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Celebrating the women who make it possible.

As a global leader in custom-engineered porous polymer solutions, Porex is proud to celebrate the women engineers and scientists who make our customers’ products possible. Our material science experts partner with our customers to develop new-to-the-world innovations across a wide variety of applications from life sciences to consumer packaged goods.

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PRECISION METAL COMPONENTS & ASSEMBLIES

Precision.

Quality.

Consistency.

Each word accurately describes the parts we produce here at Hobson & Motzer. It should come as no surprise that they also describe the hundreds of talented associates who manufacture them every day.

We are proud of all our associates.

This month, we recognize some of the many women in manufacturing at Hobson & Motzer who help our company make a difference with each part we produce.

They’re proud of their work and we’re proud of them!

Visit hobsonmotzer.com to learn more about them in our October blog post.

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Improving Lives, Advancing Technology, Transforming Metal

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WOMEN IN MEDTECH | WOMEN IN ENGINEERING | CONTENTS

Medical Design & OUTSOURCING

WOMEN IN MEDTECH MANUFACTURING ..................46 Marie Ottum, TE Connectivity ..................................................................... 46

The pandemic exposed healthcare inequities near and far ...................................................50 To address disparities in COVID-19 testing, treatment and vaccination, we must first understand them.

Women in medtech leadership: Small gain, big opportunity ...........................................54 The prevalence of women in corporate leadership positions within the medical device industry remains low, and the rate of increase is stagnant despite new initiatives to increase diversity in the industry.

Women researchers receive a fraction of funding from the world’s biggest medtech companies .............................60 The gender divide in medtech extends beyond leadership and into funding for investigational studies by U.S. physicians.

3M - Audrey A. Sherman .................................................63 Agillis Consulting Group - Shannon Hoste ......................64 Argon Medical Devices - Sarah Ehrlich, Sophie Marcoux ....65/66 Avient Corp. - Lindsay Fleming .......................................67 Berry Global - Svetlana Contrada ....................................68 Celanese - Laura Brand ...................................................69 CPC Worldwide - Kira Switalla ........................................70 Cretex Medical - Angie Hillyard ......................................71 Eurofins Medical Device Testing - Liz Sydnor .................72 Flex - Jennifer Samproni .................................................73 Flexan - Gabriela Jaquinto ..............................................74 Hobson & Motzer - Kim Gross ........................................75 Integer - Jennifer Bolt .....................................................76 Isometric Micro Molding - Donna M. Bibber...................77 Nordson MEDICAL - Shannon Diamond .........................78 Porex - Yuan Chang ........................................................79 Resonetics - Shawna Pearson ..........................................80 Steris - Betty Howard, Kimberly Mollohan.................. 81/82 TE Medical - Madhulika (Maddy) Srikanth ........................83 Teamvantage - Kelly L. Stichter .......................................84 6

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Accumold - Angela Williams ............................................ 158 Advantech - Shannon Steward ........................................ 159 CentroMotion - Miriam Prieto ......................................... 160 Digi-Key - Autumn Richardson ........................................ 161 Dodge Mechanical Power Transmission Company Inc. - Toha Poveda ................... 162 ECIA - Tobi Cornell, Juliet Rene Fajardo, Teri Ivaniszyn .................................................163-165 Encoder Products Company - Sarah Walter ................... 166 GE Digital - Sowjanya Chalamkuri, Kristen Sanderson ............................... 167/168 Honeywell Process Solutions - Alicia Kempf ................. 169 igus - Nicole Lang ............................................................ 170 Master Electronics - Jennifer Paukert ............................. 171 maxon - Virginie Mialane ................................................. 172 Microchip Technology - Ingrid Tay .................................. 173 Mitsubishi Electric Automation - Agnieszka Zupancic .....174 Phoenix Contact - Melissa Sommer ................................ 175 Porex - Denisa Peshkatari ................................................ 176 Quantum Devices - Samantha Ludt ................................ 177 Sager Electronics - Lisa Auffrey....................................... 178 Siemens Digital Industries Software Laura Allison, Amanda Beaton................... 179/180 Wolfspeed - Yueying Liu .................................................. 181 Würth Indsutry North America - Sandy Emry................ 182

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INSULET CEO SHACEY PETROVIC IS PUMPED UP TO LAUNCH OMNIPOD 5 BOSTON SCIENTIFIC’S MEGHAN SCANLON FORECASTS THE FUTURE OF UROLOGY

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Ella Atkins ........................................................................... 86 Kara Branch ........................................................................ 94 Amanda French .................................................................. 98 Caitlin Kalinoswki.............................................................. 104 Hester Anderiesen Le Riche ............................................. 112 Maureen Lincoln ............................................................... 118 Danielle Lower .................................................................. 124 Sibongile Manthata .......................................................... 130 Karen Panetta ................................................................... 136 Jill Tietjen ......................................................................... 144 Dr. Amy Wang .................................................................. 152

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Women in Engineering

Engineering a career in robotics and flight Leslie Langnau • Senior Contributing Editor

Years ago, in 1979, Ella Atkins was one of the first students to participate in a Johns Hopkins University SMPY program, which began in 1971. In this program, she would study mathematics. A grad student from Johns Hopkins was assigned to her as a mentor.

“In the very informal correspondence that went on between us, he was offering materials that would give me the opportunity to explore options,” said Atkins. “Some assignments were about math and science, some were about engineering, including aerospace. As I read those, I liked the look of airplanes.”

Atkins grew up in a small, rural community in West Virginia that had a fighter aircraft training route over her house. She enjoyed watching the planes fly overhead. She was also influenced by the NASA space programs.

“I don’t know that I ever really put astronauts as number one on my career list. I was more interested in designing the spacecrafts and have someone else fly them,” she said.

Atkins is now a Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan — also a core member of faculty in the Robotics Institute.

Currently, she is on a yearlong sabbatical to work as a technical fellow for Collins Aerospace, which

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is now part of Raytheon. She is a senior member in IEEE and a fellow with AIAA, the aeronautics and astronautics group.

Her undergrad and masters were in AeroAstro (aeronautics and astronautics) from MIT. In her master’s studies, she did research in space robotics. Then she went into the aerospace industry for three years.

“One of the things you learn in space robotics,” she said, “is that the electronics and the software are a tremendous part of what you’re doing.

The mechanical systems support the DESIGN WORLD

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Ella Atkins

Professor of Aerospace Engineering University of Michigan

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electronics and the software. So that knowledge led me to want more foundational knowledge in computer science.”

So, she received her PhD in computer science and engineering from the University of Michigan.

Taking things apart Ever curious, Atkins tended to take things apart to see how they worked.

One thing in particular stands out in her memory: dismembering Barbie dolls.

“I didn’t care how they looked, I cared how their legs connected.

So, I would take all of the pieces and parts off of them, I’d behead them and remove the arms and legs. This frustrated my family; they thought I was quite destructive. I tried to explain to them that I was figuring out how they worked.”

This experience, though, led her to study robotics, especially robot arms used in space.

“Zero gravity is a big deal. If you have gravity, then when you lift an arm out to the side, you need a certain amount of strength in each of the joints of the robot to counter the weight of each of the pieces.

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In space, you don’t need that. If you look at a robot arm on Earth (NASA Goddard might have one that emulates what was on the space shuttle in the space station) you’ll find that they have to put pulleys and counterweights on the arm because it can’t hold itself up, but that’s not the goal,” she said.

“And there are additional challenges in space — for example, when one part moves, the whole unit moves. So, if a robot arm is servicing a satellite, when you move the arm out, the spacecraft moves in response because there’s no grounding. [Plus], the conditions in space are so harsh. The vacuum, the coldness, the temperature change from being in the sun to being in the shadow of Earth, for example, when orbiting. And you have to carry all of your own energy, there’s no plugging it into the wall to recharge it,” Atkins said.

Engineering challenges As problem solvers, engineers enjoy a challenge as it’s an opportunity to learn something new. Atkins challenges the notion that once a problem is solved, it’s “done.”

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In academia, many of the engineering challenges students or professors write about are not always done. Explained Atkins, it’s hard to be “done” as a researcher.

You may have developed a proof, an analysis, or an algorithm, and you write about it, but you’re not done.

One example Atkins gives involves UAV autonomy. Atkins and some of her students have been working on autonomous flight, analyzing the use of multiple quadcopters to hold a payload. One of the goals is to have a person guide the payload by pushing it.

“That’s a natural haptic interface if you have a payload that’s carried next to a human. We started this project right after the hurricane disaster in Puerto Rico. We saw supplies sitting on docks because roads were blocked,” she said.

“People were drinking contaminated water, they didn’t have enough food or medicine, and so on. With medicine, the payloads are often small. With water, you actually need to carry a pretty heavy payload to get enough to where you want to go.”

“We looked at the notion of carrying something that might be a 24-pack of plastic water bottles somewhere. Rather than have a big vehicle with large propellers, we looked at whether we could have many quadcopters and attach them with tethers to a payload. With that, you have redundancy, one quadcopter could fail and the rest of them could still carry it and drag it along, it wouldn’t crash.

“We looked for a way to guide the copter without the need to look at a cell phone or a laptop. Because the reality is, you don’t want an emergency services worker with their head down looking at a laptop.

So, we explored the idea of pushing the quadcopters. You can guide one along until it gets out of a crowded

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area and then it can move on its own to the needed area. I think the next big thing for unmanned aircraft will be the small version. That combines the best of the robotics with the best of the small UAVs, maneuverability, and stability.

“If you think about any particular domain and ask the question, such as lifting something that’s relatively small off the ground and carry it somewhere, the functions of cutting, grasping, releasing, attaching, carrying a tool, and so on are the same problems we had many years ago with space robotics. The ability to do something dexterous with manipulation in space is now appearing with unmanned aircraft.”

What’s the rush?

As engineers know, when it comes to product design you can usually achieve at least two of three factors: you can have it fast, you can have it cheap, or you can have high quality.

Most engineers find that their bosses pick one — get to market fast. Thus, engineers must deal with the pressure to rush products to market. Sometimes the rush has few consequences. Other times, the rushed product turns into a news story.

“In the software world, we offer beta versions of software. Many times, that software gets out into the community, who have mostly learned to accept problems with software because we want the latest things.

Well, if it’s a beta version of a video game, who cares? Right? It’s exciting for it to fail.

“If it’s software in the automation of a Tesla vehicle, that’s unfortunate and we’ve seen crashes because that software has been rushed into the vehicle before it actually proved itself. It was a beta version. I’m not saying that Tesla is any worse than a lot of new companies. I’m just saying that they are an example

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of a company that has chosen to put early software systems into passenger vehicles so that they could collect data from it. They have manuals that say, ‘Warning, this is not a well-tested software. Don’t trust the autopilot. Always sit there with vigilance, with your hand over the wheel, be ready.’ But people don’t always listen to those kinds of instructions. They don’’ always read those instructions.

“So, it’s a question of ‘Is that okay?’ Should Tesla be able to put such products on the road? We have different government standards — and the reality is, safety doesn’t sell. I’ve been so frustrated with that. Over my entire career, I’ve wanted to do research to try to make things safer. Autonomy, not to make the wiz-bang gadget more efficient or cooler, but to make it safer. And the reality is, customers don’t buy safety, they buy cool stuff. If government sets minimum standards, then the companies and the customers go after those minimum standards. There’s a perception that that level is enough.

“There are two questions here.

One is, is there a rush to market problem? In which case, you can’t really push a person to be perfect.

We make mistakes. So there needs to be enough people, enough time, and enough tests to find those mistakes. And it doesn’t matter what the company’s policy is, there has to be that time and effort.

“On the flip side, one of the reasons these rush-to-market things happen is because we’re running faster than we can catch up with standards. For example, I’m not going to defend Boeing. The 737 Max clearly had some issues, but we also have put Boeing in the crosshairs. And somehow a lot of other companies are sliding by, without ever actually coming into play for those crosshairs. I’m not

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People who see data differently, see the grid differently. ge.com/digital Building a world that works.

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Women in Engineering saying one company is better than another, but a lot of companies rush to market.”

Dealing with diversity In the past couple of years, issues of diversity have come to the forefront of company discussions. As a professor, Atkins still frequently sees diversity challenges in the classroom.

But she also sees progress.

“We still, today, have problems with female and minority students in a classroom and lab setting. The students who are underrepresented tend to be ignored. As an instructor, you have to work hard to make sure that you advocate for those students, that you stop by and say, ‘I think this student had a good idea. I heard something about it.’ And then you talk to them and everybody is like, ‘Well, the professor’s talking to them, so maybe we should listen.’

“I’ve been happy to see an improvement in the university’s level of activism in student-led groups.

There’s a group of students at Michigan that call themselves the Black Graduate Students. They not only support each other, but they are playing a more active role in engaging with faculty, serving on search committees, being in Dean’s committees, and so on.

“I think it’s really good for a group that normally might be unintentionally marginalized to be in a position where they have sufficient authority that it would be difficult to marginalize them. We also have women in an aeronautics and astronautics organization that has been forming over the last few years, not just at Michigan, but many other places. At a conference, I would say 15% to 20% of the technical attendees are women. It’s nice to see a group that is large enough to be confident.

Speaking of confidence, as well as diversity, women engineers still struggle with society’s expectations

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of them. Atkins related a story on how she dealt with expectations.

When Atkins was younger, she “lost points” by not dressing to society’s expectation of how a young woman should look. So, she conducted experiments.

“The first time I ever played games with that was when I was interviewing out of MIT. So, here’s the game that I played. I actually knew how to wear makeup. I would fix my hair and wear makeup and fancy clothes.

“When I got my master’s degree and I was interviewing for jobs, I had more than eight interviews. I was pretty confident that I was going to get at least a couple of them.

For half of them, I showed up with makeup and fancy hair and nice clothing and high heels. The other half, I looked like I look today, hair barely combed, casual, maybe not too casual, but not fancy. I received interviews for every position that I had not ‘dressed’ for, but did not receive any onsite interviews or job offers when I was in makeup. That experience taught me something —

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that there’s an implicit bias against women that spend time looking nice in hiring and I have never worn makeup a day in my career since then, because it’s easier,” she said.

As Atkins shows, women engineers do not need to conform to some perception of what a women engineer is. They just have to be themselves and focus on the love of engineering.

DESIGN WORLD

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Celebrating the women who make it possible.

As a global leader in custom-engineered porous polymer solutions, Porex is proud to celebrate the women engineers and scientists who make our customers’ products possible. Our material science experts partner with our customers to develop new-to-the-world innovations across a wide variety of applications from life sciences to consumer packaged goods.

Have questions? Visit www.porex.com

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10/14/21 7:43 AM

Women in Engineering

Proving that “Black girls do Engineering” Paul J. Heney • Vice President, Editorial Director

Math and science are what first drew Kara Branch to engineering. As a child, she always excelled in her coursework, but it surprised her how good she was at math and science. Branch said she knew she was going to do something great in these subjects when she met her high school chemistry teacher, Mrs. Chapman.

“She challenged us … and I was the youngest in that class,” Branch said. “She gave us an assignment one day and mentioned that whoever passed it would be exempt from our end of the year final. I was the only one in our class to pass this assignment — and the only person exempted from that final. This sparked something in me. Growing up in an underserved community, there was no role model to expose you to engineering, but this moment let me know I had a skillset that set me apart from others.”

In college, Branch had a strong desire to major in dance, one of her loves. But her aunt, who was the only other person in her family to attend college, had a lot of involvement in her college decision-making process. When Branch mentioned how she wanted to major in dance, the aunt immediately dismissed that.

“She told me to aim for another major,” Branch recalled. “I met with my freshman advisor and she mentioned the College of Engineering would be great for me. This is what led to me becoming an engineer.”

Into the workforce Branch feels that her biggest engineering challenge was actually when she came out of college and transitioned into the workforce.

“I did a lot of research in college, which made me such an avid writer. But I did not intern, so day one on

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Kara Branch

Founder and CEO Black Girls Do Engineer Corp.

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the job was that first experience of what a day in the life of an engineer looks like,” she said. “Some of the challenges I faced [included] doing big presentations for our clients.

I always tell people; I went from college straight in the boardrooms — with a calculator, of course.

Working with our customers through my designs and processes. Having to remember the temperature, pressures, and materials of each line — to be able to answer all of their questions — was challenging at first, but with more experience, it certainly got better over time.”

Branch, who has been an engineer for six years now, started in the oil and gas industry, and has now transitioned to the aerospace industry. Within oil and gas, she led plant designs and many grassroot designs. Working in aerospace, she explained that she has now had the privilege to work on hardware that has launched into space.

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Helping young women Branch thinks that exposing young girls to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is where it all starts, but representation is the key ingredient.

Her passion led her to create her own non-profit (501c3) STEM program, Black Girls Do Engineer.

She’s dedicated the last two years outside of her full-time job to develop Black Girls Do Engineer.

“My program has helped girls love STEM and choose STEM careers,” she explained. “We have impacted more than 300 girls since we started in June 2019.

It is important for me to make a difference in girls’ lives, but most importantly educate them about the importance of STEM.”

Based in Houston, Black Girls Do Engineer has a focus on increasing the number of young women (ages 9 to 21) in engineering-related roles. The organization’s goals

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are to provide access, awareness, and advocate for two million Black American girls to pursue STEM careers by the year 2050.

Branch said that she sees how women are just not comfortable in the engineering workplace, something else that needs to be addressed.

