About Us
Our mission is to be the water firm of choice for both our clients and our team.
Here to Do the Best Work of our Lives –
Join Us!
West Yost is hiring! Join our team to feel fulfilled, appreciated, and appropriately challenged. Since 1990 we have been building partnerships and collaborative teams within our groups and areas of expertise. We help you bring your value to the forefront and contribute to creating successes together.
Mission – To be the water firm of choice for both our clients and team
Vision – To be the leader in water in the west
Purpose – To advance water resources for future generations
A Day in the Life at West Yost – Making an Impact Together
We have all come to West Yost because we know we will be supported in doing the best work of our lives! Together we have fun collaborating, doing what’s right, and delivering high-value solutions. We are encouraged to take ownership in a way that earns trust with one another and our clients.
We are West Yost
Together we take pride in advancing water resources for future generations
- We support our communities
- We are water focused
- We take pride in what we do
- We strive to become our best
- We do what’s right
- We believe in quality
- We listen
- We solve challenging problems
- We see the bigger picture
- We collaborate
- We have fun
Leadership Spotlight
Firm Leadership
Charles Duncan, PE, D.WRE, MBA
President and Chief Executive Officer
Charles Duncan, PE, D.WRE, MBA
President and Chief Executive Officer
“Every day, when I come to work, I’m inspired by the entire West Yost team. Our teammates are insanely talented. At West Yost, we are driven to solve challenging problems and do what’s right for our clients. My mission is to fully support them in our shared goal of doing the best work of our lives. I am proud of what we have accomplished for our clients and our teammates.
Since 1997, when I joined West Yost, I have been privileged to be a part of many challenging projects for our long-standing clients. As President and CEO of West Yost Associates, my focus is visioning our future, inspiring our team, partnering with our clients, and serving our community.”
Greg Chung, PE
Operations Director, Vice President
Greg Chung, PE
Operations Director, Vice President
“I get excited by the discovery and challenge of engineering and the inspiration and energy I get from working alongside very smart and dedicated people.
I am proud that our team was able to help the City of Jackson improve their wastewater treatment plant on a very limited budget. The City had very limited funds and a lot to improve at the treatment plant and I was proud that our team was able to work through the many technical challenges and deliver a successful project.”
Elizabeth Drayer, PE
Chair of the Board of Directors and Chief Engineer
Elizabeth Drayer, PE
Chair of the Board of Directors and Chief Engineer
“I am truly honored to be serving as Chair of the West Yost Board of Directors.
Over the years, I have witnessed our company’s growth from a small number of staff in two offices to over 220 staff members in nine offices. Throughout that growth, we have maintained an unrelenting commitment to providing exceptional service to our clients and communities while continuing to make West Yost a great place to work for our employees. As Chair, I look forward to working closely with our board of directors, company leadership, owners, and staff to continue our commitment to excellence for our clients, our communities, and our employees.”
Chris Leister, MBA
Business Services Director
Chris Leister, MBA
Business Services Director
“What excites me about working at West Yost is helping to drive the connection between the people, processes, and technologies that make West Yost such a great place to work.
I believe people and relationships are the most critical component of that equation, and West Yost’s culture reflects that with ongoing initiatives supporting Diversity Equity and Inclusion, wellness, charitable giving, professional development, and meaningful community engagement. There is a tangible sense of joy and energy among team members as West Yost truly embodies our core value ‘we have fun’, which makes it exciting and motivating to come to work every day with such passionate and fun teammates.”
Ernest Liu, PE
Chief Financial Officer
Ernest Liu, PE
Chief Financial Officer
“I am excited to support the mission of West Yost’s engineers and scientists as they work to improve the lives of everyone in our communities. I view my role as one of support; to make sure that our technical staff have what they need to provide their expertise to all of our very important clients and stakeholders over the course of the year. I am gratified to maximize the returns from their effort and to optimize our capital structure to ensure our long term viability as a firm.
I am very proud of being part of the leadership team that has improved our firm’s operational efficiency over the past two years since I joined the team. It has been very rewarding and gratifying to watch our firm evolve.”
Abigail Madrone
Business Development Director, Vice President
Abigail Madrone
Business Development Director, Vice President
“I am committed to preserving and enhancing our natural resources for future generations. My passion and dedication for water resources management grew from the ground up through my background in groundwater monitoring and management.
It is personally and professionally rewarding to collaborate with our technical leaders and clients to develop resources and solutions that enhance the communities we serve. We invest in the success of our teams and our clients, and the “people first” environment at West Yost brings many opportunities for growth and innovation.”
