Jeffrey G. Bergsten, PE
Jeffrey G. Bergsten, PE has been selected by the Central Pennsylvania Engineers Week Council to receive the 2024 Engineer of the Year Award. Jeff is a current member of the Institute of Transportation Engineers – Mid-Atlantic Section (MASITE) and has served on many varying professional society committees including CPEWC of which he served as Chair in 2013.
Jeff was born on March 14, 1970 to Gordon and Martha Bergsten. Jeff’s family moved to Carlisle, PA in 1984 and he graduated from Carlisle High School in 1988. Following high school, he attended Columbia University in New York City where he earned his B.S. in Civil Engineering with an Environmental Engineering emphasis. While at Columbia, Jeff joined the school Club Volleyball Team and competed against other College Club teams. During the summer months, he had multiple internships with PennDOT District 8-0 in their Maintenance and Construction units. After college, Jeff landed his first job as a consultant with Johnson, Mirmiran, and Thompson (JMT), performing traffic engineering analyses using Transyt-7F and assisting with hand drafting highway cross-sections for PennDOT. He still remembers having to sign up for computer time on one of the office’s 3 desktop computers to conduct the traffic engineering analyses, as the demand for computers to complete engineering tasks was minimal at that time. Jeff has just over 30 years of experience in the industry and is a licensed professional Civil Engineer. Jeff and his wife, Sherri currently reside in Carlisle and are the proud parents of two boys, Anders, 23 and Sean, 20.
After working at JMT, Jeff and Sherri were married in 1994, and Jeff followed his wife to Princeton, NJ where she was enrolled in a Molecular Biology Ph.D. program. There he worked for Schoor DePalma, in Manalapan, NJ as a Traffic Engineer performing Traffic Impact Studies. While at Schoor DePalma, he worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as a Call-In consultant and reported to the World Trade Center for the first few months and then reported directly to Newark Airport while they were undergoing their 4-year, $4-Billion Redevelopment. After the birth of their first son, Sherri and Jeff decided to move back home to Carlisle, and have resided there ever since. Jeff worked for Orth-Rodgers, AECOM, Bushart-Horn, and spent the last 15 years working for Michael Baker International where he was a Vice President and was a Director for their Technical Services Group that included disciplines from Traffic Engineering/ITS, Environmental, Site/Civil, and Transformational Technology. Jeff recently accepted a position working for Carlisle Borough as their Assistant Borough Engineer reporting to the Director of Public Works. He felt strongly he was at a point in his career where he wanted to give back to his community where he has lived for 25 years. In addition to tackling all new kinds of engineering problems and projects outside the realm of transportation, he very much values his 12 min. walk to work that has him pass his parent’s home.
Outside of his professional life Jeff has always been involved and active in his community. He served on the Carlisle Zoning Hearing Board from 2001-2014 and was Board Chair for 10 years. He also participated as a performer in Cantate Carlisle for 6 years, and served on their Board for 6 years. More recently he has served on Carlisle’s Climate Action Committee where he pitched the idea of the Pomfret Street Garage as being a multi-modal transportation hub, and now that Garage has 2 EV charging stations and they are working on providing covered bicycle parking.
