Third-generation Auburn engineer continues cycle of generosity

Emily Traylor believes in the potential of Auburn students. She always has. She also believes in the power of philanthropy to fuel that potential.

It was the Auburn Family’s generosity that brought her to campus as a student, and today, the 2010 wireless engineering and 2021 MBA graduate thrives on seeing the next generation of Auburn engineers succeed. As an engineering mentor, college and department council member, and donor who has created several scholarships, she’s building her own legacy on the Plains.

“My husband and I created our first scholarship to honor the legacies of my grandfathers,” she said. “Since then, we have endowed two more scholarships. It has been one of my favorite things to tell our scholarship recipients about my grandfathers and share my family’s Auburn story.”

Traylor is blazing trails in private industry, but her heart has never been far from the Plains. She’s the first to admit that for her, it all began with the vision, intentionality and generosity of the College of Engineering’s namesake, Samuel L. Ginn, a 1959 industrial management graduate. His $25 million gift in 2001 established Auburn’s wireless engineering program, transformed the college and created extraordinary opportunities for future Auburn engineers like Traylor.

The college recently celebrated the anniversary of Ginn’s historic gift, and Traylor jumped at the opportunity to share the impact he has had on her own personal story.

“His gift created the Vodafone scholarship that paid for my entire undergraduate education,” she said. “Every experience and opportunity that came from my time at Auburn — from meeting my husband to the career and life I have today — can be connected back to Mr. Ginn’s generosity. It truly changed the course of my life.”

Engineering an Auburn story

Traylor comes from a long line of Auburn engineers. And although she represents the third generation in her family to select that educational path, choosing Auburn wasn’t a given. With assistance from her parents, Mark ’83 and Julia Wood ’82, both industrial engineering graduates, she thoughtfully evaluated her options.

“I knew I would always be an Auburn fan, but I looked at a lot of different schools and programs, mostly engineering and computer science,” she said. “Still, Auburn felt like home.”

Receiving the Vodafone scholarship sealed the deal, and the rest is history.

Ginn’s scholarship support made it possible for her to live on campus all four years. And it was in the Honors College dorm that she met her husband, Tommy Traylor, a 2010 social science education graduate. Her academics and involvement as a Cupola Engineering Ambassador and the president of Auburn’s chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery kept her on the engineering side of campus, while her husband spent his time in other areas.

“We met and became really good friends in the dorm,” she said. “He’s a teacher, not an engineer, so if I hadn’t had the financial support to live on campus, we never would have met.”

Traylor was hesitant about wireless engineering when she first considered majors. At the time, smartphones were still a few years away from being mainstream, and Auburn had the only accredited wireless engineering program in the nation. But it didn’t take long for her to realize she was exactly where she needed to be.

“I took my very first computer programming class and this sounds nerdy, but I saved the first lines of code I ever wrote, printing and framing them in my dorm room,” she said. “It was so cool to me that I could make a computer do something with lines of code.”

Everything about her student experience equipped her for her life after graduation — versatile and innovative academics, engaging student involvement and personal relationships that have transformed her life.

Engineering a career by Auburn

After graduating from Auburn, Traylor married her college sweetheart and began a vibrant engineering career that looks much different from that of her predecessors.

“My dad worked for the same company for 35 years and my granddad worked for the same company for 40 years,” she said. “I think it shows how versatile wireless engineering is that I’ve been able to do several very different things within the field because my degree gave me that foundation.”

She loved the puzzle-solving aspect of her first position in software quality assurance. But after five years, she answered a call to take on a completely different role in a new office opening in Auburn.

“I explained to the hiring manager that I didn’t have much work experience with what this role would be doing, which was a combination of software development and IT operations, or DevOps. He told me, ‘You’re an Auburn engineer. You can learn this,’” she said.

Eventually, Traylor took a chance on a new, Auburn-alumni-led startup and found her sweet spot in a company with challenging work, innovative projects and unlimited possibilities.

Seven years later, Fullsteam, a software and payments technology company, has more than 2,000 employees, and Traylor is on her third leadership role with the company.

“It’s been quite a journey,” she said. “And it shows that you don’t have to fit into one little box with an Auburn engineering degree. You can lean into different opportunities and take some risks.”

Engineering a new Auburn journey

Traylor cherishes the opportunity to build a life in Auburn. Her husband is a social studies teacher, assistant football coach and assistant tennis coach at Opelika High School. Her parents retired here. And she and her sister, Elizabeth Covington, a 2016 pharmacy graduate and an associate clinical professor in the Harrison College of Pharmacy, live on the same street.

Traylor and Covington were also both recognized with the Auburn Alumni Association’s “20 Under 40” award.

Today, Auburn means more to Traylor than ever before.

“I have my whole family here, so when I talk about Auburn and the Auburn experience now, it means everything to me,” she said.

Investing in students and the college she loves is at the core of her new Auburn experience. She volunteers, mentors and serves. She also gives, because she knows what it means to receive the life-changing gift of an Auburn education. Even today, Ginn plays a starring role.

“I was able to meet Mr. Ginn recently and I told him how much he’s influenced my life,” she said. “I told him how much being able to live on campus, remove a financial burden from my parents, meet my future husband and realize how much we love Auburn has meant to us.”

Meeting Ginn was a dream come true for Traylor, and he continues to inspire her on her new Auburn journey. The Ginn Family Foundation recently committed $30 million to engineering scholarships, the largest such investment in Auburn’s history.

“When I heard about his new gift, all I could picture were the new Ginn Scholars,” she said. “And that image reminds me of myself. Those students are starting their own Auburn journey, just like I did. I’m thrilled to see this cycle of generosity continuing for more generations.”

Giving back is contagious. And once you invest in others, you don’t ever want to stop. The future of Traylor's Auburn story will be written with accounts of student success, lives changed and dreams fulfilled. And she believes the best is yet to come.

“You don’t have to have $30 million to give back. You can start with what you have today,” Traylor said. “I love that I can talk with students about that now and they can have that seed planted. It’s a wonderful cycle that never has to end.”