Forty Under 40: Melissa Dysart

Melissa Dysart is an accomplished member of the engineering industry, which is both male-dominated and rapidly evolving. She has worked more than 15 years as a drafter for Tatum-Smith Engineers Inc.

She calls Tatum-Smith the “greatest place to work with the best bosses; it’s a family-type atmosphere and they care about us. And they indulge my artistic side, which I believe sets our drawings apart.”

Dysart joined the firm in 1998 after earning a drafting certificate at Northwest Technical Institute and briefly working for an architect.

She manages a staff of seven structural engineering drafters and provided drafting and modeling services for key area projects such as the Walmart AMP, support facilities at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and Fayetteville High School.

Dysart said she strives to evolve with the industry as it moves away from hand drafting and toward computerized drafting, which an increasing number of engineers do themselves. She has become a regionally recognized expert in structural modeling software called REVIT.

Dysart and her husband live in Hindsville, a stone’s throw from the family farm where she was raised milking cows and gathering eggs along with her six siblings.

She has always been artistic and recalls being scolded in elementary school for drawing floor plans when she was supposed to be focusing on school work.