Podcast: Nuclear Engineer Grace Stanke Talks Life After Miss America

Grace Stanke shares what life is like after Miss America. “The New Face of Nuclear Energy” recently received her nuclear engineering degree and moved to the East Coast for the next big step in her exciting career. In this ASME TechCast episode, we talk about how her journey started, where she is now, and what 2024 holds in store for the Wisconsin native.

Stanke is one of 25 early career engineers on our inaugural Watch List who opened up to readers about personal stories, career advice, and life experiences. 



Auto-generated transcript:

00:00:00 Sarah Alburakeh
Welcome to ASME TechCast, bringing you the innovators, the innovations and the issues pushing the envelope of engineering.

I'm Sarah Alburakeh, strategic content editor at Mechanical Engineering magazine.

Earlier this year, mechanical engineering staff began compiling lists of up-and-coming engineers in a variety of fields. We put together a group of 25 early career engineers who we believe are the ones to watch. One such individual on our watch list is Grace Stanke, core design engineer at Constellation Energy, and former Miss America. Grace, we're happy to have you on the show. Welcome.

00:00:38 Grace Stanke
Yeah, gladly. I'm excited to be here.

00:00:41 Sarah Alburakeh
So Grace, there's quite a list of achievements and awards here to recap and cover. It'd be great to hear from you in your own words. What would you say have been your biggest awards over the past few years?

00:00:54 Grace Stanke
Oh, I mean, Miss America 2023 is, I think, one of the most recent ones that comes to mind in terms of awards. It's really interesting to go through because there's a variety of scholarships too. At the high school level that I received going into college. So the Wausau Rotary scholarship was something that was really special to me, and I was able to go back and actually speak to the Wausau Rotary Club as Miss America, which was really cool because they pulled out my application and we looked at everything. So that was really fun. But Miss Wisconsin and Miss Wisconsin's outstanding team was also a very big accomplishment that I'm proud of. Otherwise, I mean it's Forbes, 30 under 30. I got that I that I don't know if that's considered an award or not. And the Wall Street Journal stated that I was the new face of nuclear energy. So those are all pretty big things that I'm pretty proud of.

00:01:48 Sarah Alburakeh
And you should be. That's incredible. OK, so let's back it up to the earlier days before all of this happened. Could you tell us the story of how it all got started and how you got into engineering?

00:02:01 Grace Stanke
I was always exposed to engineering growing up. Thankfully, my dad was a civil engineer, so he would take us to construction sites. He worked on bridges specifically so we would watch bridges get demoed overnight. We would see them be built, and I really loved seeing him use math and science to help people live their daily lives. I loved seeing him use math and science. Seeing him use it in a real practical application as well, because there's only so many math problems of Timothy goes to the grocery store and picks up 68 bags of watermelons. How many watermelons—that can only get you so far and so excited about math. So it was really cool to see that real world application growing up.

00:02:42 Sarah Alburakeh
What does the next wave of engineers coming in need to be aware of?

00:02:48 Grace Stanke
Biggest thing is you're gonna hear the word “no,” but that doesn't always mean that that's the final answer. And I think that this goes especially also for women in engineering too. But it goes for anybody. You're gonna hear no, but sometimes there's a different route. Sometimes there's a different path to take in order to accomplish what you want to accomplish.

00:03:09 Sarah Alburakeh
And what has been the biggest moment for you up until now? Like if you had to nail it down to one thing, what has made you the most proud of everything that you've done so far?

00:03:20 Grace Stanke
Honestly, getting my nuclear engineering degree and building the career that I have right now, I love the communication skills that I've been able to develop, whether it's written or verbal or public speaking, whatever it might be, and to be able to talk about nuclear on a public outward facing front has been really such a joy that I am so proud of while also continuing to maintain technical knowledge through my engineering degree and soon to be, you know, core design position as well as I continue to advocate.

00:03:51 Sarah Alburakeh
And what are some of the challenges that you had to face to get to where you are today? Were there any speed bumps?