“Although I believe we dominate in the STEM field, women just do not feel like we belong in this male dominated industry,” she said.

“Sometimes our voices are not heard, or our work is either taken or not acknowledged at all. I am a mom of three daughters — and let me say women are excelling at working fulltime and being a mother. Being a mom has not halted me at all. I can show up every day just like the men in this field. It definitely comes with its challenges, but I love the work I do. Yes, COVID has added the stress of working from home and having to care for our children at the same time, but I have adjusted well — because that is what women do. We always figure it out!”

Branch said that a unique perspective that women bring to engineering is creativity. She feels that women have the magic to come up with “a million different ways to do one thing.”

Her advice to other women in the field is to put in the extra work to ensure they study and develop an understanding in any areas they aren’t sure about— this is key to having the tools to develop confidence in the workplace.

“As engineers, we are always learning every day, so you must make sure you are taking the time to continue to learn and grow,” she said.

“This is what makes you confident in your ability to lead and perform in the workplace. Being prepared is what eliminates mistakes.”

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I love most about “ What the Dodge culture are the people I work with.

They become like your family and that makes it a more enjoyable place to work. Everybody likes to collaborate, so each one of us contributes our expertise. We put customers first, and I enjoy the great relationships we have with them. Dodge also provides extensive training and excellent opportunities for career advancement, which allows employees to advance and succeed in different roles.”

— Toha P., Dodge Application Engineering Manager

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Women in Engineering

Thinking outside the box Leslie Langnau • Senior Contributing Editor

“I’ve been told that it’s rare to find an engineer who loves ballet, but it’s more common than you’d think -- it just doesn’t fit the stereotype we were all raised with,” says Amanda French, co-founder and CEO of Emme, a healthcare company that is revolutionizing birth control.

Amanda French was a 2016-2017 Innovation Fellow at the Stanford-Byers Center for Biodesign, where the idea for Emme was born out of contraceptive research. Prior to founding Emme, she developed breakthrough heart valve technology as an R&D engineer with Edwards Lifesciences, where she also held roles in program management, manufacturing, and marketing through the Technical Development Program. She also was on the team at Earlens that developed a revolutionary hearing aid which was recently honored as one of Time’s Best Inventions of 2020.

While some people hold the stereotype that engineers are solely devoted to all things logical, French finds that her strong passion for the creative arts, including dance and musical theater, nicely balances her love of math and science. She did not become aware of engineering until late in high school. Initially, she was on a quest to find a career where she could help make a difference in people’s lives with math and science. It was while she was visiting prospective colleges, though, that she learned about the field of biomedical engineering.

“And I immediately knew this was the right industry for me,” she says. “Engineering is the

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perfect balance of creativity with rigorous science, and I am so drawn to the impact technology can have on improving lives around the world. It is so rewarding to invent a new product and have the tools and skills to build it from scratch. I think the most fun aspect of engineering is to see the impact of the products I’ve designed on the lives of the people who are using them.”

While there were engineers in her family, such as her grandfather, the lecture on biomedical engineering that she attended during that college visit was what really influenced her career choice.

“The professor was teaching about haptic robotics and neural prosthetics, DESIGN WORLD

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Amanda French co-founder and CEO of Emme

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Women in Engineering and I found it fascinating that human-made technology could be wired to be controlled by the brain. That experience is what led me to pursue engineering, so that professor played an influential role, even though we’ve never met. But I am also inspired to know that I’m following in my grandfather’s footsteps.”

Making a difference A large number of women are drawn into engineering because they see how they can make improvements and changes in the world that benefit many. That’s one of the reasons French cofounded Emme -- to improve lives.

The mission of her healthcare technology company is to drive innovation to bring the birth control pill experience into the 21st century.

The goal is to put women’s health in women’s hands, addressing some of the problems women find when using the birth control pill.

“We recently launched the patented award-winning Emme Smart Birth Control System -- a smart case and app that work together to automatically track the pill, provide custom reminders to reduce missed pills, and offer personalized support through health information and experience tracking. I am so proud of the diverse team of talented experts we’ve assembled to bring this product to market. We are working together to raise the bar in the industry overall.”

Design challenges As mentioned earlier, French has worked on a number of innovative products, including the Earlens

hearing aid system. Of course, each product has its challenges during different stages of the design process.

One challenge she recalls came up in the product development during the design verification testing stage. This testing entails stress testing the device to make sure it can withstand a durable lifecycle.

“When product failures are discovered at this point, it’s important to think creatively to find solutions that can be implemented without having to start from scratch with the design. I have found that the best way to overcome these types of challenges is to work with a team who brings unique perspectives to help accelerate a deep understanding of the problem and the solutions that can be considered. For example, I once

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Women in Engineering solved a design issue by introducing a new manufacturing method based on knitting, which was something nobody else on the team had experience with!”

While French brings out of the box thinking to solving design challenges, she also takes different approaches to leadership.

“I have learned that the best way to lead is to bring your authentic self to work and lean into what that means for your specific leadership style. I am empathetic by nature and motivated by working to understand the goals and needs of my team in order to align that energy with the broader company mission. I think a great leader helps others see their strengths and structures organizations in a way where each person is utilizing their strengths and clearly understands the impact they

are having on advancing the mission of the company overall.”

French has focused on building a company culture that embraces experimentation and quick cycles of testing and learning. “Hopefully this empowers every member of the team to feel supported to test out new skills and ideas without the fear of failure, which enables the entire group to grow and innovate as quickly as we can,” she says.

Of course, failures are part of the engineering experience. Viewing them in the proper context, though, reinforces good engineering design principles. For French, engineering failures reinforce the importance of a growth mindset.

“Discovering an engineering failure is critical towards accelerating a full understanding of the product or problem in question, so I like to

view engineering failures as valuable information that can help everyone improve the next iteration. In my first role at Edwards Lifesciences, our department celebrated failures formally to reinforce the critical importance of failing to accelerate learning and drive innovation forward.

“I believe that if you are not failing, you are not taking big enough risks. To push boundaries in the industry, by definition, you need to be willing to test things that are not proven to work out. It might take 100 “failures” before finding the one winning formula, and if you seek to avoid the failures then you’ll also avoid the big wins. I think my background as a dancer has helped me embrace this mindset, because it is an artform where you are constantly seeking opportunities

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to adjust and improve and it’s hard to perfect a new technique without first trying and failing countless of times.”

Speaking of culture, though, here too, French offers a unique perspective where employees come from all kinds of backgrounds, not just engineering.

“Our team at Emme brings together a very diverse group of experts, who have experience from fashion, beauty, technology, consumer products, healthcare, education, and beyond. If instead we had built a team of all like-minded individuals with a narrow set of experiences, we’d have left a lot of opportunity on the table, and had a much smaller chance at succeeding in launching a revolutionary, award-winning product.”

For French, diversity helps engineering teams be more successful. She has experienced firsthand how diverse teams make better decisions, are more creative, and ultimately drive higher profits compared to teams that lack diversity.

“When you build a team that brings a broad array of perspectives, you are going to drive more innovative results.”

Paying it forward Many women engineers become mentors to younger engineers, often through STEM or STEAM programs. French is no exception.

“I think it’s so important to pay it forward, and so I dedicate time on my calendar to regularly offer mentorship to people early in their careers. Some of the formal ways I seek to give back to the engineering community are through my roles with non-profit organizations including the Stanford Biodesign Alumni Association as well as MedTech Women. I’ve personally benefited from the “mentorship” that can be gained just by listening to the stories of others, so I enjoyed recently sharing my story with the SWE Podcast.

I have found that the best way to overcome challenges is to work with a team who brings unique perspectives to help accelerate a deep understanding of the problem and the solutions that can be considered. I once solved a design issue by introducing a new manufacturing method based on knitting, which was something nobody else on the team had experience with!

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Women in Engineering

A problem solver extraordinaire Paul J. Heney • Vice President, Editorial Director

When growing up, Caitlin Kalinowski built a lot of “nerdy little things.” When she was three, four or five, she would do a lot of physical prototyping of ideas that she had. For example, she had little machines that would keep water warm or hand warmers and nose warmers. Engineering, she noted, is just using science to solve problems, it’s an applied field. Science and math are important fields in their own right, but to engineers they’re also tools.

“Engineering is all about solving problems and making people’s lives better,” she said. “That’s where we should start when we introduce kids to the field. You start with a problem you, yourself have. Ask your kids how they would solve it themselves? I was lucky enough to have parents who were permissive about me doing all kinds of crazy things. Starting with building toys, like Legos, erector sets, all of that stuff. When I was a kid, I didn’t know what engineering was — I was just playing and building. It took until middle school to start to realize, ‘oh, there’s this field and it uses applied knowledge, and it can help solve other peoples’ problems.’ It slowly became clear that engineering was an interesting career path for me, but I don’t think I put all the pieces together until my freshman year of high school.”

Another thing that shaped Kalinowski early on was her stepfather, who is an experimental physicist. As she grew up in New Hampshire, he would tell stories about his lab at Stanford, and about how he had a motorcycle he rode all around California. She noted that her parents were both academics, but neither of them were in STEM. 104

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Caitlin Kalinowski

Hardware Director Facebook Reality Labs’ Oculus VR

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Women in Engineering

“I used a lot of what he said to inspire me, to look into STEM. And I loved talking about how the world worked, from the tiniest particles to the largest forces in the universe,” she explained.

In any organization, you have to skate to where the puck is going. In order to build an organization for growth, you have to anticipate what the world is going to look like in a couple of years, build your leadership team first — like scaffolding — then build out the rest of the team.

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Advancing quickly Kalinowski earned her BS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 2007, where she is a guest lecturer at Stanford’s School of Engineering and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. She was a technical lead for Mac Pro and MacBook Air products and was part of the original unibody MacBook Pro team. Today, she serves as Hardware Director for Facebook Reality Labs’ Oculus VR products— including 2020’s Oculus Quest 2, Oculus Quest, Oculus Go, and Oculus Rift.

One of her responsibilities at Apple was designing the lower half of the enclosure on the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops, an important career milestone for her.

“My focus was on the way that the enclosure pieces go together,” she said. “I was able to utilize a fine stamping process to make the gap between the bottom cover on the top cover on Apple’s laptops much tighter. Originally, the part’s perimeter was forged and CNC machined, which was a much wider tolerance than fine-stamping. So, we get the parts much, much closer together.”

Kalinowski said that, just like in cars, the perception of quality in consumer electronics has a lot to do with gaps and offsets between the parts.

“If you look at some more massmarket cars versus sports cars, you can start to see some differences in the way they’re constructed,” she said. “There’s a lot of really subliminal sort of messaging that goes into how tight parts fit together. The most impactful technical work I did at Apple was probably my leadership on the Mac Pro. Since then, my focus has been on my organizational DESIGN WORLD

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Women in Engineering and driving strategy on multiple programs at once.”

And that new focus, building resilient organizations that can scale, has been the hardest challenge of her career, she said.

“In any organization, you have to skate to where the puck is going.

In order to build an organization for growth, you have to anticipate what the world is going to look like in a couple of years, build your leadership team first — like scaffolding — then build out the rest of the team,” Kalinowski said. “It’s challenging to figure out what might happen in the future, but also a lot of fun.”

Women in the engineering workplace Kalinowski said that she doesn’t know that there’s any specific “woman thing” that women bring as a class to engineering.

“Of course, we have different bodies, body sizes and shapes.

We can have different clothes, different hair, more of us wear makeup, all these things change the way a wearable product interacts with you, for example. Does your hairstyle allow you to don wearables the same way as men? Does the product size fit you? As one example, having women and men both on the team is critical as far as ergonomics and fit go,” she said.

For women starting out, she feels that it’s critical to motivate them to learn about engineering by helping them determine what problems they are facing that they want to solve, that they can solve with engineering. Then, the focus should be to give them the tools to solve those problems and get them building.

Also important, she said is knowing that you’re going to make mistakes, and that’s fine.

“As long as you have a good manager, there should be space for you to make the right mistakes. The

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trick is, instead of avoiding mistakes, learn to make the right mistakes, only making them once, and learn from them. I do believe that women, in particular, tend to focus more on avoiding mistakes than going for the best solution whole-hog and not worrying too much. I’ve made some pretty big mistakes actually in my career. And it’s worked out fine for me, I’m still here. So, expect to make mistakes, and work to make sure they’re high-quality mistakes,” she said.

Kalinowski noted that there’s probably more women than men who’ve dropped out of the engineering field after studying it in college, but she has a plan to combat that, personally.

“The research that I’ve read suggests that the first two years of a woman’s career in engineering are fairly formative — and her experience in those first two years has a lot to do with how she feels about engineering and staying in the engineering field. Unfortunately, on average, I think women have tougher initial years than men in the rest of the industry,” she said.

“One of the things that I try to do

Being a meaningful leader Kalinowski explained that being an organizational leader does not mean knowing what to do all the time and telling people what to do all the time. Instead, the job is to support your team, to unblock them, to provide some guidance.

“Really, it’s like being an orchestra conductor, where the work is being done by other folks (which is hard to get used to actually), but your job is to flow the information and the resources — and find gaps and close them before they become a problem.

You have to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the organization, and to help the team be successful versus being dictatorial. I didn’t know that at first. When I first managed, I didn’t understand what management was. I learned very quickly, in the first month, that you can tell people what to do but it doesn’t usually

“One of the things that I try to do is hire students out of school to make sure that they have a really good first two years of experience in engineering.” is hire students out of school to make sure that they have a really good first two years of experience in engineering. And I’ve found that that’s actually pretty effective. But if they go somewhere else and don’t have a good experience, then I think that’s where in many cases we start to lose them. I do think that there’s absolutely a Delta in experiences on average. And I think that we as leaders, we, who are technology

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leaders, have to make sure that women and underrepresented minorities have a really strong, positive experience in tech the first year.”

mean they’re going to do it. It’s not an effective leadership tactic. The right tactic is to listen as your chief activity, and to understand what’s happening in your organization — and to unblock your team and set your team up for success,” she said.

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Women in Engineering vast majority of folks being either early or mid-career.

“I feel really great about our programming. It’s actually the largest technological conference for women on the West Coast and the largest LGBT technological conference in the world. The reach is massive and there’s all these young people who are coming and experiencing being part of their community while they’re looking at tech,” she said. “I feel that the contributions I’ve made to that organization have affected quite a few younger women and younger people. I also always have three or four women I’m mentoring at any given time, both inside and outside the organization and that’s really rewarding to me as well.”

Regarding equality, Kalinowski said there’s a lot that tech does in general, such as the Rooney Rule.

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“Part of the way that tech works is you always pick the best candidate for the job, from the funnel that you have. But tech is starting to really look at making sure that the top of the funnel is diverse and making sure that you have multiple underrepresented candidates ideally in the funnel,” she said. “Then, you essentially allow that to drive that diversity at the bottom of the funnel, but that the rest of the process is actually focused. I think that’s a good rule, so you have at least one, but ideally more candidates in the pipeline.

You do tend to have to do a little extra legwork to make sure that you have the right sourcing and that you’re looking in the right places for diverse candidates, even when they might not have as classic a background.”

FOR YOUR

And what of that five-year-old Caitlin, the one building rudimentary nose warmers? What wisdom would she impart on her younger self?

“Don’t worry so much,” she said.

“Honestly, it’s going to all work out fine. I think that we have this thing we do when we’re in the moment and we have setbacks — it feels like the end of the world. That’s normal, especially when we’re young. But getting back up and continuing towards your goal is more important than being successful the first time around. People who have success in any industry have the ability to face setbacks, learn from them, and get back on the horse. That is the most important thing, not worrying too much when things don’t go right, or that they might not go right.

This takes your energy away from finding solutions.”

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Women in Engineering

Engineering purposeful play Paul J. Heney • Vice President, Editorial Director

An engineer by training, Hester Anderiesen Le Riche found her passion during design projects that influence people’s behavior and contribute to their health. Today, she is the CEO and founder of Tover, and the creator of a pioneering cognitive stimulation system: the Tovertafel.

Anderiesen Le Riche, who has a PhD in Industrial Design Engineering from Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands, wrote her dissertation on “Playful Design for Activation,” which entails an evidence-based approach of developing a product service system to stimulate physical activity of people with severe dementia. During her PhD, she designed the Tovertafel: the original interactive light projection system that entices those with cognitive challenges to interact and have fun together.

Anderiesen Le Riche explained that she has always been “a beta” and that drew her to engineering.

“In primary school we built constructions that would bring a marble from point A to B, and the process of creating the puzzle to achieve that goal was exciting. My fellow mini-engineer, Haley, ended up studying Aerospace Engineering, and is still a dear friend!” she said. “I chose TUDelft for the creative and human aspect of design. The engineering always remained an intriguing element, to make your idea actually work, but I’ve also always been drawn to the human connection component.”

While she didn’t have a prominent influencer early in life, she started her studies with her first boyfriend; they shared an interest for smartly designed products.

“He taught me Corel Draw and we were creating some seriously corny 90’s graphics for his MD disks, as he was a hip hop DJ. I wasn’t overly creative as a child and definitely didn’t see myself as an artist. However, I think making those graphics and visiting the faculty of Industrial Design 112

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Hester Anderiesen Le Riche CEO and founder of Tover

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Women in Engineering and reach larger goals, ultimately helping change the lives of more people around the world.”