Lindsay Smith, PE
Director of Strategic Initiatives, Vice President
Lindsay Smith, PE
Director of Strategic Initiatives, Vice President
“I love working with our great team at West Yost to solve challenging projects in partnership with our clients. I get tremendous satisfaction seeing our clients implement projects that make a positive impact for their communities..
The Davis Woodland Water Supply Project is a special project for me. I began working on the project in 2007 and continue to serve the Woodland-Davis Clean Water Agency today. The project brought a sustainable surface water supply to the Cities of Davis and Woodland and UC Davis, which also happens to be the area where I live.”
Area and Sector Leadership
Samantha Adams, MESM
Surface Water and Groundwater Business Sector Leader
Samantha Adams, MESM
Surface Water and Groundwater Business Sector Leader
“I’m passionate about the environment, sustainability, and water. I love that my work is a meaningful contribution to environmental stewardship, given the particularly challenging water management issues to solve in California. I grew to love consulting because of the diversity of clients I collaborate with. While the water management issues are similar, each client has unique challenges in need of creative solutions. That makes every project challenging and exciting.
I began the Upper Temescal Valley Salt and Nutrient management Plan for Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District and Eastern Municipal Water District in 2013 and am particularly proud of the results. I developed and implemented a creative regulatory solution that saved my client money and provided the Regional Water Quality Control Board with greater assurance for the long-term protection of beneficial uses of groundwater in the study area. I enjoyed leading the project team in the development and application of a technical approach, the negotiation of the regulatory compliance plan, and stakeholder outreach and communication. In 2020, the Regional Board approved a Basin Plan amendment to formalize the new SNMP. I now have the opportunity to serve as technical advisor to the implementation team, which is very rewarding.”
Nate Cullen
Treatment Business Sector Leader
Nate Cullen
Treatment Business Sector Leader
Nate Cullen is an experienced treatment engineer and engineering manager with expertise in master planning, developing capital improvement plans, and implementing treatment plant and pump station projects for expansion due to growth, to meet new regulations, for asset management, and to improve plant efficiencies. After 8 years in consulting, Nate spent 30 years working for Clean Water Services in Tigard, Oregon, where he started as a project engineer, worked his way up through engineering into managing operations of the treatment facilities, and retired as Chief Operating Officer. During his tenure at Clean Water Services, he was a leader in the transformation from a focus on treatment only to a focus on maximizing all aspects of water resource recovery, through optimization of biological phosphorus removal, nutrient recovery and fertilizer production, water reuse, co-digestion and cogeneration, and renewable energy initiatives.
Daniel Groves, PE, PMP, CISSP
Operations Technology, Cybersecurity, and Resilience Business Sector Leader
Daniel Groves, PE, PMP, CISSP
Operations Technology, Cybersecurity, and Resilience Business Sector Leader
“I enjoy working with a team of diverse, highly skilled Operations Technology, Cybersecurity, and Resilience professionals serving clients that provide essential water services to the community. Our team provides a mostly unseen essential service that is crucial to the operation of critical infrastructure in the water industry.
I am proud that we are practicing what we preach around cyber security and resilience! I had the opportunity to hand pick the professionals I work with every day – it was a highlight of my career to “get the band back together” selecting the best experts I’ve worked with in the past. Together, we have stood up an electrical, instrumentation, and controls group within West Yost that embodies and delivers on resilience. We deliver CCE, CIE, and all of the methodologies which will change the water sector for the better to improve resilience of critical water infrastructure. I am honored to be able to provide that to all of our clients.”
Michael Gruenbaum
Area Market Lead – Southern California
Michael Gruenbaum
Area Market Lead – Southern California
I am passionate about connecting with clients and understanding and solving the challenges they’re facing. I’m fortunate to work with a team of brilliant water sector engineers who have a proven track record in supporting our clients in a variety of ways. In my role, I aim to connect our clients with West Yost’s team of engineers to define projects and develop solutions that bring incredible value.
The work West Yost is doing for the City of Garden Grove epitomizes our commitment to addressing challenges and delivering high value work. As SCADA Program Manager for the city, I managed the development of their SCADA master plan and am now managing over 20 SCADA improvement projects which are aimed at overhauling existing legacy system to a new, cutting-edge SCADA system. I find great satisfaction in helping the City overcome these challenges including operational, technological, general support and more and it’s rewarding to see them acknowledge and celebrate the benefits of our work in real time.
