Matthew Bleakney, Engr ’24 (MS), is a traffic engineer with the Baltimore City Department of Transportation. When he started his master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering with Johns Hopkins Engineering for Professionals, he was working for Textron Systems, a defense contractor.
Through a volunteer community service project with the Federal Hill Neighborhood Association to design and install traffic bump outs, community artwork, and ADA complaint ramps at a local intersection, he discovered his passion for transportation. “I realized I was good at managing large and complex projects, enjoyed seeing them to completion, and figured I might as well get paid to do this sort of work,” he says. A bump out is a traffic-calming measure meant to enhance pedestrian safety and lower vehicle speed at street corners.
At the completion of the project, he switched to the Engineering Management program. “I thought I needed to learn more about how to manage projects and manage people than I needed to learn technical skills,” he says. “The flexibility within the program allows you to do some pivoting. Everyone is very nice and willing to work with you on achieving your goals.”
The Executive Technical Leadership course (595.781) taught him how to organize his ideas and present them to leadership in a way that could convince them to invest time and money into worthwhile projects. “I learned how to work with people in neighborhoods, how to work with city leaders, how to get them to work together, and to make sense of a chaotic world and its workflows,” he says.
Completing his degree has paid off. “I was surprised by how much my degree allowed me to consider different possible career paths,” he says. “Once I was able to put it on my resume, it opened up a lot of doors for me. The combination of the work I did on the community project and earning my degree from Johns Hopkins is why I have the job I have today.”
He also made several personal connections with people in the program. “I was also surprised by how many people I got to meet along the way, whether through in-person opportunities or even online,” he says. “It was cool to connect with others and see each other at the end of the day. It’s nice to have that mix of social life and education.”
Mural artwork by Saz Ross.