When Anderiesen Le Riche started Tover, she had assumptions about what strong leadership would look like. She said she imagined directive, stern and hierarchic personalities leading big companies.

“But there are other leadership styles, too,” she said. “The first business book I ever read is still one of my favorites: Good to Great from Jim Collins. What he describes as ‘Level 5 Leadership’ was different from my assumptions, but closer to my values and personality. The book gave me a lot of confidence and evoked excitement that I could potentially lead a company within my own values and also gave me great lasting advice on how to grow into that role.”

Engineering ignited my interest and belief that I was able to create something. The translation of a thought or idea to something real is very exciting to me,” she said.

One of her earliest design projects at school involved an assignment to create an electric nutcracker. She had just returned from nine months travelling the world — and had learned a lot — but nothing about electric motors, gear wheels, or materials.

“To be fairly honest, I did not know where to start,” she said.

“Looking back, I learned some of the most important lessons from that project that I still use every day.

One of the greatest being: If you ask what you don’t know, you will know it. I approached the project step by step. Every day I asked another teacher, fellow student, or Google — and every day I got a little closer to my electric nutcracker.”

Developing a product “Product development seems to me as a winding road with many intersections,” Anderiesen Le Riche said. “A white canvas gives

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you endless options for what to design and any challenge in the process can be solved in different ways. I think that my strength lies with abstraction, determining the essence, formulating a design vision, taking decisions, and a few risks. I think I am the driver in design teams.

I won’t be the engineer with the most technical knowledge on board, nor the creative with the craziest ideas, but I make sure that we get to our destination and on time.”

“My company, Tover, recently celebrated its North American launch as well as the release of the Tovertafel 2 — an updated technology from our startup product. Our mission has always been to create a more caring and inclusive world for those living with dementia and cognitive challenges, and this launch is an exciting next step in us achieving that goal.”

“Spearheading such an expansion, especially during a global pandemic was no easy feat, but we were successful because we have such an absolute belief in our mission. As a result of our success, we are able to keep raising the bar

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Women in engineering Anderiesen Le Riche said that the male-female ratio in her faculty of Industrial Design Engineering was 60-40% while in college — incredibly high for an engineering faculty.

“The only other faculty with a similar ratio was Architecture … Perhaps courses that involve more context, different disciplines, that challenge our birds-eye view and cater for a broad interest would be more appealing,” she said.

She said that while it may not be a perspective completely unique to women, she does think that she has the ability to create a personal commitment to the long-term goal of her company and its mission — and that’s so important.

“I think that is one of the main qualities that determine success in just about any growing business. With so many emerging technologies, I am also constantly looking at ways that I can apply technology and design to real world problems,” she said.

“Women who are currently in the engineering industry also have a DESIGN WORLD

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Women in Engineering

great opportunity to help lift the voices of the next generation of women engineers to help diversify the industry and bring more perspectives and experiences to the table. How can those new to engineering develop confidence in the workplace? What safeguards would you recommend to women aiming to minimize mistakes?

Any comments on learning from mistakes?”

She also feels that women’s curiosity can be critical.

“Most people enjoy sharing their knowledge and ideas. When you show honest interest in other people’s expertise and knowledge, you can not only learn a lot (to design an electric nutcracker for example), but you also gain respect.

I have a similar curious approach to

tap into other people’s experience to fuel both my own professional growth and that of my company’s,” she said.

“I feel that being a woman helped me more than it was restraining me in any way.”

Looking forward, looking back Anderiesen Le Riche still wants to tackle inclusivity issues, something she’s very passionate about.

“There are as many barriers to our society as the number of people,” she said. “These barriers make interesting design challenges where technology and engineering could be of added value. I would love to enable those who are physically challenged to enjoy all the sports that I do, for example. Or to tackle redesigning our products for developing countries to utilize as well.”

And her younger self? What advice would she give that young woman?

“Consider all options. In the last phase of my PhD, I discovered that I might be an entrepreneur,” she said. “I never considered marketing my own product until I coincidentally met the Dutch startup community. Their commitment, drive, enthusiasm and confidence in their ideas resonated with me and gave me all that was necessary to start my own business. A new career path opened in front of me. I felt a strong sense of belonging and recognition in a space that I hadn’t truly considered before.”

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Women in Engineering

From math to engineering, Mary Gannon • Senior Editor

with love

Maureen Lincoln, PE, has founded and served as CEO of companies throughout her career but engineering is where her heart lies. As the founder of Kerelaw Engineering, P.C., a Bronx-based product design and engineering agency, she is responsible for steering the company’s engineering team. She has been the Director of Engineering for the company since 2019, and previously served as the company’s Principal Engineer during its first years of business operation, beginning in 2016.

An MIT graduate, Lincoln has always been drawn to math and mechanisms.

“I’ve always been fascinated by mechanical things, even at a young age,” she said.

“My mother tells me I made paper dolls with moving parts, and my brother often reminds me I took apart all his toys. Once I was old enough to ride a bicycle, I was really hooked by mechanism designs and how to use them.”

Lincoln found her way to engineering through a deep love for math, which her parents encouraged. She was enrolled in a gifted student program from 4th to 8th grade, where she studied math on an independent basis. “I took all the math coursed available until I exhausted the system. While still in high school, I took undergraduate math classes at a local university. Math was the inroad to my engineering career and success.”

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Maureen Lincoln, PE

Director of Engineering and founder of Kerelaw Engineering

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Women in Engineering

Maureen Lincoln is founder and director of engineering at Kerelaw Engineering, where she works with a small and talented team to provide engineered solutions to clients that look great, function as required and meet market expectations.

Top, Joseph Tatis, engineering intern works on a product design; bottom right, the entire team from left to right, Zoe Ho (Industrial Designer), Joseph Tatis (Engineering Intern), herself, Chris Findlay (Program Manager) and Phyllis Isola (Office Manager), and Lassie Lou; and bottom left, the engineering team collaborates on design projects.

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She then enrolled at MIT, where she earned her BS in Mechanical Engineering.

“While at MIT, I took the design competition class 2.70 (now 2.007) with Professor Woodie Flowers. His hands-on approach to teaching further opened my eyes to the wonders and powers of engineering,” Lincoln said.

“His teaching team further reinforced my decision to be and stay in engineering, including anecdotes of consulting gigs and practical design feedback. Sadly, Professor Flowers is no longer with us, but I still remember and use my learnings from his class.”

A career in design Upon graduation, she began her career in product design and development, always with a strong focus on innovation, manufacturing and job creation. As her corporate career progressed, Lincoln

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used her technical training, mentoring skills and team building abilities to develop strong engineering teams and product development programs.

Over her career, she has worked in new product design and development in the automotive, industrial, consumer and medical industries, especially now working with her team at Kerelaw for nimble and innovative designs.

“We recently worked with a client to quickly repackage their proven technology and leverage their industrial brand recognition to provide air purifier technology solutions for institutional and business settings,” she said. “We jumped in as part of the core team to translate their vision to tangible features and benefits while offering a design optimized for manufacturing. Together we worked to launch a beautiful, quiet, and efficient machine that supports post-Covid reopening plans. It’s already been adopted by Fortune 100 companies and well-known universities to improve air quality in shared spaces.”

Her engineering career has run the gamut from quality engineer to senior design engineer, director of product engineering to CEO. Through each of those career types, she has learned the importance of troubleshooting and teamwork.

“Early in my career, I worked on an automotive sensor with intermittent functionality. Like many of us engineers have experienced, the issue did not fully present itself until the parts were run at production volumes and used in the field,” Lincoln explained. “Though the issue would not create a safety issue, it was a production disruption that could potentially cost my former employer thousands of dollars in late delivery charges. With this potential liability and client dissatisfaction, fixing this problem became a priority.

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Women in Engineering cause and brainstormed solutions. I discovered a way to predict the failure by looking at the specific circuit characteristics and developed a handheld, battery powered tester that could be used to sort inventory,” she continued. “We sorted the inventory at our site and shipped verified replacements. I then flew to several international sites to sort the inventory there, missing Thanksgiving with my family!

“We did find and implement a solid design change to prevent reoccurrence, added this new test to the line, and managed to provide inventory to the customer without creating a ‘line down’

in engineering. Not to focus on the hurdles that once were — we are beyond that — but the opportunities that there are now,” she said. “Today’s business is more flexible and more collaborative. At my company, we work as an agile team with hybrid work schedules that help to promote better work/ life balance. It’s a culture of enthusiasm and respect that comes right from the top. Most important, it’s a learning environment for us all. We learn from each other based on our diverse perspectives and experiences, and from the challenges our clients hire us to solve. It’s an environment I can share

Her engineering career has run the gamut from quality engineer to senior design engineer, director of product engineering to CEO. Through each of those career types, she has learned the importance of troubleshooting and teamwork. situation, avoiding any financial penalties,” she concluded. “In fact, the customer was so pleased with our commitment and so grateful with the result they sent a letter to the VP of our site specifically calling out my team and me. It felt great to have my effort recognized, but it felt even better that this letter was used by our marketing group to procure future business.”

Shaping great engineers Lincoln noted that although there has been a great focus on STEM and STEAM and mentoring over the years, the number of young women engineers entering the workforce has not increased the way one would expect. She said retention must play a part in this.

“I think the best way to increase the participation is to keep women

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with young engineers to move and inspire them to continue a role in engineering.”

She added that while family responsibilities are certainly part of the reason women leave engineering careers, the general structure of engineering groups is also a factor. “The women I know with engineering degrees that no longer work in engineering (my daughter included!) opted to move from an individual contributor position to a more team-based role,” she said. “These include positions in marketing and/or program management.”

Lincoln said it’s better for the industry as a whole to engage more women in engineering careers because the women engineers she knows bring a unique understanding of clients’ unspoken requirements

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and unconsidered consumer use scenarios. “I’ve worked with women with excellent team building skills, especially keen on bringing out new ideas from team members who perhaps were hesitant about sharing in a group setting or had not yet looked at a challenge from a new perspective,” she said. “Diverse perspectives and experiences certainly help identify the best of the many possible engineering solutions one can use to solve a design challenge and having women as part of the engineering team makes this possible.”

Finally, Lincoln imparted some advice to those studying to become engineers, noting the importance of internship programs. “It’s a great way to learn real-life, professional skills and gain confidence in a safe environment, especially if you can find the right mentor.

“To safeguard against mistakes, always check your work,” she added. “It’s the best professional advice I ever received, and many times has saved me from publishing mistakes. Another way to minimize mistakes is to look at the problem from different perspectives. If you can look at the problem from different perspectives and still converge on the same solution, then the solution is robust.

“I’ve learned it’s important to recognize and communicate mistakes right away,” Lincoln concluded. “To make a bad mistake better, offer some initial analysis and solutions as well.”

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Women in Engineering

Engineering as a springboard to other opportunities Paul J. Heney • Vice President, Editorial Director

Sometimes, life directions can change with a chance conversation or unexpected opportunity. Danielle Lower said she fell into engineering in a completely unintentional way. When she enrolled in university her freshman year, Lower said she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life.

“I listed metallurgical engineering as my major at the recommendation of a friend who was recruiting for the department. They had a good amount of scholarship funding available and not enough student interest. I figured it would be a good way to receive some financial support and try a few math classes until I figured out what I really wanted to do.

I had always been good at math, so I figured that whatever I ended up selecting as a major would be math oriented. As I got into the program’s course work, I found that I really loved the challenge. Engineering courses are hard, and I think more than anything I wanted to prove to myself that I could graduate with an engineering degree, even if I still wasn’t sure what I would do upon graduation. I later switched my major to mechanical engineering because I felt that it would offer a wider range of possible career opportunities in the future. While I was uncertain in my decision at the time, I am glad that I stuck with engineering for where it has led me.

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Danielle Lower

Research Excellence Lead in the Energy and Environment Science and Technology (EES&T) directorate • Idaho National Laboratory

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Women in Engineering

I think that instead of telling young women what engineering is, we need to learn more about what their personal interests are — and show them how engineering relates in that area and how they might be able to use an engineering degree to work in their areas of interest.

During the summer after Lower’s second year of college, she was selected as an intern at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. At this point, she was still uncertain as to whether she’d continue as an engineering major. Her mentor at JPL discussed future plans with her on several occasions, and she explained that she will never forget those discussions, and how instrumental they were.

“He encouraged me to stick with engineering. He said that an engineering degree shows employers that you are willing and able to learn. He assured me that I would be able to use this degree to open so many doors and opportunities, not just within areas that would generally be viewed as typical ‘engineering’ roles. He also said that most companies will teach you what they want or need

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you to know to be successful if they can see your potential. In my experience, everything he said has been true,” Lower said.

Challenges accepted Lower, who is the Research Excellence Lead in the Energy and Environment Science and Technology (EES&T) directorate at Idaho National Laboratory, thinks that her greatest challenge has also been one of her biggest engineering accomplishments. Prior to her current position, she was working as part of the Idaho Cleanup Project, which focuses on the environmental cleanup of radioactive waste from Idaho.

“While on this project, I was working on a first-of-a-kind facility for processing radioactive waste.

I was brought on to the team to assist with developing a predictive model for calculating fluidized bed jet lengths,” she said. “I was working with a senior research scientist to develop these calculations based on limited previous research and resources. We would validate our estimates and assumptions with fullscale testing. This was an incredibly challenging project, where I was researching similar technologies, developing and validating theories and assumptions, and generating a predictive MathCad model to develop future predictions. As a team, we were able to develop a

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representative model of our oneof-a-kind fluidized bed. I was still a relatively new engineer at the time, so I think I brought a fresh perspective to the team. I asked a lot of questions (to learn) and I think my questioning attitude motivated senior engineers to critically think about the model we were designing, ultimately making the project a success.”

Lower feels that each woman working in engineering brings her own unique perspective, just as men do, and thinks we need a variety of unique perspectives to create a diverse team.

“The best ideas generally come from diverse teams — not just from diversity of gender or color, but from a diversity of experience — and to get a true diversity of experience, you need representation from all walks of life: male, female, married, unmarried, newly graduated, seasoned employee, and so on. So, we need women on our teams — a diverse representation of women — as each one of us are going to bring a slightly different perspective based on our wide array of life experiences,” she explained.

Lower also thinks that we need to help young women see the realm of possibilities available in the field of engineering and understand that it is so incredibly diverse.

“Right now, I believe that when a lot of young women think

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Women in Engineering

about careers in engineering, they think of large-scale factories and mass-production industries like the automotive industry or careers in oil and gas,” Lower said. “These fields may interest some, but we need to show young women that a career in engineering can be so expansive.

For example, I spent a portion of my career working as a patent examiner in the mechanical engineering department for IP Australia (which is an agency within their government that administers intellectual property rights), and currently, I use my engineering background … at Idaho National Laboratory. So now, while I don’t necessarily do ‘traditional engineering,’ I use my engineering background in my work to support our research community by ensuring safe, efficient, and effective operations.”

“I think that instead of telling young women what engineering is, we need to learn more about what their personal interests are — and show them how engineering relates in that area and how they might be able to use an engineering degree to work in their areas of interest. For me, I have never really been interested in designing large systems, but I was ecstatic to once find a job position for a kitchen tool design company advertising for a mechanical engineer to perform stress calculations for their new kitchen tools. While I didn’t go down that path, I think it would have been so much fun to design the next generation of kitchen gadgets!”

As far as barriers for women, Lower thinks that the biggest issue today is the stigma that they can’t (or shouldn’t want to be) engineers.

“I think this stigma causes many women to second-guess their desire to pursue a career in this field. Even now, I often hear comments about engineering being a ‘man’s field’ or expressing extreme surprise that I elected to be an engineer, and while

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I am set in my career, these types of comments can be negatively impactful to younger women trying to determine their career path,” she said.

Getting up to speed Lower has some advice for women who are new to engineering, so they can develop confidence in the workplace.

“As with any new skill, you gain confidence with time and practice. Mistakes are a natural part of life. One of my current roles is working as a Human Performance Improvement (HPI) practitioner. HPI philosophy centers on the fact that all humans make mistakes while providing a practical approach to reducing human error, enhancing human ingenuity, and creating a capacity for resilience. HPI philosophy has helped me to accept my own personal fallibility and provided me with tools to set myself up for success. So, for those new to the field of engineering, I think that it is first important to accept the fact that you are going to make mistakes; it is inevitable, but realize that we were all once new engineers. In knowing and accepting that you are going to make mistakes, you begin to create that capacity for resilience for yourself, setting yourself up for success,” she said.

“How do you set yourself up for success? Ask questions! Ask a lot of questions and don’t be afraid. Show your willingness and desire to learn.

Utilize your peers; peer reviews are incredibly valuable and important.

Finally, when you do make a mistake, don’t be afraid to admit it. We tend to learn more from our mistakes more than from our successes, but we can also help others learn from our mistakes as well. In our HPI onboarding training, we always close with the following quote: ‘I would rather surround myself with people who make a lot of mistakes

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and have no problem admitting to them, than to surround myself with people who think they make none.’”

Lower said that what makes engineering fun for her is that most projects/tasks are like solving a puzzle, because the puzzles are always different.

“Some are simple, while others are like a 1,000-piece monochromatic jigsaw puzzle without an image on the front of the box to guide you. Engineering (at least in my case) has also been so diverse in the types of projects/ tasks that I have been able to be a part of,” she said. That diversity has allowed me to essentially mold my current position in research excellence into a career that allows me to use my technical background in somewhat of a non-traditional manner while allowing me to explore other areas of interest and learn new areas of research operations.”

