EWB-USA Mentor Honored with Fulbright Fellowship

Nick Tooker has been mentoring engineering students in the University of Massachusetts Amherst chapter of EWB-USA since 2019, guiding water supply and distribution projects that benefit some of the smallest and most isolated villages in Kenya.

Now, he is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship from the U.S. Department of State. With it, he plans to design and teach courses in water and wastewater treatment, beginning in January 2026, at the University of Nairobi (UoN) in Kenya.

Before departing for his five months in the African country, Nick spoke with David Wagman from EWB-USA about his engineering work, the lesson instilled in him by his mother to give back, and the importance of listening with intent to a community’s hopes and aspirations. Here is our interview with him:

David, EWB-USA: I'm interested in your journey and your involvement with Engineers Without Borders USA.

Nick Tooker: I did a bachelor's in chemical engineering at Montana State University and found that I had a passion for wastewater treatment, so I did my master's degree in environmental engineering at the University of California, Davis. After that, I worked as a consulting engineer where I was doing mostly design of municipal wastewater treatment systems.

I grew up in a family that didn't have a ton of resources; we weren't wealthy. My mom was always someone who was very caring and giving, even when we didn’t necessarily have a lot to give. I absorbed those lessons from her: This is how you treat people. Even if we don’t have a lot to give, we still give because there’s always someone who needs stuff more than we do. That was always the ethos that came through to me. She’s a great role model from that perspective. I saw the value and wanted to give back.

I did my PhD at Northeastern University in Boston. I was interacting with students who were helping me in the lab, and it happened that a bunch of them were involved with the EWB-USA chapter at Northeastern.

Trying to do a PhD and be involved with EWB-USA at the same time would be almost impossible. So, I just bided my time, happened to get an offer from UMass Amherst, and I took it. Then, to be the responsible engineer in charge for an EWB-USA project, you have to have a professional engineering license. And because I had worked in consulting, I have my PE license. So, [becoming an EWB-USA chapter mentor and advisor] was a great fit.

I started with the group in 2019 and the group that I'm involved with for our Kenya project traveled in January of 2020. They had been planning that for months and months. And then they got back and very shortly thereafter, we shut down [due to the Coronavirus pandemic].

David, EWB-USA: Can you tell me about the first project in Kenya?

Nick Tooker: That was a water supply project. The community group we were working with is called the Star Women's Group. It's this group of women who are trying to have better agricultural practices in their community. That was their motivation: being able to access adequate water so that they can grow crops to sell at market.

The team had intended to drill a borehole and use that as a starting point for water supply around the community. Joseph Gikonyo, who is a now postdoc and works at UMass, sent a photo from the community and said, ‘Hey guys, there's a hole in the ground; like the county government came in and paid to have a borehole drilled.’

So, the project quickly shifted to ‘Let's use the money to get a pump installed and start with a distribution system.’ It was a nice partnership with the local government to accelerate the project.

The best part, from my perspective, was that we got to a point where, in our conversations with the community, they were like, ‘here are the things we want to do next.’

And we're like, ‘Great! You now have a sustainable system and you don't need us anymore.’ It was the perfect EWB-USA model because the community got to a point where they could sustain the system themselves, continue to expand it, and do what they need to. They had a financial model that was not perfect, but was working for them.

They knew how to do it; they had the expertise, they had the money, and the resources to do it. And so, it was a perfect time for us to finish and move on.

David, EWB-USA: Talk a bit more about the connection with the Star Women’s Group.

Nick Tooker: I'll frame it in the context of our current project because it's a similar kind of situation. They call it a table banking group. It's a group of people in the community--in this case it's mostly women--who pool money every month, and everyone contributes a small amount. And then they give all of that money to one person so that they can do something that they wouldn't be able to do otherwise. We often work with those kind of groups as our main contact in the community.

In the case of the current project, their closest drinking water supply is about a five mile walk each way. And so, you know, both the women and the children are spending nearly an entire day just going to get water. It's six to eight hours round trip to get water for the day.

A big part of our motivation was being able to provide an opportunity so that the kids can stay in school and so that the women aren't fetching water all day and instead can grow crops that they can sell at a market or, if they have a craft, they can do that.

Being able to have access to water gives them economic mobility that they never could have dreamed of otherwise. Because if you're fetching water all day, there's no way to get to a point where you can make money for your family. To me that's the most powerful part.

We also are working on rainwater catchment. They have a primary and middle school in this village and, because their water is so scarce, the only source of water for some children is at the school. They have no electricity. There’s no healthcare in the community. We’ve also discussed with them building a library and stocking the library with books. It’s a fairly comprehensive list, but it starts with water.

David, EWB-USA: How many people are involved in a project like this?

Nick Tooker: Within this project, we probably have 50 active folks of varying levels of intensity. I would say the core is maybe 20 students who are very involved, which is tremendous. Typically, we bring with us on our travel team somewhere between 5-7 students.

In the past two years, we’ve also been involving students from the University of Nairobi, and they’ve traveled with us to the community. With my EWB-USA work, my goal is to be a mentor for the students and they drive the project. I always tell them, “This is your project, this is not my project.”

David, EWB-USA: Is there more intensity listening to the local community and what they’re trying to accomplish?

Nick Tooker: I think there’s more intention. I don’t necessarily think there’s more listening in Kenya compared to here. I think there’s more intention with how we approach it.

David, EWB-USA: What do you mean?

Nick Tooker: The way that EWB approaches it and the framework they set up is very much a partnership with the community.

Sometimes as a consultant it would be, ok, this is a partnership with a client and my client may have a slightly different idea than the community. I still listen to the community and I still get feedback from them, but I’m really listening to my client.

In the case of EWB-USA I don’t think of the community as a client; I think of them as a collaboration partner. We’re working on this together, so we have to listen to each other. That’s intention.

David, EWB-USA: Is there an outstanding moment that you could describe working in the community?

Nick Tooker: The one that really sticks out to me and still gives me chills to think about was during our first trip to the community we’re working in. We were doing some surveys to discuss what their issues were. I was with a Kenyan who was interviewing, so I was there just to listen and observe; I was getting a translation.

And this community member—one of the women in the group that we are working with—we started asking about food and feeding her children. As soon as those questions started to come up, she started almost to be embarrassed and to look away. You could see her start to tear up because it was so hard for her to provide food for her children. The emotion that was coming through, even though I couldn’t understand the words she was saying, I could clearly understand what she was trying to communicate.

It’s heartbreaking to not be able to provide food to your children. I’m starting to tear up now just thinking about it because it was so emotionally impactful. That’s the reason why we do this.

David, EWB-USA: As you prepare for your upcoming Fulbright Fellowship, what do you hope to achieve?

Nick Tooker: Part of the reason I applied for this Fulbright was to be able to strengthen our relationship with the University of Nairobi. I saw a lot of value in it both for the students there and for my students at UMass, as well and figuring out better ways for them to collaborate with each other.

One part of my Fulbright is to go teach at the University of Nairobi for a semester. The other part is to develop a course that students there and at the University of Massachusetts can take together.

My idea is to do it as a winter session course for our students where we can, hopefully, bring a few of them to Nairobi to learn about engineering, design, and how you do development work in a different context.