Kelye McKinney, PE
Northern California Central Valley Area Market Lead
Kelye McKinney, PE
Northern California Central Valley Area Market Lead
“I get great satisfaction when I can help our clients solve problems and advance projects for the betterment of their community. Having worked for a public agency for 23 years, I understand the responsibilities agency staff have to their rate payers and how smart solutions and quality work benefit communities. The West Yost culture embodies that with creative and committed professionals doing what’s right for their clients.
I had the pleasure to work closely with staff from Placer County to develop a Sustainable Agricultural Groundwater Recharge Program. This program uses developer fees that will support the health of the western Placer groundwater basin for local agricultural interests for years to come.”
Corie Moolenkamp, PE
Infrastructure Business Sector Leader
Corie Moolenkamp, PE
Infrastructure Business Sector Leader
“What I love about my jobs is helping people solve problems, whether they are clients or staff. It is extremely rewarding when a client calls with a difficult challenge keeping them up at night and I am able to pair them up with the ideal staff to provide a solution. As a business sector leader, I focus on my excellent team feeling satisfied and passionate about their work. Sometimes I facilitate changing around assignments to capitalize on their strengths, I want to make sure they feel fulfilled by their work.
The Washington Park Project has been an amazing experience. I am able to help a client with an extremely complicated project and a large number of stakeholders. Together we’ve seen through many successes through completed coordination efforts. For example, a piece of the design was not fully formulated and I was able to bring the geotechnical, civil, mechanical, and structural engineers in with the client and contractor and say “we are not leaving the room until we have a solution”. This resulted in very out-of-the-box thinking that really solved their problem with a unique solution and the client was very satisfied.”
J.P. Davis, PE, CCM, QSP
Construction Management Business Sector Leader
J.P. Davis, PE, CCM, QSP
Construction Management Business Sector Leader
“I am passionate about my job! I see my clients and the contractor on a day-to-day basis, face-to-face. I enjoy getting to know them and their work styles. My goal is to meet their needs so that the whole team can have a successful project. Start-up is one of my favorite phases because using my experiences from prior projects, I can head off challenges before they impact the project cost and schedule. It is rewarding to start from nothing, coordinate a large team, pull in large equipment, and bring a system to life!
I am proud of the successful completion of the City of Modesto Headworks, Dryden Box, Influent Flume Improvements Project this year. Working together with the City and Contractor to continue the Headworks project safely and effectively amidst the pandemic, which was quite a feat considering nobody on the project contracted the virus. I created a collaborative team and was able to show value to the City, which led to winning the River Trunk Realignment Project, so we can continue support to the City for the coming year.”
Nick Belmont
Pacific Northwest Area Market Lead
Nick Belmont
Pacific Northwest Area Market Lead
“My family motivates me to do the best work of my life.”
I live with guiding principle that I want to be able to drive down a street, point to something meaningful and tell my children that their dad helped build it. I have committed by entire career to supporting the water and wastewater industry and as a proud parent of two, I strive to live up to that goal. West Yost’s sole focus of providing the best water resources management and engineering in the West, supports my desire to do my best work. In doing so, I am able to help create and preserve the vital resources that our communities depend on and that my family can be proud of.
Rachel Lanigan, PE
Water Business Sector Leader
Rachel Lanigan, PE
Water Business Sector Leader
Rachel Lanigan assists clients with decision-making and capital planning, having completed 15 water master plans and numerous planning studies across Washington, Oregon, and California. She specializes in integrating resilience into long-term planning, solving hydraulic issues, and demonstrating the benefits of utility investment. Rachel is skilled at communicating complex issues, honed through presentations at various meetings and conferences.
What Matters to Us
At West Yost we actively provide opportunities for growth. We support the health and wellbeing of each team member. Team-led initiatives provide connection and a means to have input into our culture. Through these examples, team members have gained tools, ideas, and access to wellness initiatives.
Diversity Equity and Inclusion
The DEI is a diverse group of team members in varying professions and stages of their careers. Their focus is both internally and externally on how we, as West Yost, support our communities and profession in a manner that promotes and strengthens diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Young Professionals
Our active Young Professionals group provides networking and professional development opportunities for those of us starting our careers. There are both at work and after work activities, depending on the YP’s preference.
Wellness Working Group
The members of this group bring perspectives and gather insights to reinvest into our team. The team gathers to assess, plan, promote, and implement West Yost’s robust wellness program and activities. We look forward to Active April, where we challenge each other to walk daily, and to upcoming fundraisers with organizations like Feeding America, where together we provided over 40,000 meals in a single month.