If she could advise her younger self, Lower said she’d emphasize not to be afraid to ask for what you want or what you need.

“Opportunity isn’t always going to fall in your lap. If you see something that interests you (a project you want to work on, a conference you want to attend, a course you want to pursue), speak with your manager; ask for it,” she explained. “You may not always get a yes, but it will always be a no if you don’t try. I spent too much of my earlier career waiting for opportunity. It’s only in the last couple of years that I started expressing interest in new development opportunities, and I am fortunate to have a management team who is very supportive.”

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Women in Engineering

Pioneering a pathway to diversity Aimee Kalnoskas • Contributing Editor

As one of the only women in her highly specialized field as a process design engineer, a South African immigrant, woman of color, and mother of four boys, Sibongile Manthata has had more than her fair share of challenges in her career. And her entre into engineering was more accidental than intentional.

“I heard about engineering but knew very little about it,” she said. “Fortunately, one of my friend’s sisters was a new chemical engineer, and I thought I would do well in it.”

With that in mind and encouraged by the many engineering bursaries (scholarships) available in South Africa, she focused on keeping up her grades and applying for engineering school. The lack of family support only made her more determined to pursue an engineering education.

“Were it not for the initial encouragement from my friend’s sister,” she noted, “I probably would not have applied to engineering school. My grandma’s husband even made it a point to say that engineering was only for men. This stigma helped motivate me to challenge myself and prove it wrong.”

But inspiration and support did come once Sibongile got into engineering school. A female lecturer, Dr. Diane Hildebrandt, was the sole female professor in her school. Dr. Hildebrandt was well-recognized in her field and had received multiple awards for her work – yet another motivator for the budding engineer.

“We get inspired seeing ourselves in the people we want to become,” Sibongile said.

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Sibongile Manthata

Staff Scientist, Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC)

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Women in Engineering Coder Barbie? Engineer Barbie?

Sibongile has never forgotten that positive influence and sees mentorship and female leadership as critical factors in promoting greater participation of young women in engineering today.

“I know how much it means for me to see female professors in university give lectures at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Representation really matters. It is important to see role models that look like you while advancing and starting your career. However, this could be taken a step further – we need to inspire girls at an earlier age. We should encourage them to find a passion for science education at the elementary school level. This

“…having a new team member with a diverse background encouraged my colleagues to think even further outside the box and approach problem-solving in a new way.”

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also means marketing science in new ways, too, and breaking gender stereotypes. For example, we should show that Barbie wants to be an engineer or learn how to code. We should also set a new standard that girls can be both a cheerleader and a scientist. The two are not mutually exclusive.”

And what can women bring to the engineering lab, benchtop, meeting-room table? The move towards inclusion and diversity in engineering is more than a catchphrase for Sibongile – it’s a recipe for project success.

“When you have all similar experiences,” she said, “you may miss a solution or idea because you haven’t come across it in your experiences. Team members with diverse backgrounds can bring broader perspectives to the table – they can look at problems through a new lens and provide different solutions.”

Elaborating upon her real-life example, Sibongile remembers a project she became involved in after the team was established where a different perspective resulted in success.

“I once worked on a challenging project handling a catalyst,” she recalls, “Before I joined, the team sought out many solutions but hadn’t landed on the idea that was most beneficial. Because of my background experience, I saw an opportunity to revisit a solution previously proposed and recommended it to the team in a different way. Once we started looking at the project with this new perspective in mind, we were able to successfully find a solution that is still being used today. I think having a new team member with a diverse background encouraged my colleagues to think even further outside the box and approach problem-solving in a new way.”

She frankly acknowledges that women can and do bring a different

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perspective than men, not only to engineering but to any organization or team.

“Women make great leaders,” she said. “We are creative and adaptive. I find my personal experience with balancing work, children, and household activities has only brought me success. I don’t think women should have to do everything or be superhuman by any means, but with many of us juggling multiple roles in a day, it typically allows us to be nimble and strategic, especially in our careers.

We learn to think multidimensionally, which prepares us as great project managers and quick-solution finders.”

Fear not the mistakes In general, mistakes have had distinct undertones of “failure” – a term which, in itself, carries a negative connotation. Like many other successful people, Sibongile sees mistakes as eventual progress with a generally positive outcome.

“I do not think people should be afraid to make mistakes; it is often the best way to learn,” she maintains. “Building confidence requires you to try, and sometimes when you try, you fail. The key is to learn from those mistakes and understand that you will always be learning. As an engineer, you should aim to start your career by learning from those around you. Your college career has provided you with an excellent opportunity to prove to yourself that you can master this field. You should approach problems by trying them first and then asking a coach (usually a person that has been there a little longer than you have) to check them or check your logic.”

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Women in Engineering that is 80 percent black. However, it was something Sibongile took for granted until she came to the United States. But that could not dissuade her, and she is passionate about showing her four boys that there are no boundaries for women, particularly women of color. To allow any apparent limitations you encounter to do so would be to deny yourself not only an exciting and promising career, she maintains, but also the satisfaction of seeing the fun of something on paper come to life and work.

“Whether you design a solution to start up or a pump or create a new facility design that becomes operational,” she says, “the feeling is thrilling.”

For Sibongile, obstacles are something to be attacked, not to run away from.

“Being a black female engineer has meant that not only have people found prejudice based on the color of my skin but also because I’m a woman in what’s stigmatized as a “man’s field.” If I can be successful and good at what I do, anyone can do this. You need to have a can-do attitude and dare to dream. Never let other people’s limitations define yours.”

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Women in Engineering

Using engineering skills to make an impact Leslie Langnau • Senior Contributing Editor

For many women engineers, it’s the impact they find they can have on worldwide problems that either attracts them into engineering, or keeps them in it. Dr. Karen Panetta found that IEEE gave her exposure to worldwide engineering challenges that still keeps her enthusiastic about the field.

“IEEE was my lifeline. It wasn’t my professional experiences that I would say helped groom me and prepare me for the realization of how impactful engineering could be. I could do more than just design CPUs, but that awareness came from my interactions with IEEE and all the amazing projects that I’ve worked on. Especially the projects that impacted humanity through technology. And such a realization resonates so much with young people and students, especially women. That’s the connection to engineering.”

She’s worked on underwater drones, gone into quarries, helped firefighter’s use imaging technology, and is working on making rocket fuel from water. She’s also helped doctors investigate COVID through her image processing skills.

“One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that not only do you need to understand what the problem is, you also need to understand the people you’re trying to solve the problem for. You can have an elegant solution, but if you don’t have that acceptance, it’s a waste. We find that when you use local materials that people understand, that the technology is less 136

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Dr. Karen Panetta intimidating and you get much more buy-in.

She cites an example of water filtration systems for third world countries that need water purifiers.

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the community, you’re not going to get user buy-in. I saw one one water purifier being used to store fruit.”

Stereotypes But, as with many women engineers, there’s always the battle with stereotypes. Dr. Panetta pursued an engineering degree at a time when www.designworldonline.com

IEEE Fellow, signal and imaging processing algorithms, emerging tech solutions for optimized robotics, cloud computing, and biomedical imaging applications.

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Women in Engineering

women’s career choices were pretty much limited to secretarial, nursing, or teaching. While career choices have opened for most women over the years, the battle of overcoming the limitations and expectations others put on you continues.

The battle often starts early.

“Sit there and look pretty like you’re supposed to.” Panetta’s father would say those words to her when she was a young girl. She was always curious about what he was working on, which was usually heavy machinery. She would ask him questions, and that was the usual reply she received.

As she grew older, her father had no problem asking her to mow the lawn, despite the fact that she had two older brothers. Her response was, “No, you want me to sit here and look pretty.” But she would mow it anyway. Notes Panetta, “He finally realized, when I hit about 13 or 14, that I could do math and science and that I have a mind for it. That’s when he said, “You’re going to be an engineer. As gender biased as he was from the culture, he saw my potential.”

When she discussed why he told her to just be pretty, his response was “That’s just the way it was.” But he did want her to have a stable, financially supportive career, and engineering was a good choice.

Her father picked the college for her, one close to home, since daughters were not supposed to go too far away. Panetta initially went to a college that offered computer engineer versus electrical engineering or computer science.

When she graduated, she joined Digital Equipment Corp. and began building computers. DEC offered free education, so her family encouraged her to continue her studies for her masters and PhD in electrical engineering, which she did while working full time.

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Stereotype: You’re a woman, you’ll be a good teacher

While studying for her advanced degrees, Panetta noticed the lack of teachers with industry experience.

Most professors went immediately into teaching once they received their PhD. But for Panetta, that meant students were not receiving the industry perspective.

“Teachers should be teaching relevant things that are going on in the real world.”

So, she entered teaching after some years at DEC. “I went to Tufts University and was accepted, even though I had not taught before. I was the only female electrical engineering professor, which surprised the students back then as they had rarely encountered a female professor of electrical engineering and they had a stereotype of what a female engineer was all about.”

Even the faculty tried to pigeonhole her. She frequently received comments about what a good mentor she would be for young women and students. “I thought that was strange, but apparently because I’m a woman, I’m inherently going to be a good teacher and nurturer. I was like, “Okay. Yeah, whatever.”

customer. “I think that experience helped stimulate my whole understanding that we need to start looking at how things fail, not just is it operating in the way we expect?

But also looking at how it’s going to be used?

“I wasn’t thinking about people misusing or trying to break security, or designing something to hurt people for malicious intent. But I was thinking about the things that could happen that could make the product fail.”

Panetta designed one of the first systems that we would call today a digital twin to run not only the whole CPU model, but also the software on it. This digital twin enabled her to artificially break the computer to find weaknesses.

“And that was huge. That was one of my first sets of patents.

However, the engineering challenge was trying to get people to understand that you need to go beyond the thinking of ‘Get the product out the door,’ and ‘Yes, it passes all these tests. You need to know the product will be reliable in the field where people will mis-use it and potentially break it in a way that could be dangerous. I want it to be safe and that perspective Breaking things really wasn’t part of the engineering Panetta approaches much in her mindset back then.” life from a different perspective.

One example happened during For example, student engineers her PhD research – the ferric 25 are taught to make things work. x-ray accident. Her company’s For Panetta, a more interesting computer was running the x-ray engineering challenge is what does it machine with third-party software take to break the design? that was the interface. During the

Early in her days at DEC, she machine’s first few operations, it designed a test that “fried an entire overdosed five patients who later computing clock module. I watched died from excess radiation exposure. the smoke come out of the board.

“After the first one, you might This is one of the big main frames think everything stops,” notes and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m going Panetta. “The thinking was that it to be fired.’” was just a fluke. But I asked how

Instead, the management gave many people have to die before you her an award because they felt it was realize there’s a system problem better if they found a flaw then the here?”

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Women in Engineering

What had happened was that no one looked at the cross interactions between the hardware and software.

Engineers designed the computer.

Software people designed the software and the x-ray people designed the x-ray.

“Nobody looked at those cross interactions,” she says. “My PhD thesis was on how multiple, modal systems interact and designing a system based on the data from my digital twin model.”

Panetta thinks education on breaking a design goes beyond dealing with fraud, phishing scams, and other security issues.

Unfortunately, professors tend to penalize students for breaking something.

“I had a conversation with Steve Wozniak a couple of weeks ago and he talked about how when he was at his university, he hacked into the system and he found a flaw in it and they penalized him for that. We need to train our students on how to find flaws and prevent them in our systems. You need to be able to see it and understand it, because if you don’t understand how people are going to break it, you’re not going to be able to protect it. We need more courses on white hat hacking.”

Connection While the impact women engineers can have can get them into this field, the isolation, lack of support, and the reluctance to sell their accomplishments to others lead many women to leave it.

Finding an organization or group that offers connection can be the motivation to stay in engineering.

Notes, Panetta, “I’m used to operating in an all-male environment but at the same time, when I get the opportunity to be in a room with more than one woman, more than myself, it’s great and you also know the experiences you share.”

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Panetta currently serves as the awards board chair for IEEE, as well as being the vice-president of the Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society. IEEE has more than 39 different societies and different disciplines. She has been a member of many of them, including robotics and automation, sigma processing, education, and of course, the computer society.

While each society focuses on a specific technology, “we all work together because everything is so cross-disciplinary these days that you can’t really just be in one field.

Even if I’m in robotics, I still have to know artificial intelligence and machine learning and sensors and programming. It doesn’t matter what society you’re in.

“Plus, I get to work on the Humanitarian Activities Committee and I’m the project chair. I get to look at these great proposals from student groups all around the world that are responding to COVID and coming up with technology and sanitation and automatic robots to do things for us. It’s a great way to be on the ground floor to see the newest technology coming out and that’s why I love it, because I probably learned about asteroid mining long before people even knew that was a thing. I’m making rocket fuel from water. You say that to people and they look at you like you’re really crazy, but it’s not science fiction. It’s being done and I get to talk about it and how it’s being done and that all comes from IEEE.”

Panetta thinks recruiting more women in non-traditional fields, like engineering will still experience challenges. “We’re still totally underrepresented in the fields. The other thing is I really want to put a shout out that women need to support women. That’s something that I hear about. Some women like

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being the only woman in an area.

And I find that as I get older, I look at some of the younger women, and I see that they’re not supportive.

But it’s important to build a core of community of women that will stick with you through thick and thin through life. That’s really what you want, colleagues that stick with you.

“Sometimes I’ve helped others and then been shocked when they just totally discounted everything I did for them. But you can’t do things for people expecting them to do anything for you in return. You help because at the end of the day, you need to live with yourself and you need to be proud of what you’ve done. I can truly say that from all the things and relationships that I’ve built in IEEE and all the women that I’ve promoted within IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine for the interviews or connections, or using my network to connect them, that I’m really proud of that. And I don’t think I would have learned how to do that so effectively, to pick up the phone and call a total stranger and get them on a project if IEEE hadn’t built that recipe in my heart.

The need to listen Panetta’s involvement with IEEE has also added to her leadership skills.

“Everybody needs a voice, but sometimes the loudest voice in the room is the one that everybody listens to,” she notes.

“For some people, it’s hard to speak up, especially for people who aren’t outspoken, and have their voice heard or valued. Now, everybody says, ‘Oh, we operate by consensus,’ I’m sorry but when you get 30 people in the room, consensus is really not going to happen.

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Women in Engineering

time that when you give your idea in a meeting, it goes back around and some guy repeats it and now it’s his idea.

“But if you say, ‘Well, wait a minute. That’s what I just said,’ well, now you don’t look like a team player. We have a leadership skill that helps us handle when somebody is getting cut off or taking over somebody else’s idea.

I’m going to say, ‘Well, you and Sue agree because Sue just said that and I think that’s good because we’re leaning towards a trend of people congregating towards Sue’s idea.’ Or, I’ll say, ‘Excuse me, I’d like to hear the rest of her sentence, please. I’d like to hear the rest of her thought, please.’ That outside reaffirmation from someone other

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than the person that proposed the idea helps keep things in check.

“I do this for students who are in a program because even faculty will cut others off. I’ve had my students tell me I’m wrong all the time. But then they have to defend their point, right?

“You can’t be creative if you’re stifling that inner voice. You can’t. I think those are my lessons learned.”

Involvement with IEEE has given Panetta opportunities to see future technology. “It has taught me how to pivot. And the support for women is a huge factor. It’s more than just giving us opportunities. It’s more than just saying, “Well, we’ll give you these responsibilities.” It’s also knowing how to engage and respect and value people’s voices.”

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Women in Engineering

Accepting your differences Leslie Langnau • Senior Contributing Editor

One issue that frequently comes up for women who are educated as engineers is dealing with the idea that you are different; different from other women, different from male engineers, different from society’s expectations of you.

Jill Tietjen, an electrical engineer with more than 40 years of experience in the electric utility industry, long ago accepted her differences, and, sort of revels in them.

“I think it was very helpful that I was a girl scout, played the violin in an orchestra, and that I was always different growing up. I was doing jigsaw puzzles when I was two years old, and I was the shortest kid in class all the way through. I didn’t live in the right neighborhood. I was Jewish—in Virginia. And Jewish in Virginia, by the way, in the ‘50s and ‘60s meant that you couldn’t use the yacht club. I’m the oldest of four and the only one that is not a trained sailor because that rule was still in place when I was old enough to start sailing classes. But my sister and two younger brothers are champion sailors. I was always different. I was always the smart kid. I was always weird.”

But being different never stopped her. She served as the national president of the Society of Women Engineers, has been involved with IEEE women in engineering, and is currently writing about women in history who have made scientific and engineering discoveries.

Tietjen also sits on two boards, one an electric utility in Georgia that recently appointed a woman as CEO, and the other one an engineering firm in Denver.

An engineering beginning Tietjen’s dad was a PhD engineer, working at NASA at the Langley Research Center (where the events covered in the movie Hidden Figures took place).

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Jill Tietjen Electrical Engineer

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Electricity is being provided exactly as it needs to be provided, exactly as if nothing else is happening right now. There are hundreds of thousands of people who work to make sure that happens. Electricity has to be provided. It’s actually an obligation.

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As the oldest of four children of a federal government employee who wanted to send all four of his children to college, she was told that she would attend an in-state school.

