Karen:
What do you think your story gives permission to others to do?

Grace:
This comes back almost full circle to one of the things I said
earlier — don't discredit yourself. Even if you feel underqualified for
something, give it a try. See how far you get. Maybe you learn something, and
the next time you do it, you'll have even more preparation. So don't discredit
yourself. Give yourself permission, and don't be afraid to try new things. You
never know what they might bring.

Karen:
Today, our guest holds two titles you would never expect to find in
the same sentence: Miss America and nuclear engineer. Grace Vanderhei is a
nuclear fuels engineer at Constellation Energy, where she supports reactor fuel
core design across a dozen nuclear power plants. She earned her nuclear
engineering degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison while serving as
Miss America 2023, logging almost 300,000 miles across 26 states and eight
nations in a single year. The Wall Street Journal called her the New Face of
Nuclear Energy, and Forbes named her to its 30 Under 30 list. Grace, I am so
glad you're here.

I'm Karen Norheim, and this is
Always Lifting.

Grace:
Thanks so much for having me, Karen. I really appreciate it. I'm
honored and stoked to just be having the conversation.

Karen:
I know we've had a chance to meet before, and I know your story, and
I think it's fantastic. I think the best place for us to start is your journey
into wanting to become an engineer, and then we'll move into the rest of your
adventure into Miss America.

Grace:
There are so many subplots we can get into here, and it's always
fun. The engineering story — I like to say it's not a “good” story, but it is
“a” story. When I was 16, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, as
most 16-year-olds don't. I looked at what I liked in school, and I knew I liked
math and science, because I could point to exactly where I went wrong in a
problem, or exactly what I wanted to try differently next time. I'd get an
English paper back and it would frustrate me when the teacher said, “You're so
close, you're almost there.” I'd think, don't tell me that — tell me where. I
like precision.

So I knew I wanted something
technical, but I didn't know what kind. I was fortunate to grow up around my
dad, who was a civil engineer, so I had some exposure to engineering already,
which I'm thankful for — not everyone gets that. I was touring colleges with my
mom, a road trip across the country, and I was at Texas A&M, going down the
list of engineering types. Mechanical engineering — cool, but everybody does
that, kind of basic, I didn't want it. Electrical engineering — my brother's an
electrical engineer, and I was so sick of following in his footsteps that I
didn't care if I was actually interested in it or not. Civil engineering —
that's what my dad did, and I thought, yeah, but he just pushes dirt around. I
say all that in good fun toward every engineering field.

Then I got to nuclear
engineering. Honestly, I knew nothing about nuclear science at that point — I
knew about nuclear bombs from World War II history class, and I knew reactors
existed, but I thought, there's only two in the country, that's not really a
thing. I grew up in central Wisconsin, no nuclear plant nearby, so it just
wasn't normalized to me. But I read “nuclear engineering” and thought, what a
flex it would be to say I'm a nuclear engineer. That's genuinely how it started
— imagining my 50th high school reunion, beating out some girl who wants to be
a child brain surgeon. I didn't actually graduate with a girl like that, I'm
just illustrating the mindset.

I went home and talked to my
dad — I'd narrowed it down to nuclear or aerospace, both of which sounded fun,
like I could do big things and solve big problems, which is really what I
wanted out of life. He puts on his parent voice — if you're a parent, you know
the one — and I ask him, okay, nuclear or aerospace, what do you think? And my
dad looks at me and says, “Grace, don't go into nuclear. There's no future
there.” And fun fact about 16-year-old girls: when your dad tells you not to do
something, you go do it. So I got into nuclear engineering originally out of
spite against my father.

Looking back, if I'd actually
known more about the state of the nuclear industry at the time, I might have
agreed with him — plants were shutting down, the outlook wasn't great. It's
very different today. But I always say spite against my father is what got me
into the industry and got me to pick that option off the degree list. As soon
as I got to school and talked to people in the field who had real passion for
it, I realized — there's something here. This is a science that's been powering
our world for decades, and we don't even talk about it. Imagine if we did. It's
already powering 20% of our country and literally helping cure cancer. What
more could it do for society if people actually knew about it? That's where the
advocacy passion came in for me.

Today I design nuclear fuel.
I'm working on the Three Mile Island restart — coming back online as the Crane
Clean Energy Center — and I've worked on a couple of plants outside Chicago
designing their cores. I'm still pretty early in my career, but it's been a ton
of fun sharing both the technical side and the exciting stories this industry
has to offer.

Karen:
I think we're all grateful for your spirit of forging your own way.
I hear a kindred spirit in you — unafraid to do something challenging,
unexpected, or different, and I think that's how we break boundaries for more
people to follow. I share your passion for the nuclear industry too — we do a
lot of work in that space at American Crane, and it's wonderful to see the
renaissance happening right now. I'm not sure if you're feeling that in your
world too.

