1950-2015
Sheila Conway, Ph.D., passed away on January 8, 2015. She was born in New York City, NY and dedicated her entire professional career, which spanned more than five decades, to public service, environmental protection, and public safety across the USA and beyond. Sheila served as managing partner of Urban Environmental Research (UER), LLC, which provides advice on safety and security and environmental impact assessment. Sheila and her team accomplished ground breaking, cutting-edge work to provide emergency response strategies for government agencies. Sheila received numerous awards and recognition from local, national, and international organizations.
Prior to co-founding UER, Sheila served as executive director of the Colorado Center for Environmental Management in Denver. She previously served as senior project manager for ICF Kaiser Engineers in Edison, NJ, where she was responsible for building the company’s first regional office. Sheila earned her BA in geography from the University of South Florida and her MA in geography and her doctorate in Environmental Planning and Design from Arizona. She wrote several books, articles and professional papers, and was a widely recognized national and international public speaker, invited to speak at conferences in the UK, Portugal, Austria, Italy, Belgium, Malta, Australia, as well as across the United States.
Sheila served on several International Scientific Advisory Committees for Wessex Institute of Technology in the UK, and attended many of its conferences and was a member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Safety and Security Engineering. Sheila actively supported an extraordinary number of organizations, including the Lupus Foundation of America, the American Red Cross, American Society for Public Administration, Nevada Development Authority, Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, The Shade Tree, American Lung Association, Las Vegas Green-Up, the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, and the University of Nevada at Los Angeles MA in Crisis and Emergency Management.
Sheila is survived by her beloved husband Paul Washeba, sadly her son, Clay, predeceased her. As a wife, sister, aunt, mentor and friend, she will be missed by many and is a great loss to the Wessex Institute of Technology, where her many initiatives and her continued support have been greatly valued.
Carlos A Brebbia
Wessex Institute