Prior to college, Tietjen had a small career as a babysitter for several of her Dad’s coworkers. At 16, she was given a book on Fortran, one of the earlier computer programming languages.

“That’s what I did when I babysat, I learned Fortran. So, I saw all those engineers, but I never saw a woman as an engineer. I’m one of the first 10 women to graduate in engineering from the University of Virginia, and we were our own role models.

The University of Virginia admitted women as undergraduates for the first time in the fall of 1970. Tietjen graduated from high school in 1972. Her guidance counselor discouraged her from applying because she didn’t think Tietjen would get in.

Fortunately, Tietjen ignored that advice, applied and was accepted as a math major in the College of Arts and Sciences.

“Nobody told me that with the talents, abilities, and the skillset that I had, that I should consider engineering as a career, or that I should pursue an engineering education. But I loved calculus, so I filled out my application as a math major for the College of Arts and Sciences.

“I placed out of a semester of English and a semester of calculus, which is a very unusual combination.

Halfway through my first semester, I could see what the kids in engineering were doing, the kind of classes they were taking. There were some engineering girls on my hall and I knew that was what I wanted to do. I was initially a math major. But there was an applied math major in the school of engineering. So, I became an applied math major with a minor in electrical engineering. I called home on the payphone in the hall of my dormitory to speak to my parents. At first, they

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thought I was calling because I was pregnant, but it was worse than that. I had transferred to engineering.

“Mom said, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ But Dad was absolutely ecstatic. I graduated in four years with applied math and a minor in electrical engineering. I belonged.

That was where I needed to be.

That was where I fit. That was where my skillset was.

“There were seven girls in my class. No, we didn’t blend in the class. We didn’t have any female professors. Did I know there weren’t any women in engineering? Did I know that the first year that the percentage of women in engineering in the US reached 1% was 1972? No, I just thought there were no women in engineering at the University of Virginia because there were no women at the University of Virginia. And then I went into the workforce and went, “Oh my goodness, holy cow!”

“It was a good experience for me though, being at the University, because it prepared me to be different. No matter what I did, I wasn’t going to fit in. I couldn’t, because I wasn’t the norm.”

While it’s a common comment that there’s perceptual bias against women in engineering fields, Tietjen’s experience with two teasing, merciless brothers prepared her to work alongside men. “I was already very used to male humor, the badgering, the back and forth, how to deal with it, how to handle it, how not to get upset about it, how to give it back.”

Keeping the lights on Today, Tietjen works in the electric utility industry, which she loves.

She’s especially proud of the fact that during this pandemic, utility companies have kept the electricity supply coming.

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Women in Engineering

“Electricity is being provided exactly as it needs to be provided, exactly as if nothing else is happening right now. There are hundreds of thousands of people who work to make sure that happens. Electricity has to be provided. It’s actually an obligation.”

Tietjen describes herself as a planner, which helps with her job of plant development. These huge facilities have hundreds of millions of dollars invested, which requires a lot of planning and documentation.

Often, both written and oral testimony are required, which Tietjen handles. After the plants are built, they are put in rate base, which she testifies to so that the power plant is certified.

Leadership skills One would think that such projects build leadership skills, but Tietjen says her leadership skills came more from the volunteering she did through the Society of Women Engineers.

“When you work with volunteers, you do not have the option to hire or fire. So, you must persuade people to help with your project, whether it’s establishing a scholarship fund, raising the money for the scholarship, and so on. You have to persuade and motivate people to want to work with you. During those efforts, I learned budgeting skills, networking skills, facilitating strategic planning skills, and how to work with other people. I learned all of those things through my nonprofit activities, but in many ways those experiences supported and enhanced my career development.”

The most important communication skill she learned was listening.

“You need to listen to what a person says, pay attention to how they feel, notice how they’re reacting, and understand also that people don’t hear what you say. I learned early that you need to verify what they heard you say. I had a person that

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was working for me and I gave her instructions. And then I asked, “Now, what did I just tell you that I wanted you to do?” And she told me, and it wasn’t even close to what I thought I had told her I wanted her to do.

That listening, that communication, and valuing everyone on the team are critical. Everyone is important.

“I was in a work situation back in the day when you actually had the word processing staff type your reports and testimony. I was traveling and I needed something immediately. The only reason I got it done was because I had always treated the word processing staff with respect. I treated them with value. I understood the important role that they were playing. And I thanked them, appreciated them for what they were doing.”

Engineering failures “I’ve had plenty of failures, but I don’t know that I would consider any of them engineering failures.

“My perspective has been that I contributed in some way to a situation. So, I want to figure out how to fix what I’m doing wrong, and I want to not make those same mistakes again. So, what is it that I can do differently? How can I learn from the situation? I’m going to make mistakes. I’m human. Let’s just hope I make different mistakes.

Let’s not make that same mistake again.

One “engineering failure” Tietjen mentions is the low number of women entering and staying in engineering.

“I’ve been working to increase the number of women and percentage of women in engineering for 40 years, along with many men, university programs, organizations, even government initiatives. And we’re not there.

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“I was on the steering committee for the celebration of women in engineering for the NAE, the National Academy of Engineering, 1997 and 1999. And our motto at that time was 50-50 by 2020.

“There are so many reasons why we have not reached higher numbers. If we really knew the answer, we could fix it. One of the reasons I’m a big supporter of the National Center for Women in Information Technology, which was an outgrowth of a conference that I helped organized in 2002, was because I thought, ‘Okay, if they can fix this problem for computer science and information technology, we’ll just take the strategies that they used and then apply them to all the engineering and hard sciences.’

That was 2002. That organization is almost 20 years old, and the last time I saw the numbers on computer science and information technology, they were going down. Women started at about 40% in computing or some high number. I could have the number wrong, and then it was under 10% last I heard. Girls are 40% of the STEM workforce based on ability. But in developed countries where women have choices, they choose other things.”

Clearly there’s a need not being met by companies and industry to keep women, who are well-trained in engineering, in their fields.

“I’ve been the only woman on the Georgia Transmission Board off and on for 24 years. There’s now another woman on the board, the first one since 2010. I do activities for the women in the company, because I think it’s important to be that role model, and to see that you can persevere.”

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Women in Engineering

the percentages of women in engineering. “We’re pretty much in the same place. I think the career is wonderful. I think it’s important. I think it’s beneficial. I think engineers do incredibly important work. I think we need diversity of all kinds in order to make projects and products that work for everyone.

“But there are plenty of other choices, plenty of other ways to make money, to support your family, to get satisfaction. Very few people are one dimensional.”

Society has long held a opinion of which gender does what. “Men are groomed by their parents and society to be the breadwinner. They need to stick it out in their career choice because they see themselves as having to provide for their family, and so on.

“Women have not been encouraged to have careers. And when they do, they have additional responsibilities. “There are so many things that happen in their lives.

They’re the ones that end up being responsible for almost all of it, kids, elder parents, husbands or partners focused on their own career.

“I have a very dear friend I met through the board of trustees at the engineering school, at the University of Virginia. And one time she took me aside and she said, “Jill, I couldn’t stay in engineering. I have three kids and my husband was so work-focused, the only way I could do it was if I stepped back from engineering.” She became a teacher.

But she apologized to me.”

The support structures to encourage and then support women in engineering are not as strong as they need to be. It’s the women who are expected to pull back from their careers when family and other issues arise.

The pandemic may finally shift this perspective a bit. Tietjen thinks one positive effect will be that anyone, man or woman, will be able

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to work from home as needed.

“We just spent almost two years from home and so we know we can do it. Many of the businesses that are doing work from home are finding out that they’re actually more productive. So, nobody can say you can’t be productive working from home.

“From that perspective, that might make it a little bit easier for women and men with family responsibilities. A father might want to attend a parent teacher conference or a child’s afterschool game. After the pandemic is over, if anybody raises an eyebrow about that, you just have to look at them as the employee and go, “Well, where were you for the last pandemic years?”

Mentoring “I’ve spent more than 40 years working to encourage more women and young people to be engineers.

I just feel so strongly that young women need encouragement to consider this great field. I didn’t get that encouragement. People didn’t tell me I needed to do that. I didn’t get appropriate advice at key points along the way.

I just think that it’s so important for these young women to have the opportunity to know that this is a wonderful, marvelous career. I actually say, and one of my friends, Lynn, who is a college Dean, I just say “Lynn, everyone should be an engineer.” And she just went “Well, Jill, I don’t think everyone’s cut out to be an engineer.” And I went, “No, that it’s a possibility.”

“If every student took enough math starting in eighth grade with algebra, so that they at least were not precluded from the field.

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Women in Engineering

Tiger Mom earns her stripes Aimee Kalnoskas • Contributing Editor

Amy Wang: world-class technologist with a B.E. from Tsinghua University, an M.S. and Ph.D. from Columbia, and Co-Founder and V.P. of Cogniac, a computer vision A.I. services provider, says she was “tricked” into engineering.

This self-described Tiger Mom (to everyone except her 7-year-old daughter, although she disagrees) is known for asking a lot of questions. Appropriately, her Chinese name is Wang Hua Yan – making her initials WHY. So, this was our opportunity to turn the tables on Amy in this interview and ask not only “why”, but what, how, and when. We started by asking how she got into engineering, and that’s where the “trickery” came in.

Not the right thing but for the wrong reason “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a mathematician,” she said. “I wanted to invent some fundamental mathematic theories that help humans to understand the world better. And when the time came to go to college, my parents knew it would be hard to find a job if you were studying math. So, they tricked me into applying for the top university, Tsinghua University in China, for engineering. It’s like MIT in China. And so, I ended up in the engineering school.”

Upset and disappointed, Amy decided she would become a mathematician anyway and proceeded to take a lot of math classes.

Gradually, she realized she wasn’t very good at math or, at least, quite a few people in her classes were much better than her at the subject.

Amy continued, “So I sort of gave up and got my degree in engineering.

After college, I came to the states, got my Ph.D. at Columbia in computer

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Dr. Amy Wang

Co-Founder and V.P. of Systems • Cogniac

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networks, and then joined Symbol Technologies’ R&D department as the first female engineer in a small R&D team. And all this time, I felt like a failure. I was never good enough to be a mathematician and ended up an engineer. But when people would ask me what do you do, I would say, ‘Oh, I’m an engineer.

They would reply, ‘Wow, you must be very smart because engineering is so hard.’ But I would tell them no, no, engineering is very easy. I just wasn’t smart enough to be a mathematician.”

The realization that she found engineering easy because she was good at it finally clicked, and that realization changed Amy’s life.

“In my eyes, I became an

with “My sense is that…”. Those ‘senses’ led to Ruckus’ miniaturized wireless adapter that “rocked” the WiFi world at CES 2007, and, says Amy, to an even greater A.I. platform at Cogniac that she feels will spearhead the next industrial revolution powered by A.I.

Of her mentor, Amy says, “Over time, I realized that Bill is one of few true ‘first principles thinkers’ who mastered many mental models of the world, with a particular emphasis on building products. I didn’t work with Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. Personally, I think Bill, with a keen sense of user experience and relentless drive to make something great, is a kind, humble version of them combined.

“Self-motivation to succeed and learn will often be a leader’s biggest strength.” engineer because I wasn’t good enough at math,” she said. “But then a cloud lifted, and I realized that I am good at engineering because which is why I find it easy. And now I am a technologist because I love realizing the potential of engineering, electronics, and maths combined.”

Mighty mentor Amy counts herself lucky to be surrounded by engineers and their families but still points to a mentor who founded Cogniac with her.

“Bill Kish has been a very close friend and inspiration throughout the two decades we have known each other,” she said. “I have worked with brilliant engineers and researchers throughout my life, but Bill is uniquely gifted with great intuitions for navigating complex real-world issues.”

When confronted with difficult questions new to him, Amy says that Bill often starts his sentence

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And, she adds with a smile, “And yes, nice geniuses do exist, and it is great to work with them.”

Just ask Mixing outstanding mentorship and enabling brilliant people to do their best to create and implement new technology fuel Amy’s drive. It’s also a key indicator of her leadership abilities. Her mantra? “Never fall out of love with what you are doing.”

“Even as a leader, you have to enjoy what you do, and, for me, I have always focused first on what I am good at and use that ability and confidence to support my learning in areas where I can improve,” she explains. “There are loads of other traits that are helpful in leadership, including empathy, decisiveness, and ambition, but the self-motivation to succeed and learn will often be a leader’s biggest strength.”

“I like to think that my teamwork and motivation to

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succeed allows my colleagues and staff to see that if you believe in something hard enough, there are no hurdles that we cannot overcome,” she said. Of course, her team gets asked a lot of questions and expects to find the answers to find success, just like her.

The Tiger Mom at home is also the tiger leader at work. Amy never stops asking questions. It’s second nature for her – and not just because the initials of her Chinese name – Wang Hua Yan – are W-H-Y. It’s also one of her best tips.

“I’m always asking people, ‘Have you done this” Have you done that?’ It’s like a Tiger Mom in China.

I’m always speaking up,” she said.

“I never feel like, ‘Oh, am I stupid asking that question?’ Just ask the question. That can help a lot even if it is just to see the changes it invokes in people.”

In Amy’s opinion, being the only female in the room and asking questions is not a challenge – it’s a unique opportunity.

“I always think the good thing about being the rare female is that you are very popular,” she said.

“Because you are standing out naturally, you can take advantage of that to make yourself more heard, because you are there, you are different, and there are people – not all – who are receptive to that.”

Success through real diversity There are enough real-life success stories to prove that diversity is a positive thing, whether in teams, departments, engineering labs, or leadership positions. As the co-founder of Cogniac, Amy felt she could probably attract people of diverse backgrounds because they saw diversity in the founders.

Diverse backgrounds tend to breed a diverse workforce of people from different cultures, not just in the context of male or female.

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diversity we have in the technology industry,” she said, “the more we will all benefit - gender, race, nationality, background, etc. They all help us understand the world from a different perspective, which can only make us better. Second, it’s a journey, and there’s no doubt that engineering is currently a male-dominated environment.

Throughout my career, I have seen more and more women take leadership roles in engineering, technology, and A.I. More role models (and publications like this) will shine a light on women who are succeeding in the engineering space, and that can only be a good thing. Cogniac is part of the SAP.iO Foundry program based out of New York, for example, which focuses on supporting minority and female founders in technology, so that’s a great initiative to be a part of.”

When asked what women, specifically, bring to the table, Amy’s mind goes back to her mathematical roots. Fifty percent of the U.S. population is female, and are 50 percent of them involved in engineering?

“I need to come up with a theory, a mathematical equation to help quantify what you lose by not involving that 50 percent,” she said. “Its impact is huge in every respect. For example, I tend to ask for different perspectives from multiple people. Females do more of that versus many of my male colleagues, who tend to have solutions immediately. I think that females tend to ask for more opinions. A lot of my female colleagues would check with me and ask, Should I do this? Is this the right thing to do? And I see a pattern. If you check with multiple sources, you make a more informative decision – and that’s a very good habit. Again, I think the impact of including everyone from different backgrounds is huge from many

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Despite the relatively low numbers of women in engineering now, Amy sees STEM programs and technology itself opening up more opportunities for women earlier on than in the past and pushing towards a tipping point.

“I think more parents are involved in helping their kids doing STEM program,” she said.

“I signed my daughter up for this STEM program, “Innovation for Youth” in Silicon Valley and they are helping girls to understand what engineering is. That’s what the session is all about – around engineering concepts, design, and then implementation. It’s amazing. So, I feel like the world is contributing, making these things happen. Everyone wants to jump in.”

A final roar from this Tiger Mom comes from a principle she always lives by, and one everyone should ask.

“Do I make the world a better place?’

October 2021 www.designworldonline.com

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Angela Williams Senior Quality Engineer

Accumold B.S. Industrial Engineering University of Iowa

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What first drew you to engineering? / When did you first know you wanted to be an engineer?

Growing up, both of my parents had jobs in a local factory. My dad worked as a test engineer and would often get called into work on off shift hours for support. He would let me tag along when he knew it would be a quick fix and then take me to see different parts of the factory and teach me about the manufacturing processes. I still find joy in touring factories and especially learning about manufacturing processes that I haven’t previously seen. I also enjoyed math and science in high school, so it seemed like a natural next step for me to study engineering in college.

Give us an example of your involvement in: a design project, a product launch, the development of a new technology, or the adoption of a new technology or process.

In my current role, I am involved in various product launches with multiple customers.

I find that it is important to build a strong sense of teamwork with both internal and external team members. I always strive for full transparency with the entire team and listening to everyone in the room. It’s important to pull out ideas and experiences of all present. In doing so, it allows the team to fully understand the obstacle and work together to tackle it as quickly and seamlessly as possible.

Describe your biggest engineering challenge. How did you conquer it or resolve it, or what was the outcome?

I’ve encountered many technically challenging problems throughout my career.

However, looking back, the biggest challenges are those that take place in high pressure situations that involve interpersonal skills, such as working with an upset customer or a supplier who cannot fulfill commitments. Those situations always involved traveling to those places and working with a team of people. When everyone is on the same page working towards the same goal it can be exciting to implement change and move forward to resolve challenges. I’ve seen the most successful solutions come to fruition in working sessions with team members who are open to meaningful change. Of course, when there are certain types of personalities that are present in those meetings, I usually remind myself of something my parents always said: “a polished rock is still a rock.” Just because someone in the room can spin something and present it in a more pleasant way doesn’t necessarily make that the better way. My pragmatic approach is to avoid the “spin” and keep everyone moving forward.