00:03:57 Grace Stanke
Yeah. I think in one, one workplace that I had, it was a difficulty to establish boundaries between the employee and employer. And that was something that it was necessary for this position. And honestly, for me personally, I knew where I stand. I knew my priorities and I knew my value as an employee as well, right? So making sure to take that all into consideration, I made sure that I presented everything in a formal manner as to why I need these boundaries set or why I need this workplace to look a little bit differently than how it should and how it existed at that point in time, and that was the approach that I took a polite, respectful, direct communication and I think it helped.

00:04:41 Sarah Alburakeh
We know that you've been working hard to change the misconceptions that are around nuclear energy and just, you know, the lack of knowledge around nuclear energy in general. How do you see that translating so far? How do you see that field right now? Do you feel that people are changing their views on nuclear?

00:04:58 Grace Stanke
I do feel that we are changing general public perception of the word, nuclear and nuclear energy as a whole. You know, I compare my experiences from the past year to when I first started advocating about five years ago. It's two drastically different circumstances. When I'm working with the general public.
However, we do still have a lot of work left to do, because for me, in my opinion, what we need is overwhelming public support and public demand that is gonna be the only way that we can really achieve the nuclear—they keep calling it the nuclear renaissance, like the industry calls it the nuclear renaissance. But I just don't… So keep building up towards this nuclear construction and expansion that we need in order to continue just supporting our energy grid here in America and to transition to clean energy.

00:05:50 Sarah Alburakeh
Let's touch more on that clean energy part. Where do you see the future of that going and where does the future of that need to be going?

00:05:58 Grace Stanke
In my personal opinion, I believe that our base load source of energy should not depend on the outside environment in any way shape or form, meaning it shouldn't matter if the sun is shining or not or the wind is blowing. I'm gonna throw stones there, but you know, I think that nuclear and hydroelectric really should build up about 70% of our energy sources.
The remaining 30% great. I'm all for renewables for states that it makes sense in here in America, I'm from Wisconsin, so we don't see the sun for most of the year. We have a little bit, but it's not enough to power our homes when it's -40 out and we need that heat to be running. So it's important to make sure that we have reliable energy prioritized. Bring this clean energy transition.

00:06:44 Sarah Alburakeh
OK. And how about the future on a more personal level, so your own future, where do you see it headed, you know, with your new job and everything that you're starting, what are your expectations?

00:06:55 Grace Stanke
I mean, right now a lot of the things that I'm working on towards preparing for this new work day and workplace overall as I am setting up a lot of public speaking opportunities that are international. And I think it's important just to kind of bring that up because within nuclear specifically, it really is an international community and we need the support.
Coming internationally in April, I headed to Japan and that's something that—that’s a country that has every right to tell the entire nuclear industry to get out. You know, they have every right, but they're still aggressively pursuing nuclear and so many other countries are, so many other countries are doing it in a better way than America is. And I'm excited to watch America continue to grow and flourish. We have all of the innovation in the world happening here in our home country, but how can we continue to expand that to a worldwide level and see how the nuclear industry grows and changes, especially with advancements like small modular reactors?

00:07:54 Sarah Alburakeh
Touching on innovation and growth, how important is research in all of this?

00:08:00 Grace Stanke
Research is innovation. Research is always doing better, is always striving to improve. One thing that I think is really cool about engineering as a whole is we care about efficiency a lot. And sometimes that efficiency is coming from improving things via research. I was involved in two research labs in my undergraduate degree. I loved my time at both of them. I did learn that a full time career in research is not for me, but I do think it is so crucially important to ensure that we're always looking to advance technology moving forward.

00:08:32 Sarah Alburakeh
Right. And you've been very involved in public outreach. So that's also something that is interesting to hear from an engineer’s perspective. You know, kind of put yourself out there with something like Miss America and reach the public. How important for engineers is that?

00:08:48 Grace Stanke
It's not necessarily even finding a platform like Miss America that makes this public outreach so crucial and successful, right? I don't think any engineer needs to become Miss America or some other whatever it might be in order to do things like this.

Because all it takes is starting that conversation is sitting down and maybe presenting back at your local high school that you graduated from going into their science, their physics, their chemistry class, their geology class, whatever it might be, and talking about what you do as an engineer. Honestly, it's the opportunity to answer questions is what I find that people look for the most when it comes to the general public, and when it comes to something as unknown as nuclear or maybe engineering for young people that are kind of considering going into it, they want to ask questions and just having the opportunity to get those questions answered is incredible.

