Alumni Interview · Engineering ’09
Marcus Webb
He crossed the bridge on a scholarship — then spent fifteen years building new ones.
Marcus Webb grew up two bus rides from campus and arrived at Ashlar Ridge on a full engineering scholarship. Today he is the founder of Spanline Infrastructure, a firm retrofitting bridges across the West — and the funder of the mentoring circle that pairs every Ridge engineering senior with a working alumnus.
From Lab Bench to Founder
After six years at a national civil firm, Marcus spotted a gap: small cities with aging crossings and no engineering staff. Spanline now employs eighty people, eleven of them Ridge graduates. “I hire for the traits the Ridge drilled into me,” he says. “Show your work, share the credit, finish the bridge.”
“Someone paid for my seat in that lecture hall. My company’s mentoring budget is just the installment plan.”
The Mentoring Circle
Each semester, sixty seniors meet monthly with alumni engineers: résumé drills in October, site visits in February, mock interviews in April. Placement rates for participants run twenty points above the department average.
Advice for Builders
“Learn the boring parts — permits, budgets, maintenance schedules. Anybody can sketch a bridge; the Ridge taught me to deliver one. And hire people smarter than you as fast as you can afford to.”
Meet Marcus at the Meet-Up
He keynotes the career breakfast on Saturday morning.