For the rest of Angela Williams’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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2021 Women in Engineering

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Shannon Steward Sales Manager

Advantech, Cincinnati, Ohio Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Miami University (Oxford, Ohio)

Shannon has worked for the Advantech Cincinnati, Ohio office for the past 5 years. She began her career as an Inside Sales Engineer and recently moved into her current role as a Sales Manager. She specializes in the Embedded Single Board Computer line and one of the favorite parts about her job is the variety of customers, industries, and applications she’s gotten to work with in her time with Advantech.

Outside of work she enjoys rooting on the FC Cincinnati soccer team, trying new restaurants in the area, (attempting) DIY home projects, and traveling with her husband.

Talk about the culture at your company. What makes it inclusive or supportive of women in engineering and automation?

I would describe Advantech’s company culture as collaborative, welcoming, and respectful. When I first started as an Inside Sales Engineer my manager was a woman and her manager was a woman. So from day one I saw women in my company not only holding engineering positions but also taking strides to move upward in their career path. Throughout my time here I have seen many women work in various engineering roles and feel empowered to take on new challenges.

What first drew you to engineering and this industry?

Going into college I started out as a chemistry major but found myself wishing I had more math classes to take. After some research I figured out that Chemical Engineering added the math courses I was looking for. While Organic Chemistry really made me question this decision I stuck it out for the promise of having a job right out of college. So I would say I was initially drawn to the degree because I enjoy math but I ultimately stuck it out because I felt it was my best return on investment.

Describe your biggest career challenge. How did you solve it — or what was the outcome or lesson learned?

My biggest career challenge was right before I took my current job. I felt very unsure of which direction I saw myself going and for once in my life didn’t have a blueprint for the next few years. I was considering all different options for my next job and the outcome was finding my current position! I decided to put myself into an industry I knew nothing about and see if I could make it. It taught me that sometimes it’s okay to not have a plan and take a leap of faith.

What career advice would you give to your younger self?

Your career choices don’t have to make sense to anyone but yourself. Stand strong in your convictions, challenge yourself to always learn new things, and read more books.

For the rest of Shannon Steward’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Miriam Prieto Project Lead

Maximatecc, a CentroMotion Family Brand Industrial Engineering

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What first drew you to engineering?

While exploring my career path at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez seven years ago, I began to understand the broad spectrum of opportunities available in the engineering field in an industrial city like Juarez, Mexico. I realized the ample possibilities of a career in the field of industrial engineering, and its different branches and applications. The versatility is what appealed to me the most.

Were there any influential engineers (women or men) who helped shaped your decision to become an engineer?

My aunt and uncle, who developed their respective careers in manufacturing, were ultimately very influential in my career decision. My uncle, who has now retired, was an engineer and worked in the manufacturing industry in Juarez. He always talked about how he enjoyed working with different processes and helping the company with improvements. Additionally, my aunt is an industrial engineer, and I saw how successful she became. They inspired me to pursue this path.

What barriers do women face in today’s engineering world, if any?

In the early stages of my career, I believe respect for a woman’s skills lies at the heart of the barriers women face in the field of engineering. I think women often don’t receive proper recognition as engineers. There is differentiation for women in their professional careers, compared to male colleagues, peers and managers, in terms of tasks, responsibilities and making decisions. Women may be relegated to support or secretarial roles and second guessed when taking charge and executing plans of action.

Describe your biggest engineering challenge.

My biggest hurdle involved coordinating multidisciplinary teams. In my role, it is always challenging managing a team because it requires some knowledge of each of the participant’s discipline. This knowledge is critical to be able to determine scope and deliverables for each role, to ensure the project is successful from concept to completion.

In my current role as project lead for maximatecc, a global company specializing in operator information and control solutions for industrial vehicle manufacturers, in Juarez, Miriam, I’m proud to lead cross-functional teams to launch new products, implement engineering changes, develop projects for new customers and coordinate activities from kick off to launch. I know I have helped my team improve, using open communication and a very structured project planning process.

For the rest of Miriam Prieto’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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2021 Women in Engineering

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Autumn Richardson Senior Manager, IT-Platform Ops & Modernization

Digi-Key Electronics BA Physics, 2010 Bemidji State University BS Computer Science, 2010 Bemidji State University

Autumn Richardson is the senior manager, IT – platform ops & modernization, for Digi-Key Electronics.

She is a strategic and passionate IT leader who enjoys developing solutions to interesting problems in innovative ways.

Autumn earned her bachelors’ degrees in physics and computer science from Bemidji State University in 2010. While still an undergraduate student, she completed an internship through NASA’s Planetary Geophysics and Geology Undergraduate Research Program and was invited to present her research at the 39th NASA Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in 2008.

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Talk about the culture at your company. What makes it inclusive or supportive of women in engineering and automation?

Digi-Key has a large group of amazing women mentors and role models, who are very accessible. I like that I am not the first female in the organization to shift from a software engineering role to a leadership position – I have others who have demonstrated that path before me, who I can look to for guidance.

Digi-Key values its female leaders, and having those opportunities to see that leadership in action, along with the opportunities to learn new skills, explore other positions within the organization and take different approaches to challenges, creates a great culture for women.

When I joined Digi-Key as an intern, I was immediately working on projects that had a direct contribution to the success of the business. I felt valued right away, knowing that I was a collaborator who had a voice in shaping the direction we were going, solving real-life problems and engaging with business partners.

Describe a recent company project (in which you were involved) that went particularly well. How did you and your team go about ensuring success?

Digi-Key had recently shifted its software engineering organization to an Agile approach – a faster-paced, highly iterative process that helps scale and develop features more quickly. In software development, each time you change any code, you need to test it to make sure it’s working properly, as well as doing regression testing to make sure that previous functionality is also still working properly.

Our teams were doing a large amount of manual testing, rather than automating that process. I jumped at the chance to help that automation team transition into a program that could scale. I was able to empower the members of the team as automation experts and pair them with teams across the department to teach them the technical skills they needed to script and code automated testing. We built out a Center of Excellence and a Test Engineering career path, ultimately investing in programming skills and growing the partnership between testing and software development.

For the rest of Autumn Richardson’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Toha Poveda Application Engineering Manager Sensor Products

Dodge Mechanical Power Transmission Company, Inc. B.S. Mechanical Engineering and M.S. Engineering Management, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Toha Poveda is currently the Application Engineering Manager for Sensor Products at Dodge Mechanical Power Transmission Company, Inc. She specializes in smart sensors for mounted bearings, enclosed gearing, and other power transmission products. She is a native of Ecuador and is fluent in Spanish and English. She started her career with Dodge as a Mechanical Designer and quickly moved into an Application Engineering role on the Bearing and PT Components teams. She took on the responsibility of supporting the new Dodge Smart Sensor for Mounted Bearings product line. She has received an ABB Above and Beyond Award for her outstanding customer service, and her peers also awarded her with the 2019 Application Engineering Excellence Award.

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Talk about the culture at your company. What makes it inclusive or supportive of women in engineering and automation?

Managers of women engineers play an important role in supporting women professionally and personally. It is important for them to understand that we may have personal responsibilities, such as the great joy of being a mother, which are essential aspects of our lives. I can proudly say that I am the mother of three beautiful children and my professional career has not stopped me from being there for them. I have been blessed with managers and a company culture that understand my career and family are important to me. My managers have always been flexible in their approach and supported me when needed. A company that supports a work-life balance is the key to attract more women engineers in the workplace. It is also important to note that it is not only a company’s responsibility to create a supportive environment for women in engineering, it is also our responsibility to push harder to make our opinions heard.

Describe a recent company project (in which you were involved) that went particularly well. How did you and your team go about ensuring success?

I recently implemented a new tool that provides us with the ability to support our customers virtually. Its embedded guiding tools are great for quick resolution to customer requests. I learned about this new tool from a webinar that another internal business unit presented. They had been using it successfully with their customers for some time. I studied and tested the tool myself and immediately identified other departments in my company that could benefit from it. I started the project by building a diverse, cross-functional team. I engaged the engineer that presented the internal webinar, as I needed her support to allow us to borrow some licenses to test. The team includes application engineers, sales engineers, and solutions architects. During the testing period, we ran into a few issues with the firewall and getting the link set up between our engineers and our customers.

I was in constant communication with the team, the appropriate managers, and our network team to ensure we could remove the barriers and test this tool appropriately. It was a successful test and we have decided to move forward and purchase our own licenses. We are deep into the quoting and implementation phase and expect to launch the technology soon. The key to this project was ensuring that we had the right people on the team who bought into the technology and that there were open and frequent lines of communication between all parties.

For the rest of Toha Poveda’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Tobi Cornell VP, Distribution

Kruvand Associates, Inc.

Tobi Cornell graduated from Texas Christian University in 1994 and entered the electronics industry that same year working for a Manufacturer’s Rep firm, DJ Sales (Dallas, TX), in an Inside Sales position. She went into Outside Sales after 2-½ years before the firm was acquired by Kruvand Assoc (Dallas, TX) in 1999. She continued in field sales at Kruvand for these past 22 years and counting with an account base in the Dallas/Ft Worth area, and was appointed VP of Distribution during this time to continue to foster and grow the close relationships with channel partners in the industry.

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Tell us about your company and how they support your involvement with ECIA. Kruvand is a Manufacturer’s Rep firm located in the Dallas, TX area serving the states of TX, OK, AR, LA and the country of Mexico. We have just under 40 employees located in the US and Mexico territory that we serve. Our involvement with the ECIA began early on as one of the original reps to join the organization. We also always attend the ECIA Executive Conferences in the Chicago area each year. My company is very supportive of my individual involvement with the ECIA’s various task force activities, which over the years have included me working with the groups that helped create the new Design Reg form, the planning of Regional ECIA meetings when they were held in Dallas, and most recently the DR Task Force to research the Design Registration program/system in our industry.

Describe a recent project with ECIA (in which you were involved). What were you most proud of or what is most notable about this project?

The most recent project has been the DR Task Force. I began when it formed in early 2020 and spent that full year working with the ECIA team and our other task force members who came from Distribution, Rep firms, and Manufacturing companies. Together our team came up with survey questions for the industry, took the first long draft of surveys ourselves, paired down that research and survey, and then helped recruit others to take the revised surveys. Finally, we analyzed all the data and categorized it for the ECIA Board’s review. When 2021 came around, I elected to stay with this DR committee as it entered the second phase of research, and we welcomed many new members to the task force this year from different Distributors, Manufacturer’s Reps, and Manufacturers. I must say that having the history participating in the first phase has made this second phase very satisfying, as I get to see something that has been discussed for one full year move on to the next full year of evolution…and it continues to be very eye opening! By the end of the year our project will come to a close with what should be a fascinating and amazing outlook of the future of the DR Program in the Electronics Industry.

Describe your biggest career challenge.

I think the biggest career challenge would be facing the years of drastic change. Whether it be a market segment decline, a large product line loss, or a natural disaster. I think right now we’re seeing the biggest career challenge in history as we all face and deal with COVID and how it has changed our lives. It is the biggest challenge I’ve faced, yet it’s also an opportunity to grow, to rethink how we do things, and to come out of this stronger on the other side.

For the rest of Tobi Cornell’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Juliet Rene Fajardo Director of National Distribution Sales

TDK-Lambda Corporation Bachelor of Business Administration (B.B.A.), University of Phoenix-Southern California Campus

Juliet Rene Fajardo is an experienced sales professional accomplished in managing the Distribution Sales channel for an electrical and electronic manufacturing company. In her thirty-one years, she has created and implemented strategies on a national and global basis resulting in excellent customer service, increased employee and customer engagement, and improved financial results.

Skilled in Sales Management, Operations, Power Supplies, Purchasing, Customer Service and Manufacturing. She offers enthusiastic leadership skills with the ability to motivate and lead teams in problem solving, negotiating, and relationship building at all levels. She is also experienced with the Japanese business culture.

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Tell us about your company and how they support your involvement with ECIA. TDK-Lambda Corporation, a subsidiary of TDK Corporation, is a global supplier and recognized leader of power conversion products suited to many applications including; medical, industrial, broadcast, defense, factory automation and LED/LCD signage. With global sales in excess of $500 million, we have design, manufacturing, and sales locations in all five key geographic locations: Japan, China, EMEA, ASEAN, and the Americas. TDK-Lambda’s view is a “Power Supply” is more than just an electronic device. It is the “heart” of our customers’ systems and the core element of safety and reliability. This belief drives us to support our customers through all stages of the product life cycle; product development (design-in assistance, EMC, standards, safety certification), introduction (speed, logistics), growth (scale, cost), maturity (cost), and decline (EOL strategy, post support). Our history of providing reliable and innovative power supplies has earned us the reputation of being a trusted world-class organization.

TDK-Lambda has been very supportive of my involvement in ECIA, through industry events such as EDS held in Las Vegas and the executive conference held in Chicago, as well as my participation is various ECIA sub committees. These forums are great for establishing and strengthening industry relationships.

What first drew you to the industry?

In my early career years, I worked in purchasing at Applied Materials. It was a great experience that really exposed me to this wonderful electronic component industry.

This early experience opened my eyes to the technology innovation, as well as the role electronics plays in many facets of our daily lives.

Describe your biggest career challenge.

One of the biggest career challenges was balancing my “work vs personal life” while obtaining my college education, maintaining a full time job, and raising my two (2) young daughters.

What career advice would you give to your younger self?

Dream big, work hard, and don’t be afraid to take on new challenges.

For the rest of Juliet Rene Fajardo’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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2021 Women in Engineering

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Teri Ivaniszyn Vice President, Distribution, Operational Excellence & Trade Compliance

Digi-Key Electronics BA Business, 1994 University of Michigan BA Communications, 1994 University of Michigan

Teri Ivaniszyn is vice president of distribution, operational excellence and trade compliance for Digi-Key Electronics. Ivaniszyn oversees a cross-functional team of 1,800 associates who are responsible for on-time delivery of more than 25,000 daily orders to customers in 180+ countries around the world.

Since joining Digi-Key in 2013, Teri’s expertise and leadership has enhanced many operational processes, including establishing the largest Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) in the United States and the first small-package FTZ with major carriers, Custom Border and Protection (CBP) and government entities.

She has also helped implement enhanced component traceability processes, and set up COVID-19 safety programs.

Tell us about your company and how they support your involvement with ECIA. Digi-Key Electronics has always been a big supporter of ECIA. An opportunity arose about five years ago for a Digi-Key representative to join the Global Industry Practice Committee (GIPC), and our CEO Dave Doherty recommended it to me as a great opportunity to get involved.

The opportunity was perfect for me because it allowed me to learn more about the electronic component industry, as well as learn about best practices and operational excellence from peers in the industry. Joining this committee was an excellent fit, as I could jump in and be part of making a positive difference immediately – not just within my own organization, but across the entire industry.

Working with ECIA has been amazing. I have not only learned more about the industry and been able to make a difference in the industry, but I have made some lifelong friends along the way. Everybody who is involved really wants to do the right thing and do what’s good for the industry and for their people. To me, it’s been a very rewarding experience.

Describe a recent project with ECIA (in which you were involved). What were you most proud of or what is most notable about this project?

Being involved in ECIA has perhaps never been more impactful – or more important – than throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Like other members, Digi-Key’s main priority throughout this health crisis has always been our people, and making our work environments as safe and clean as possible.

Last spring, I led an ECIA committee that was focused on protecting the health and safety of employees throughout the industry – something that was very relevant and important to all ECIA members. We developed a list of best practices and procedures that members were implementing within their own companies, so they could be shared with others.

For example, a team of Digi-Key engineers developed a UV sanitization tunnel to disinfect the 8,000+ plastic totes that are used to move products around our warehouse.

We shared all the specs with other members, in case there were others who would also like to develop and implement something similar.

Initiatives like this are always so rewarding because they involve people, and keeping them safe and healthy.

For the rest of Teri Ivaniszyn’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Sarah Walter Applications Engineer

Encoder Products Company M.S. Electrical Engineering – University of Colorado, Boulder B.S. Electrical Engineering – University of Portland

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What first drew you to engineering? / When did you first know you wanted to be an engineer?

I grew up in rural Idaho and I was recruited to the University of Portland for a golf scholarship. Growing up, I’d always been a tinkerer; I loved to take things apart, figure out how they worked, and fix them. When I was choosing my major, it was between art and engineering, but I wanted to pursue a stable career, so I chose engineering.

I enjoyed my undergrad experience so much, I decided to pursue a master’s degree in a more specialized area of electrical engineering. Also, since I graduated at a time when there was an economic dip, I knew I wasn’t going to miss out on any professional opportunities.

I was accepted to several graduate programs, but I chose the University of Colorado, Boulder, where I pursued a degree in a combined program with electrical engineering and physics. I learned the fundamentals of optics and lasers, and how to build table-top optical test environments, with my work done in single wavelength applications. Many of my fellow students were working on their PhDs, but I was pursuing a shorter track to achieve a master’s degree and join the commercial working world. Working alongside a variety of students, however, was a valuable experience to learn about different types of research and cutting-edge science and technology.

Talk about the culture at your company. What makes it inclusive or supportive of women in engineering and automation?

My department is inclusive of women and I and my female colleagues are treated as equals with our male colleagues. Our input is considered and valued, and there is a definite sense of teamwork among the entire engineering group. Right now, my job is focused on customers’ applications, helping companies find the right encoder for their unique applications where a standard off-the-shelf encoder doesn’t work for them.

