When Hanifa Johnson joined Maser Consulting, Red Bank, N.J., last year as a senior project engineer—along with technical and management skill, she brought a commitment to help the community in which she was raised and has worked—Newark, N.J.
 
Since 2011, Johnson had been the “local champion” in that city for Engineering Better Readers (EBR), a national pilot program begun by the Silver Spring, Md.-based Engineers' Leadership Foundation in which industry firms and their employees  take leadership roles in local communities to incentivize students to boost reading in low-performing schools.
 
Johnson recently supervised this year’s launch of the EBR program at Newark’s Camden Street elementary school, which now involves weekly after-school reading sessions for pre-K through third-grade students.

Volunteer readers are practicing engineers from Maser and other design firms, as well as college students from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Johnson’s alma mater.
 
Students are encouraged to read independently to earn points to purchase merchandise from the school store that is subsidized by contributions from design firm sponsors and from Target Corp., says engineer Jim Johnston, who helped organize the Newark program and is a board member of the foundation.