Before I jump into what I’ve learned, what I’ve been working on and what my internship experience has been like thus far at McKinstry, I’d like to take a couple minutes to introduce myself. My name is Ivan Cliff, but most everyone knows me as Mac. My parents named me Ivan to keep the name in the family. I was born and raised in a little town called San Anselmo outside of San Francisco. Ever since I could walk, I’ve been riding a bike—at first around the local school yard and eventually out into the mountains.
Mac Cliff.
I continued to race bikes through high school and the beginning of college, until I decided to ride as a hobby, not a sport. Throughout high school, I worked in a bike shop as a mechanic and that—combined with a passion for speed—is where I discovered my engineering intuition. Fast-forward to today and I’m entering my final year of the mechanical engineering program at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash.
I first heard about McKinstry from a friend who toured the Spokane office two years ago. I attended an open house at the Spokane office in the fall of 2017, and that boosted my interest in joining the McKinstry team. On May 15 of this year, I was thrilled to start work as a design project engineering intern in McKinstry’s Portland, Oregon office through the B.L.U.E. Program.