Describe your biggest engineering challenge. How did you conquer it or resolve it, or what was the outcome?

My biggest career challenge is helping customers who need custom solutions.

There are so many different considerations when designing industrial automation applications, often the customers aren’t sure exactly what they’re looking for in a motion feedback device. I have to pull back from an encoder view of the application to get an eagle-eye view. For instance, if a customer tells me, “We need labels applied to bottles,” I need to understand when in the process those labels are applied, and I need the specs on the application--how fast the conveyor belt is moving, how large the bottles are, what the speed of the application is, will the encoder be subject to washdown, extreme environments, etc., to determine what the best encoder solution is. It’s incredibly satisfying to get the “weird calls” and find those customers the encoder that is going to provide reliable motion feedback, day in, day out. That’s why I enjoy my job so much--I get to help fellow engineers solve problems.

For the rest of Sarah Walter’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Sowjanya Chalamkuri Vice President of Software Engineering, Manufacturing Software, GE Digital BS Tech Electronics & Communication, Jawaharial Nehru Technological University

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What first drew you to engineering? / When did you first know you wanted to be an engineer?

My first thought of pursuing engineering came when I was in high school where I started developing an interest in Math and Science. This reflected in my academics and I was performing quite well. I knew that I was going to do something good in these subjects when my high school Mathematics teacher challenged the class to solve a complex math problem – I was the only person who raised a hand and she called on me to solve the problem on the board. I was a shy girl, and it drew all my courage to stand in front of everyone to solve the problem with a very detailed explanation. That was the start; I had many more instances like that which built my self-confidence, and I became a goto-person for my classmates in these subjects. It was also nice to hear that I was now the topic of discussion in teachers’ staff meetings. I then became engaged in technical seminars and science fairs which motivated and strengthened my aspiration to pursue STEM. Give us an example of your involvement in: a design project, a product launch, the development of a new technology, or the adoption of a new technology or process.

There are quite a few challenging and exciting programs that enabled me to take risks and play out of my comfort zones. However, working with talented technology teams has made it even more enriching. One program was leading the development of the market’s first multi-modal manufacturing software product which enables discrete, process and multi-modal manufacturers to turn real-time, mission-critical production data into actionable insights. There were a lot of firsts in this product development which drove new technology adoption to re-envision a modernized user experience. We designed a scalable architecture, a new deployment model, and drove innovation with new differentiated capabilities. This product has been recognized for excellence in Continuous Processing Manufacturing by noted industry analysts. It was a proud moment for the team.

Describe your biggest engineering challenge. How did you conquer it or resolve it, or what was the outcome?

The most recent engineering challenge for one of our products was improving the ease of deployment for one of our most widely used products. We did a Kaizen workout and came up with key performance metrics to measure the deployment experience. We made incredible progress by reducing the deployment time by 90% and making the process simpler and intuitive.

For the rest of Sowjanya Chalamkuri’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Kristen Sanderson Vice President of Engineering, Grid Software

GE Digital BS Computer Science & Mathematics, Auburn University

What first drew you to engineering?

I had many interests growing up. I loved math and English and considered marketing, journalism, and architecture as career options. When I was a senior in high school, my Dad, who is a software engineer, encouraged me to take a programming class as an elective. That class opened my eyes to a brand new world of structured logic and set me on my path to Engineering. As my career has progressed, I have found ways to incorporate my other interests.

Were there any influential engineers (women or men) who helped shape your decision to become an engineer? If so, who and why?

My main inspiration was my Dad. He inspired and encouraged me to enter this field.

Both of my parents always told me that I could do anything I set my mind to and then they encouraged me to reach for the stars.

One woman engineer I really look up to is Grace Hopper. As a pioneer in software, she created the compiler and COBOL language. She was a strong woman leader who was candid and biased to action…exactly what I want to be.

Since I started my career, I look for inspiration from everyone around me. I feel strongly that there are things for us to learn from each person in our lives. I observe those around me looking for things I can learn to do to become a better person and leader.

What barriers do women face in today’s engineering world, if any?

There are still too many situations where I am the only or one of few women in the room. I am very happy to say I don’t find this in my business unit, but I still see it plenty as I work within the industry. Unfortunately, when that happens, too many women decide not to stick around, creating an even bigger gap.

Globally, there are still too many areas where women are not encouraged to study STEM subjects or pursue STEM careers. They are discouraged from leadership roles.

This is one of the areas I feel passionate about. As a leader in Engineering, I am a role model. I have and continue to focus on building a pipeline of young women in STEM through GE Girls, a GE sponsored program designed to encourage girls to explore STEM careers, and speaking both internally and externally with women. I mentor and am mentored by women. We have to keep building each other up.

For the rest of Kristen Sanderson’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Alicia Kempf Engineering Manager

Honeywell Process Solutions BA in Computer Science from the University of Delaware

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What first drew you to engineering? / When did you first know you wanted to be an engineer?

I always excelled in subjects like Math and Science when I was younger and dreamed of becoming an inventor or an architect. I loved the idea of creating something brand new, that no one had done before that could help solve people’s day-to-day problems in a way they couldn’t envision themselves.

I used to work in a T-Shirt store in the summers and we had an old timecard punch machine that was broken. It was old so the store owners wanted to throw it away and replace it. I asked if I could try to fix it so I took it apart, looked at the insides, figured out how it was supposed to work and what was wrong, and fixed it pretty quickly. I found it hugely gratifying figuring out for myself how something worked, or how it was supposed to work, and finding a way to fix it.

Were there any influential engineers (women or men) who helped shaped your decision to become an engineer? If so, who and why?

I don’t think I had any engineers who influenced my decision to become one, but I do have someone who influenced my decision to stay in engineering, which is equally important as we see a disproportionate number of women leave the field. I was fortunate enough to be mentored by an incredibly talented female Senior Software Architect at Honeywell who not only mentored me but also acted as my advocate. She really helped me excel in my career and introduced me to new opportunities. She inspired me to become a mentor myself and it is something I always recommend to aspiring engineers - Identify a mentor who can help them grow and meet their career goals.

Describe your biggest engineering challenge. How did you conquer it or resolve it, or what was the outcome?

One of my greatest challenges is working on products that have been developed and continue to evolve over time in different technologies, and maintain and continue to expand them as the original designers move to new roles. We modernize some of our solutions in newer technologies, which allows us to deliver a superior user experience and valuable new features to our customers. In the process of modernizing, we are able to facilitate valuable knowledge transfer and training between our experienced engineers and our new team members. However, we can’t modernize solutions just to rewrite existing code in a newer technology, we have to bring our customers new value in the process and that is the challenge. We have done this successfully many times in the past.

For the rest of Alicia Kempf’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Nicole Lang Product Manager

igus B.A., Psychology, Political Science, Roger Williams University J.D., Law, Roger Williams University School of Law

Instead of pursuing a potential career as a sports agent, Nicole Lang supports engineers, original equipment manufacturers and other machine building specialists solving challenges on behalf of igus, inc. She started with the Germany based manufacturer of motion plastics in entry level positions in 1998 while pursuing a college degree, and has risen to an executive role as the Product Manager for the company’s bearings.

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Talk about the culture at your company. What makes it inclusive or supportive of women in engineering and automation? igus has always made me feel like I am part of the group no matter my gender.

Although in the beginning of my career I worked primarily with males, they never treated me like I was less. Worldwide the culture at igus is that we are part of a team that shares in success. igus has always fostered an environment to facilitate growth. I’m proud to say that over the years there are more female applicants and success stories, and I am thrilled to see it.

Give us an example of your involvement in: a design project, a product launch, the development of a new technology, or the adoption of a new technology or process.

As I climbed the corporate ladder, I found the lessons I learned while studying law could also be applied in engineering. Others ask, ‘Why with a law degree are you not pursing that?’ – and my answer is no one can ever take your education away. I use those skills daily, so it wasn’t a waste. I like to think it helped enhance how I work as a product manager. I use my law degree at igus quite a bit in looking at business contracts, but at the end of the day what excites me is working on applications and helping engineers solve their problems.

I worked with a manufacturer of lab equipment who experienced contamination from bearing systems that required lubrication. The contamination affected samples. A lot of variables came into play. This was a new design for them and they used all of our methods to get the right product/material. They first started with SLS Printing to check the geometry and do actual testing which worked great, then on to machining. We later molded parts. They have since requested some other design changes to accommodate other issues with the design (unrelated to bearings). We are working with them to ensure that we can solve all of their issues and make the process as easy as possible while getting them parts that work perfectly in the application. I really appreciate what engineers do and how important their work is to society. Learning about their projects really helped me decide that this is what really made me happy.

At igus we believe very strongly that we do not ‘sell’ our bearings in the typical sense of the word. Instead, we work with engineers and educate them on our products and ways they can help solve some of their issues. The collaborative nature is something I really appreciate. In the end engineers make the decision that is best for their project.

We help support this by providing technical support and samples.”

For the rest of Nicole Lang’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Jennifer Paukert Vice President, Sales

Master Electronics

In her role as vice president of sales for Master Electronics, Jennifer Paukert is responsible for overseeing Master’s sales efforts and business development strategies. Prior to this position, she served as regional sales director for the Central region of the United States.

She joined Master in 2011 as a field sales account manager and has since held a variety of sales roles throughout the years including direct responsibility for Master’s top customers, as well as running Master’s value-added manufacturing division

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Talk about the culture at your company. What makes it inclusive or supportive of women in engineering and automation?

I believe inclusivity starts at the top and the founders of Master Electronics have elevated women since the beginning of the company over 50 years ago. The core values of the company that were established are built into every aspect of hiring, onboarding, and review process to this day. The core values are “we care, we are dedicated and loyal, we are entrepreneurial, and we are visionary thinking.”

As the company scales, the importance of diversity of thought and ideas become even more relevant and beneficial. I was fortunate to curate and sponsor our first Employee Resource Group, Women at Master. The purpose of this group is to advocate, develop and empower the woman at our company. No matter what gender, race, background, every person has a voice and is empowered to use it and execute on their idea. With over 50% of our employees being female, this type of curated environment is especially empowering to be a part of as a female in a primarily male-dominated industry.

Describe a recent company project (in which you were involved) that went particularly well. How did you and your team go about ensuring success?

There is no quesiton the trade war between the US and China has heavily impacted the electronics industry. When tariffs first rolled out, there was a lot of uncertainty within the component distribution industry on how to address tariffs with our customers. After re-evaluating our initial strategy and determining a course correction was needed, I was faced with spearheading the change both internally and externally. Everything from internal programming enhancements, to training, to external messaging was needed. Every internal business unit was affected on some level. I started by uniting everyone around the common goal, identifying the problems and all possible solutions. I had to learn to speak programming language and set regular check-ins with all BUs to assure the project was moving forward. We tested our changes for all potential breaks and tested again and again. When it was time to go live, all internal businesses were trained on our strategy changes and process changes. We were able to go live with no disruptions to our customers or internal processes while solving a massive business problem. Collaboration, alignment, organization, and a great team of people were key to the success of this project.

For the rest of Jennifer Paukert’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Virginie Mialane Medical Market Manager

maxon France Masters of Physics from Marseille University Engineering diploma in Materials and Interfaces from Lyon Engineering School

Virginie Mialane earned a Master of Physics from Marseille University and furthered her education with an Engineering diploma in Materials and Interfaces from Lyon Engineering School. Her career began in November of 1999 when she joined an industrial SME specializing in biocompatible coatings for orthopedic implants. She joined maxon France in 2003 as a Project Manager developing one of the first motorized implants in the maxon group.

After more than a decade in the R&D department supporting several projects for medical applications, she was promoted to the French Medical Market manager role in January 2018.

Talk about the culture at your company. What makes it inclusive or supportive of women in engineering and automation?

As a female engineer, I realized that technical expertise is well recognized in the scientific world. Rigor and tenacity are also qualities that are sought after in female engineers. What I like about maxon is the collaboration on innovative projects with added value. We can work with the medical engineers in Switzerland, in Germany or in France to develop the solutions our customers need. Intellectually, this collaboration is very enriching and dynamic.

Describe a recent company project (in which you were involved) that went particularly well. How did you and your team go about ensuring success?

The maxon world meeting was held in France this year. It involved a visit of the factory with several speakers discussing our skills and our capabilities. We worked in small teams to focus on a theme (R&D, manufacturing, supply chain, etc.) then highlighted our competencies with applications that the speakers worked on. This collaboration was very demanding time wise, but very successful and appreciated by our visitors.

Describe your biggest career challenge. How did you solve it — or what was the outcome or lesson learned?

Several years ago, I worked on a custom project with a Chinese team. As I said before, the international part of my job is really something I appreciate a lot and I like developing. For the first time, I worked in collaboration with the Asian team. I struggled to find the best way to work with the team to go further and quicker in the project despite taking several trips and work sessions locally.

It took me several weeks to figure out how to move forward, I needed to abandon my traditional project management ways and listen to and give more advice to the local team working on it, even if it didn’t seem to be going in the right direction at first. In doing so, the results were more apparent.

Sometimes we need to forget our own plan to be more openminded to be more successful.

For the rest of Virginie Mialane’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Ingrid Tay Technical Training Manager

Microchip Technology Bachelor of Science in Engineering, Arizona State University Master of Business Administration, Grand Canyon University

Ingrid Tay is based at Microchip’s global headquarters in Chandler, Arizona. She oversees the Technical Training Writing Services team, which supports the company’s engineering and sales functions. She joined Microchip in 2013 after graduating with a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in engineering from Arizona State University.

In 2020, she earned a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Grand Canyon University. She is also active in introducing students of all ages to robotics and engineering, working to support and staff programs including the FIRST Robotics Competition international program for high school students. She is a co-founder of the Building Dreams Robotics organization, which promotes Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) among students in underserved communities.

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Talk about the culture at your company. What makes it inclusive or supportive of women in engineering and automation?

I really believe Microchip’s culture is one-of-a-kind. All of my managers have been very supportive of the advocacy for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) that I do outside of work. Microchip has given me the opportunity to volunteer at FIRST Robotics Competition and VEX Robotics events. Many Microchip female employees like myself have participated as judges and mentors at multiple robotics and science fair events. Moreover, Microchip shows its support for engineering by sponsoring multiple robotics teams in Arizona.

In addition, I’ve had the opportunity to represent my company as a Women in Computer Science and Engineering panelist at the Arizona Science Tech Festival where we provided advice to women working as engineers and young engineering students. Also, I often speak to minority students at engineering summer programs about my college experience and as a working professional. I encourage them to continue in engineering and talk about how companies such as Microchip support women in engineering fields, and how our jobs are very rewarding.

Describe a recent company project (in which you were involved) that went particularly well. How did you and your team go about ensuring success?

We recently moved all our customer-facing training content to a new web platform to improve the user experience and our content management. Looking back, with this large project successfully behind us, what made it such a positive outcome for the company was our strategy execution. At the beginning of the project, the managers from all the teams came together to develop a strategy. We then went back to our individual teams and identified their roles and responsibilities and provided clear direction. As we were executing the strategy, we constantly asked for team feedback. We needed to know what was working and what we needed to improve. It was important to take all the input into consideration and also to keep the team well informed as decisions were being made. Managers made themselves available to answer questions as they arose, and this kept blockers and potential bottlenecks to a minimum while addressing concerns. In the end, this was a terrific cross-functional project that brought people together to collaborate and complete a very critical project for the corporation in a timely way.

For the rest of Ingrid Tay’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Agnieszka Zupancic Product Manager

Mitsubishi Electric Automation, Inc. Masters, Mechanical Engineering, Automation and Robotics University: AGH University of Science and Technology (Krakow, Poland)

What first drew you to engineering? / When did you first know you wanted to be an engineer?

My fascination with science and engineering came early on in high school, while taking advanced mathematics and physics classes. I would say it was very early on that I knew what I was going to choose as a career. After high school I got into a 5-year Masters’ program at the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow, Poland, majoring in Mechanical Engineering, Automation and Robotics. The Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics is one of the largest and best faculties in mechatronics in Poland, and the entire world, offering a modern education process, while enriching it with studies in mechatronics, automation and robotics, computer science, biomedical engineering and eco-energy.

Were there any influential engineers (women or men) who helped shaped your decision to become an engineer? If so, who and why?

I came from a family of engineers and followed the path of my grandfather, mother and uncle into engineering. Being able to watch their career growth and professional achievements as engineers made it an easy decision for me to follow their footsteps. My husband and younger brother are also engineers. I think this is an extremely rewarding profession, allowing you to see the results of your hard work right in front of you. Designing and programming is a representation of your creativity. I get satisfaction from making things work.

Give us an example of your involvement in: a design project, a product launch, the development of a new technology, or the adoption of a new technology or process.

At Mitsubishi Electric I hold a product manager position and am responsible for Modular Controllers, Networks and Distributed I/O, Industrial Computers, Energy, SCADA, IoT & Cloud solutions. All of these products have a goal to create a seamlessly working system designed and programmed to deliver a quality solution to the customer’s door. I was part of several large projects at Mitsubishi Electric, including implementing a new product shipping line communicating directly with our MES system and third-party shipping carriers. I designed and programmed several important demos/machines for international tradeshows to promote our PLC solutions, but one of my biggest involvements is to promote our line of PLC controllers, and to keep up with the latest technology and introduce it to the market. We constantly are improving our offering from a technology stand point to be best in class. Just recently, I was a part of team effort to release products supporting the new time-sensitive network, CC-Link IE TSN, to the market.