Karen:
Before we get back to Miss America — tell us what a day in the life
looks like for a nuclear fuels engineer, in case we've got future ones
watching.

Grace:
One thing worth addressing: there's actually a very small percentage
of nuclear-specific engineers in this industry. It's primarily mechanical,
electrical, systems, environmental, and civil engineering. Outside of
engineering entirely, you can work in the medical field at a nuclear plant, in
fitness-for-duty psychological evaluations — you can even be an alligator
wrangler at a nuclear power plant. I'm not kidding, that's a real job at one of
the southern Florida plants. Whatever you want to do — business, marketing,
engineering, alligator wrangling — there's a place for you in this industry.

What I do: at a nuclear power
plant, you might have around 800 employees for one reactor, and maybe only four
or five of them are nuclear engineers. I primarily write code, because I'm
developing the fuel that goes into the reactor. I don't work on-site — I'm more
of a corporate engineer, working across multiple sites with our fuel vendors to
get fuel fabricated. Anything to do with the uranium before it's generating
power is what I work on.

I like to describe it like
writing a book, which I'm also literally doing right now. You've got these
little nuclear fuel pellets — about the size of my pinky knuckle, little
ceramic cylinders, not goo, not glowing, just ceramic. There's spicy uranium and
not-spicy uranium, as I like to call it — uranium-235 is spicy, U-238 is not,
and we control the spicy amount up to about 5% maximum in a fuel pellet. Stack
a bunch of pellets to make a rod, a bunch of rods to make a bundle, a bunch of
bundles to make a core. Each pellet is a word on a page; a bunch of pages make
a book; a bunch of books make a shelf; a bunch of shelves make a library. Every
two or three years, these reactors need a new core. Right now, some of the fuel
I've helped design is operating in nuclear power plants in this country. I'm
24. That's so cool to me. It's exciting.

Karen:
The work you're doing as a nuclear engineer is fascinating on its
own. Let's backtrack to your path into Miss America.

Grace:
This is another fun subplot. When I got to school, I'd just told my
dad, I'm doing nuclear, I'm making this happen. Semester two of freshman year,
I got my tuition bill and realized all my summer savings were already gone on
the previous semester. I didn't have money for school. On top of that, I was
figuring out how to do laundry, getting my own healthcare since my dad had
retired, getting my own cell plan — I was financially independent from my
parents pretty early compared to most people heading to college.

I needed financial help, and
Miss America is a scholarship program, so I competed for the scholarships. It
was also just fun — I'd done it as a teen to improve my violin skills and
enjoyed it. It was a place where it was cool to be kind, cool to be ambitious,
cool to be an overachiever, and you had a group of women around you supporting
you and excited for you no matter your level of success. That was a unique
culture, and I'm still great friends with so many of the women I competed with.
Just this morning I met with girls I mentored two years ago who went on to
compete in the program themselves. It's been part of my life in more than just
a financial way.

But the reason I started was to
help pay for school. I didn't plan on going all the way to Miss America —
becoming Miss Wisconsin felt like the goal, and going to Miss America was just
a bonus of being a state titleholder. I didn't think I'd actually win,
especially as a nuclear engineer. But I earned about $70,000 in scholarships
total. My bachelor's was entirely paid for, and I'm doing my MBA now with only
one semester left that I'm paying for myself. So it was huge, financially, for
skills development, and for the culture.

Karen:
This leads me to something I think about a lot myself. You're
working an intense job at Constellation, going back for an MBA — it's important
to protect your energy, to recharge and enjoy the hard work without burning
out. Do you have daily rituals, or a way of thinking about protecting your
energy so you can be the best version of yourself, knowing there's no such
thing as perfection?

Grace:
I think it's different for everyone, and I want to start there,
because I know people wish there was a secret formula. What works for me might
not work for you, Karen, or for the listener. For me — I'll go six days with no
breaks and all caffeine, then take four days to do absolutely nothing
productive. That's just how I function. Day to day, I've learned quickly that
I'm a morning person — I wake up easily, and I get most of my productive work
done before noon. Noon to four, depending on the day, I've still got focus.
After 4 p.m., I'm usually not doing anything work-specific — I'll work on my
MBA, help my mom with her nonprofit, work on my book, whatever else.

I learned a lot during my Miss
America year, because that job consumed a hundred percent of your time — even
in the airport. I learned quickly not to just wear sweats to travel in, because
you might get recognized and you want to represent the organization well. I
learned to value weekends and time off. On the days I know I need to get a lot
done, I make a list — I actually work great on planes, and on hotel balconies,
don't ask me why. When I'm waiting to board, instead of doom-scrolling for ten
minutes, I make a list of what I need to get done that day. If it's something I
know I can finish in the flight time, great — if not, I'll set something like,
finish section one of the risk assessment by the time this plane lands. It
gives me an end goal in sight. That's how I stay on track — work hard, play
hard. On my weekends off, I like extreme adventure stuff. We've gotten into
off-roading lately, and I love water skiing — pretty intense stuff.