And all it takes is really being open and honest and vulnerable, which is a terrifying thing. But it's so exciting and rewarding in the end as well.

00:09:50 Sarah Alburakeh
That's a great answer. So we appreciate your involvement with ASME and you know, the CARD event—how relevant are professional engineering societies in this day and age? In your opinion, is that still something that you're very involved in or something that you recommend to people to be a part of a professional engineering society?

00:10:09 Grace Stanke
They certainly are. For me, the American Nuclear Society is one that I was pretty heavily involved in, and women in nuclear. So those are two groups that specifically nuclear focused that I really capitalized upon throughout my undergraduate degree. It provided a really crucial network that I'm utilizing to this day and will continue to utilize in the future.
And I think it provided a lot of skills, a lot of opportunities to put yourself out there as a young person too that otherwise may not have existed.

00:10:39 Sarah Alburakeh
OK. So those were the deeper questions that I had for you and now we'll just finish with a few fun ones. So kind of like a speed round to get some fun facts about you. We'll kick it off with the first one. I know that you're very prominent out there in society already, but is there still something that you think most people would not know about you?

00:10:57 Grace Stanke
Oh, prominent out there in society. I hate that! It's totally fine, just like. I think the one thing about me, you know, I grew up, I talk about this a little bit. I grew up helping my dad with restoring cars and everything like that, so I am a diehard Dodge person because of that where I just I have to. I have to have a Dodge Chrysler vehicle that's just my little weird niche that I have from just growing up and working on Dodge cars all the time.

00:11:29 Sarah Alburakeh
Oh, that's cool. OK, next besides your actual name, are there any nicknames that your friends or family call you by?

00:11:36 Grace Stanke
My dad calls me Gates. I don't really know where that came from. Like it goes Gates. Super Gates. My dentist still calls me Gracie. And I think that they just have Gracie in the system that I've now just become Gracie. But Grace is pretty much pretty much my common referral.

00:11:55 Sarah Alburakeh
Can you tell us a pet peeve that you have?

00:11:59 Grace Stanke
OK, this is this… I don't like chewing gum, like for me personally. A pet peeve like, I just can't chew gum. I don't know. It's… it's icky.

00:12:10 Sarah Alburakeh
OK, gum is icky. And taking it in the other direction, is there a guilty pleasure that you can share?

00:12:16 Grace Stanke
I eat too much chocolate and I feel like that's not really a guilty pleasure, but it's just one thing. Throughout my year as Miss America is my food, when I was travelling was expensible, so it made me realize how many Hershey bars I just go and buy. And when I say it's multiple per day, it is multiple per day. So yeah, that's my guilty pleasure.

00:12:40 Sarah Alburakeh
Relatable. OK, final question here. So we saw that you have hiked Kilimanjaro recently. Can you tell us what are all of the hobbies that you have?

00:12:50 Grace Stanke
Oh, I love hiking and anything outdoorsy. In all honesty, I'm also a really—I don't compete anymore, but I'm a water skier so I like going out trick skiing, slalom skiing. I don't jump anymore, but I'm looking to find a show team to join out here on the East Coast. Things like that. I love playing my violin. I'm really excited because now and in this post competition phase, so I'm no longer competing in the Miss America world since I've done it and because of that, it's really exciting because I can really pursue music in a different light. I wanna learn piano. I'm looking to get scuba certified here soon now that I'm on a coast, so I'm really excited.

00:13:31 Sarah Alburakeh
All right, Grace, welcome to the East Coast and thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. We're happy to have you on the show.

00:13:39 Grace Stanke
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Sarah. I really appreciate it.

00:13:43 Sarah Alburakeh
If you'd like to hear more stories about professionals who are leaving their marks on industry, academia and society, check out our inaugural watch list, recently published in our magazine and soon to go live on the ASME website.

And if you'd like to hear more conversations on a wide range of engineering topics, please subscribe to ASME TechCast on your podcast platform of choice.
I'm Sarah Alburakeh, and I thank you for listening.