In our Ciorba Spotlight summer edition, we talked with Ajani Crosley (AJ), Roadway Engineer. AJ was born and raised in a small town in New Jersey. Growing up he dreamed of living in a big city surrounded by good music and food. In 2017, he started working at Ciorba and found Chicago.

AJ has always loved Math and Science and even though as a kid he wanted to become a firefighter, engineering was his true calling. AJ graduated from the University of Notre Dame as a Civil Engineer, deciding to pursue Roadway engineering. “I like to drive and to see how roadways go and know why certain things are the way they are, it makes me appreciate what is happening in the road,” AJ said.

When asked about his favorite part of his job, AJ said: “as engineers, we wear many hats, we have to help each other to cover all bases, so it’s almost like doing a different job every day”. Moreover, AJ likes the fact that at Ciorba we work collaboratively, being “independent but accountable,” words that describe well the Roadway Team’s culture.

AJ’s piece of advice for young engineers/college graduates is “do what you like because as long as you do what you like, you will be happy. You will graduate mentally healthy; with that, you’ll come across interviews with the necessary skills and work on what you have a passion for.”

In his leisure time, AJ enjoys a wide range of interests and hobbies that tell a lot about his extroverted personality. When he’s not at work, he plays Australian rules football, which is a contact game that has the best of both rugby and football and is played in a similar field to cricket. He also plays the guitar, creating original songs. Most  recently, AJ has started to dabble in modeling. Regarding this last one, he said it is a talent that he discovered to be a lot of fun and is not as easy as it seems to be.

We hope you enjoyed reading about AJ who told us that he would title his autobiography Oops: I Got This, “because I make mistakes, but I don’t regret anything and my name meaning also reflects that. Ajani: he who takes position wins the struggle.”