Kathleen Benckendorf

After earning Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, I worked as an HVAC design engineer, project manager, and fell into pharmaceutical systems validation by accident, as do most of us who work in validation. That has been the focus of my career for many years now, often with a side of project management. These days, I work on a project basis. Ric and I have been married since 1987, and we’ve always had open doors. Ours is the party house where friends gather. We adopted a sibling group of four children in addition to our two biological children. Six kids born from 1988 through 1995 – there were a bunch of years with a LOT of teenagers in the house! We hosted two AFS exchange students from South America in two different years. We hosted three different Asian college students during holidays when the dorms closed. Currently, we’re hosting Ukrainian refuges under the Uniting for Ukraine program. Our children are grown and we have bedrooms available, so why not fill them with people who really need them? We’ve fostered many dogs, but we’re currently holding at two permanent dogs, both rescues – Killian, an Irish setter / Moyen poodle cross, and Sparky, who is ¾ hound dog (3 types) and two very random others.