, participating in project evaluation and selection on a worldwide basis, creating and evaluating the annual budget, and reviewing grant applications.
