Almost a month before Pam Radtke Russell joined the staff of Engineering News-Record full time, we gave her one of the biggest assignments any editor or reporter at ENR gets: writing the Award of Excellence story.

This year’s winner was nominated by Russell’s predecessor, environment editor Pam McFarland, who is now attending graduate school at Johns Hopkins. Russell won the job and the high-profile story, which usually would not be assigned to a newcomer—but Russell is not one. She has been a freelance member of our team for a decade, contributing stories from her New Orleans base since 2007.