Meet Heather Prior

Heather working at one of her stations. she is testing the functionality of her regulators.

Heather, is currently working as an Enbridge Gas - Distribution Stations Operation Technician, leveraging her skills in Instrumentation and Control Engineering Technology, which she obtained from Lambton College in 2016.

In her free time she enjoys fishing, hiking, paddleboarding, travelling, and playing with her dogs.

A fun fact about her and her current role: “My job involves maintaining all the equipment within a station. I get to work on pressure regulators and valves, different types of boilers, all the communication equipment, measurement devices, and pumps and tanks for injecting odorant into the natural gas. Not one day is the same as the next. We are involved with pre-job planning, construction, commissioning, planned maintenance, and repairs.”

When did your love of STEM begin?

When I was little. I remember my grandmother gave me broken clock and I would spend hours trying to see how all the gears inside worked and try to fix it. My father was also very mechanically inclined, and I would watch him as he rebuilt his motorcycle as a young girl, I was so fascinated to learn how things worked.

What is the best part about working in the field of STEM?

I love learning new things. There is not a day that goes by where I am not faced with some sort of challenge I need to overcome. This role allows me to gain knowledge by reading literature, rebuilding equipment, and speaking with experts and colleagues who share their knowledge with me. It's amazing how when you can understand the theory- or how things work, troubleshooting problem can become fairly simple and straightforward.

What advice would you give young women interested in a career in STEM?

Do not ever let anyone convince you that you are not capable or strong enough to do the work. Ambition and determination are the most important traits for a person to have. Any skill in life can be learned if you put in the work.