Manish D. Kothari, F.ASCE, president and CEO of Sheladia Associates Inc., an international architecture and engineering consulting firm based in Rockville, Maryland, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Kothari became president in 1999 and has led Sheladia in his present role since 2011. He has 30-plus years of varied engineering experience on transportation, bridges, highways, and building infrastructure projects involving design, construction support, and management in the United States and internationally. Prior to Sheladia, he worked with Bechtel Corporation USA as an engineering specialist and as vice president of D2 Consult GmbH, Austria.
He was inducted into National Academy of Construction (NAC) in 2020. He is a member of ASCE’s Industry Leadership Council (ILC), and co-chairs its Risk & Resilience subcommittee since 2022. He was elected to the Fédération Internationale des Ingénieurs Conseils (FIDIC), also known as the International Federation of Consulting Engineers, board in 2022 for a four-year term; prior to that, he was pioneer chair for FIDIC’s International Financial Institutions Committee (IFIC) and a member of FIDIC–Risk, Liability and Quality Committee in 2020. Kothari was chair-emeritus (2019-2020) and served as national chair of the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) for the 2018-19 term, vice chair on the executive committee for ACEC from 2013 to 2015, and led the ACEC International Committee for four years, from 2009 to 2013.
Kothari has been a member of numerous ACEC committees over last three decades. He was commissioner for the state of Maryland, Maryland Economic Development Commission (2013-2023) and a member of Industry Trade Advisory Committee on Services and Finance Industries (ITAC 10) with the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Office of United States Trade Representative. He is a current director of The Pinkney Innovation Complex for Science and Technology, or PIC MC Foundation Board. He is a recipient of the 2015 WTCI’s Maryland International Business Leadership Award conferred by Governor Larry Hogan. He also served previously on the Business Advisory Council of the National Education Association (NEA).
He has a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering from India and a master of sciences degree in civil engineering from the University of Michigan.