Grace:
It's actually a nuclear pun, if you didn't catch it. Nuclear fuel,
when it's being shipped across the country on trucks, isn't actively doing
anything — it takes a neutron to start a reaction. One neutron causes roughly
two to two-and-a-half more neutrons to come out, and each of those can cause
another reaction. That's why nuclear fuel behaves the way it does.

There's a lot of practical
overlap with how we interact with people. You have one conversation with
someone, and they might go tell two more people. One of those two might say,
you're crazy, I'm not doing anything with that — but the other might carry the
message forward, and now you've got a chain reaction. It's a direct metaphor
for nuclear fission — sometimes a neutron just loses energy moving through
water instead of hitting another atom and continuing the chain. I think that's
how social interactions work too — when you're spreading a message, putting
something out into the world, you're hoping to start a chain reaction.

Karen:
Beautifully said. I think you're an example of someone creating a
lot of those chain reactions — this ripple effect you're putting into the
world. I believe when we're role models, we create an opportunity for people to
see what's possible, and they pick and choose from the role models in their own
lives. You present such a different way of thinking, being your authentic self.
How do you think about your role as a role model, and inspiring others?

Grace:
I love that question, because it's one I got a lot in pageant
interviews — who do you look up to, who's your role model — and I always hated
it. There are a lot of people I look up to, but there's no one person I want to
be, because that's them, doing their own thing. I want to make my own path. So
when it comes to being a role model — whether someone's looking up to me, or
Karen, or anyone else — there shouldn't be just one person. Pick one thing you
admire about several different people, pull those pieces together, and put your
own spin on it, because there's no one else like you. Don't limit yourself to
just one person you admire. Find different facets from different individuals
and make it your own — that's what makes you, you.

Karen:
That's beautiful — role models give us a chance to try things on,
imagine ourselves differently, and build our own version in our own unique way.
When you think about your story, and this unexpected blend of things in it — I
don't want to say “contradiction,” that's not the right word, more like a
beautiful blend of unexpected combinations, which I love — what do you think
your story gives permission to others to do?

Grace:
I love that phrasing, and it ties into the role-model question.
People are often afraid to try something new because nobody's done it with
them, nobody's given them permission. But give yourself permission. Give
yourself permission to be a nuclear engineer and a Miss America and a water
skier and a violinist. Nobody else can tell you to do that or guide you there —
but you can give yourself permission to take that stance, try that new thing,
whatever it is. This comes back to something I said earlier — don't discredit
yourself. It's easy to do, but even if you feel underqualified, give it a try.
See how far you get. Maybe you learn something, and next time you'll have even
more preparation. Don't discredit yourself. Give yourself permission, and don't
be afraid to try new things — you never know what they might bring.

Karen:
Well said. So often the worst-case scenario of trying something
isn't that bad. We're not living in an era where we're being chased by lions —
if we don't run fast enough, we don't get eaten. A lot of the time, you try
something, you fail, and okay — what's the real harm, if you learned something
in the process?

Grace:
The worst-case scenario, most of the time, is you're still right
where you are — nothing changes. I talk about this a lot with our interns and
young people going through the job process: you are your own biggest advocate.
When you get an offer, even your dream job, don't be afraid to ask for a little
more salary. Worst case, they say no, and you're still at the dream job. I know
it's a bit of a cliché phrase online, but there's truth in it — you miss 100%
of the shots you don't take.

Karen:
That's a good one.

Grace:
It's trendy, so I don't want it to sound cheesy, but it holds up —
there's nothing wrong with trying and seeing what happens.

Karen:
If you don't try, you don't know, and so much gets left on the table
without that extra push to go for it.

Karen:
Grace, it's been wonderful to have you here today. Thank you so much
for sharing your story. Engineer, advocate, performer, adventurer — you're an
inspiration, and I really appreciate you taking the time.

Grace:
Thank you so much. I feel like I left it on a bit of a sad note
there at the end, but I think it's important to realize how much you bring to
the table, and to spread that to the people around you — be the chain reaction.
Be the person who starts that interaction.

Karen:
Grace shows us what's possible when you give yourself permission to
take the unconventional path, to be honest about the hard parts, and to keep
going anyway. We're reminded that it's cool to be kind, because you never know
how one genuine connection can spark a chain reaction that changes everything.
For more on Grace and her upcoming book, see the show notes below. If you
haven't already, give us a subscribe, and remember — always lift.