For the rest of Agnieszka Zupancic’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Melissa Sommer Senior Program Manager — Americas Regional Business Unit, Automation Infrastructure

Melissa Sommer began her career working as a Mechanical Development Engineer at other companies while continuing her education in a Masters of Engineering program and then in a Masters of Business Administration program. During those other positions, she always kept Phoenix Contact in her mind because her mother had worked for the company. In 2003, Phoenix Contact expanded its global footprint, creating the Regional Business Unit in the Americas. Melissa joined the company as a Mechanical Development Engineer. As Phoenix Contact continued to expand, additional opportunities were created, which led her into Project Management and to her current position as a Senior Program Manager.

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What first drew you to engineering? / When did you first know you wanted to be an engineer?

When I grew up, there was no such thing as STEM in our schools or job-shadowing opportunities. I didn’t know any engineers. I happened to be good in math and then found a love of physics when I was a junior in high school. My physics teacher, Mr. Thomas Rutland, asked me what I wanted to do when I graduated. I told him that I knew I wanted to go to college, but I didn’t know what I wanted to study. He asked me if I ever considered Engineering. Mr. Rutland got me information on engineering (these were the days before the internet), and we spent time talking about it from then on after class. Finally, that was it…I was hooked!

Give us an example of your involvement in: a design project, a product launch, the development of a new technology, or the adoption of a new technology or process.

How did you better your team, if applicable?

I spent much of my career as a Mechanical Development Engineer, designing new products. There is something really exciting about taking an idea from your head and seeing it come to life. I have worked on numerous new development projects where I was not initially sure how to make it work….. but I knew I would figure it out. I always questioned things and sought out additional ideas from my colleagues. That is what I bring to each of the teams I work with: questioning the status quo and always searching for new and better ways to do something.

Now that I am a Program Manager and lead the Project Management Office (PMO) within my organization, I approach each project with that same philosophy. As engineers, we are always being asked to develop more complicated products in a very fast timeline, while being economically feasible. We can’t do this if we don’t work together to question and seek new solutions.

Describe your biggest engineering challenge. How did you conquer it or resolve it, or what was the outcome?

A few years ago at the Hannover Messe in Hannover Germany, we launched a product with 72 new part numbers. To be prepared for the product launch, I had to ensure that all 72 part-numbers were ready for sale and available in inventory by the start of the fair. Once customers see the new products on display at Hannover Messe, it needs to be available to them to place purchase orders immediately.

For the rest of Melissa Sommer’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Denisa Peshkatari Director of Innovation—Air Care

Porex Corporation

(part of Filtration Group) Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology

Denisa Peshkatari is the Director of Innovation for Porex’s Air Care business unit. Porex, a business of Filtration Group, is a custom-engineered porous polymer manufacturer headquartered in Atlanta, GA with facilities in the USA, Germany, Scotland, Malaysia, and China. Denisa has 15 years of experience in engineering and management, beginning in the cement industry and then moving to Porex over seven years ago. An expert in innovating and developing with powder material, Denisa has held various roles in quality and process engineering, quality management, new product introductions, strategic project management and – most recently – innovation.

Talk about the culture of Porex – how is it supportive and inclusive of women in engineering?

I am very proud to work for a company that has placed a lot of confidence in what I can achieve. In my 7+ years at Porex I have had the chance to work in four different roles, and each role has helped me grow and develop my technical and leadership skills. I have always felt respected and included by leadership and my colleagues in whatever decisions need to be made, which has played an important role in shaping my career. I have continuously been assigned to drive very important goals and projects for Porex, which shows me that their support is directly tied to actions. Of our three core cultural values – trust, bias for action, and entrepreneurialism - what I value most in Porex’s culture is the opportunity to be a true entrepreneur. Our entrepreneurial spirit allows me to expand my creativity while also growing my leadership skills and collaborating with diverse global teams.

Describe a recent project (in which you were involved) that went particularly well. How did you and your team go about ensuring success? (obviously without mentioning any customer names or proprietary info).

I helped the team design and develop an innovative and unique component for a groundbreaking solution in the tech industry. We had a tight deadline and a small core team. While our internal development process required intense troubleshooting, testing and multiple iterations, we had to collaborate in parallel with several outside sources of technical expertise to achieve an optimal solution.

It was a challenge to keep all the knowledge, communications and learning development organized while allowing the team to focus on development scope.

The most rewarding experience was the many impromptu brainstorming sessions we had to go through, which allowed the team members to learn and relay on each other. I think the project would had never been a success if it weren’t for the creativity and entrepreneurial spirit of our small core team at Porex.

What career advice would you give to your younger self?

The best advice I would give to myself is to speak up and to not be afraid to ask questions. Focus on your growth and do not worry what others think of you.

For the rest of Denisa Peshkatari’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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10/14/21 2:41 PM

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Samantha Lundt Manufacturing Process Engineer

Quantum Devices, Inc. Bachelor of Science – Physics, Bachelor of Science – Astrophysics, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Samantha Lundt has worked as Quantum Devices’ Manufacturing Process Engineer for 5 years. Her primary duties include overseeing the company’s semiconductor cleanroom processes.

Samantha earned two bachelor of science degrees from the University of WisconsinMadison, in Physics and Astrophysics.

She earned the Hilldale Fellowship for undergraduate research in radio astronomy, studying the Magellanic Stream alongside members of the GALFA survey. Additionally, she returned to UW-Madison during the first 2 years of employment at Quantum Devices where she continued her education in semiconductor device physics and fabrication.

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Talk about the culture at your company. What makes it inclusive or supportive of women in engineering and automation?

When I walked into the building for a facility tour, I was pleasantly surprised to see that a large percentage of the workforce were women, spread across the company from the assembly floor all the way up to department managers. Quantum Devices is a family-owned company, and the current operations is handled by the secondgeneration. Therefore, they understand the value of family and the complexity of working full time while balancing home life. During the challenges of 2020, the team was flexible in terms of work arrangements for those of us with children who ended up being virtual for an extended period of time.

Thankfully, none of my male colleagues treat me differently for being a woman. Even people who may have been skeptical originally were more open to collaboration once they saw that I had expertise in semiconductor fabrication technology, and that I truly listened to their concerns. The realization that I was there to help make sure everything went smoothly and more efficiently made the barriers vanish.

Describe a recent company project (in which you were involved) that went particularly well.

We are actually in the midst of this project right now. Quantum Devices makes its own silicon sensors for use in their encoder products. Due to the landscape of the electronics industry over the last couple of years, it was recognized that the company needed to upgrade all aspects of their cleanroom to accommodate new fabrication techniques, as well as larger, more readily available silicon wafers. This has been a multi-year project that has had its shares of successes and set-backs.

That being said, the successes have come from collaboration between all members of the engineering team, countless hours of experiments and verifications, and the dedication to maintaining the quality product that our customers have come to expect. By going through this upgrade process rather than outsourcing our fab, we are striving to grow and move our business in new directions.

For the rest of Samantha Lundt’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Lisa Auffrey Power Systems Sales Engineer

Sager Electronics Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering/Management Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute Masters of Arts Degree, Business Management, Harvard University

Lisa is an engineering professional with over 30 years of industry experience. After graduating from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, she started her career as a Quality Assurance Engineer with BAE Systems in Nashua, NH before moving to an applications role. She spent 20 years at Norris & Associates and later joined Warner Power, establishing a Manufacturers Rep network for the company.

Lisa moved back into the electronics industry with a sales engineer position at Omron Electronic Components. In April of 2017, Lisa joined Sager Electronics as a Power Systems Engineer in the company’s specialized group, Sager Power Systems, where she focuses on solving power, thermal and battery issues at OEMs.

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Talk about the culture at your company. What makes it inclusive or supportive of women in engineering and automation?

When I entered the industry there were few women in roles like mine. Thanks to efforts encouraging young women to enter STEM over the last decade or so, there are now many more of us.

Sager and the TTI Family of Specialists (FOS) promote women advancement evident by the numbers of women in key management, director-level and senior executive roles.

In my role as a Power Systems Sales Engineer (PSE), I work closely with customers in the design and selection of either a standard or custom solution, while also exercising my organizational, project management and negotiation skills. As a female in my chosen profession, I also have the opportunity to influence not only my colleagues at Sager, but those outside of the organization. I’d like to think I am doing my small part to advance women in engineering roles.

Describe a recent company project (in which you were involved) that went particularly well.

The Sager marketing, sales and Power Systems teams work in tandem to ensure we are supporting our customers. The recent extension of lead times for electronic components has added complexity to providing newly designed products to our customers. We were working with a customer on a design opportunity that involved a product newly introduced to the market. This was a customized solution requiring design creativity and resourcefulness in order to meet the customer’s prototype schedule. The team worked together, concentrating in their areas of expertise to secure raw materials for the build, and successfully deliver the prototype on schedule and to specification. It is quite satisfying to come together as a team, meet a customer’s requirement and develop a solution that helps bring a new application to the marketplace.

What first drew you to engineering and this industry?

My father was a structural engineer, exposing me to engineering from a young age. My strengths were in math and science, therefore, an engineering degree seemed logical. Originally, I started out as a Civil Engineering major, but realized I could not see in the third dimension; so designing bridges was probably not a good idea and I refocused my education on electrical and management engineering.

For the rest of Lisa Auffrey’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Laura Allison Director of Technical Operations

Siemens Digital Industries Software Mathematics, Jacksonville State University

Laura Allison is the Director of Technical Operations for Siemens Mainstream Engineering, a business unit of Siemens Digital Industries Software. She has worked for Siemens for over 30 years. She is the release manager for Solid Edge and the Xcelerator Share web client.

What first drew you to engineering? / When did you first know you wanted to be an engineer?

Math was always easy to me; the solution to a math problem was something I could prove to be true – not just accept. When I started college, I planned to be a high school or college math teacher. But I quickly realized I wanted the additional challenges and financially security that the field of engineering could bring. I have always enjoyed identifying the root cause of problems, developing a plan or technical solution, and then executing the plan to resolve the problem. Software engineering offers daily opportunities to grow that skill. I am also personally rewarded by helping people. In software engineering, the solutions we provide enable us to help our customers be more productive and develop better solutions for their customers too.

Describe your biggest engineering challenge. How did you conquer it or resolve it, or what was the outcome?

Solid Edge is a complete suite of product development software, which is part of the Xcelerator portfolio, the comprehensive and integrated portfolio of software and services from Siemens Digital Industries Software. We started developing Solid Edge more than 25 years ago using the traditional waterfall software development lifecycle. About 5 years ago we recognized the benefits of switching to Scaled Agile. This required us to replace existing processes and tools and introduce Agile Sprints, Program Increments, and Scrum teams.

This transition was one of the biggest challenges I faced in my career. The change empowered teams to self-organize and make decisions at the team level, but cross-team communication was the key to implementing high-quality solutions across our broad product offerings.

The biggest benefit I have seen from this change has been the ability to deliver many more quality features for our customers each release. By allowing teams to self-manage, we found huge gains in innovation. With the help of my teammates and good processes, we just released our fourth major Solid Edge release using all Agile processes.

For the rest of Laura Allison’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Amanda Beaton U.S. Program Manager

Siemens Cooperates with Education Bachelor of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Tech MBA, Georgia State University

Amanda Beaton has been with Siemens since 2003. As the U.S. Program Manager for Siemens Cooperates with Education (SCE), she is responsible for connecting academia to industry by facilitating the use of Siemens Factory Automation products in schools. Amanda started her career with Siemens in the Operations Leadership Development program and worked in manufacturing in Mexico and the U.S. Amanda holds a Bachelor of Industrial and Systems Engineering from Georgia Tech and an MBA from Georgia State University.

Amanda sits on several industry advisory boards at colleges and universities across the US. She is also a frequent STEM volunteer at her daughters’ elementary and middle schools.

Talk about the culture at your company. What makes it inclusive or supportive of women in engineering and automation?

Over the past 18 years, I have noticed a tangible change in the Siemens culture. While we are still a global powerhouse in engineering, there are so many more women in leadership roles. Early on, the culture was obviously very masculine and technically focused. Today, we have so many opportunities to participate in groups focused on diversity and inclusion, and it isn’t just for show. These groups, our projects, and our roles make a real impact on the company and how we work. I can feel the shift in promoting better work-life balance and a much more diverse work force across all the roles and levels and it makes me very proud to work here.

Describe a recent company project (in which you were involved) that went particularly well. How did you and your team go about ensuring success?

I helped a team of students from a large university complete a year-long project during covid to build a digital twin of a mechatronics line. The students not only became proficient in our software, but also did the wiring and physical construction to create the digital and physical models of a manufacturing line. Several delays and the inability to travel made things more difficult, but the end result was a successful working digital twin and a wonderful presentation from the students on their accomplishments.

What first drew you to engineering and this industry?

I knew when I was young that I really enjoyed math, science, and technical subjects. I like making things and understanding how things work. I only applied to one college and knew that engineering was for me from an early age. Once I got the opportunity to intern in a manufacturing plant, I was drawn to the life and energy in the facility and sought out manufacturing. I didn’t know exactly what part of manufacturing or engineering I wanted to settle into, so a rotational program focused on operations was perfect for spending time across several manufacturing plants and functional areas to get a feel for the entire supply chain. With Siemens, I was able to transition into product marketing and management roles across different business units and product areas and experience several parts of the business and functional areas. As the child of two teachers, this has been my favorite role yet because I get to hear from so many educators and students and see the positive impact of placing technology into the classroom.

For the rest of Amanda Beaton’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Yueying Liu Senior Manager, RF Device Modeling and Device Characterization

Wolfspeed PhD, Solid State Physics and Microelectronics, North Carolina State University, 2009

Yueying Liu achieved her PhD in Solid State Physics and Microelectronics from North Carolina State University in 2009. Her PhD thesis focused on large signal physics and AlGaN/ GaN HEMT device modeling in collaboration with Prof. Robert J. Trew and Prof. Griff Bilbro.

Before joining Wolfspeed, she worked at Infineon, Morgan Hill as a RF power amplifier (PA) designer in the advance technology development group and worked on class AB PA designs using GaN devices. She joined Wolfspeed in 2014 as a RF Application Design Engineer and has worked on multiple projects in various roles. In 2016, she joined the MMIC design team as a manager for the RF device modeling/characterization group. She has coauthored more than 15 publications and holds 3 patents. She also serves as the compound semiconductor modeling sub-committee chair for the IEEE BCICTS conference.

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Talk about the culture at your company. What makes it inclusive or supportive of women in engineering and automation?

The leadership at Wolfspeed promotes integrity, respect, ingenuity, passion, ownership and accountability as the Wolfspeed values. Our team genuinely appreciates the varied talents and productive results that each person offers on both a technical and project level. Good ideas and innovative work are always valued and promoted here, regardless of what the person’s gender is. Being a woman and working at Wolfspeed, I receive the same recognition and opportunity as everyone else. The company culture is inclusive and enables everyone to achieve success in each project as a team and in each business opportunity as a company. As a matter of fact, I’ve noticed a lot of female engineers being hired in the department to promote more women engineers in the RF industry.

What first drew you to engineering and this industry?

I’ve always been curious about how micro-devices work in real circuits, even when I was young. One of the biggest influences on me was my Dad. He was a high school physics teacher and made a giant radio (size of a microwave) back in late 60’s for my Mom as a wedding gift. It fascinated me at the time. When I went to college, physics and electronics were always my favorite subjects of all the courses I’ve taken. They sort of connect the dots for me and help solve the mysteries I have had since when I was a child. In the later years of my studies at graduate school, I found it most rewarding to troubleshoot technical problems and eventually, how to solve them.

Describe your biggest career challenge, How did you solve it – or what was the outcome or lesson learned?

As a RF device modeling manager, my job is to align our modeling team roadmap with our technology and business development goals and allocate resources within the team to ensure modeling needs for internal and external designers are met. GaN is at an exciting transition point and our business is growing very rapidly. It’s a very challenging environment with lots of opportunities to take responsibility and further career development. To support the business growth, we have adopted a lot of automation and quality control process in testing, modeling/PDK development and documentation. This has enabled us to double our work throughput and still maintain the high quality product standards we continue to deliver to our customers.

For the rest of Yueying Liu’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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2021 Women in Engineering

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Sandy Emry Account Application Engineer

Würth Industry North America BS Finance – minor in Business Administration, Illinois State University

Sandy Emry began her career in the fastener industry in 2001 as part of a Sales Development Training Program with a fastener manufacturer. She completed the program in seven months and was relocated to Kansas City and became a member of the field sales team working with distributors. In 2016, she became Vertical Team Leader specializing in the Recreational Vehicle market industry. In 2019, she was promoted to Director NA Distribution Sales where she managed a $168M piece of business. In 2020, she began her engineering career with Würth and currently supports two different OpCos at various customers.

Talk about the culture at your company. What makes it inclusive or supportive of women in engineering and automation?

Würth is the largest industrial distributor in the world and very much has a family feel to the business. The culture is based on team, honesty, customer first and employee growth. The entire Würth family is based on each member becoming a better person/ employee. The door is open for anyone to pursue career choices they feel fits them best.

There is an atmosphere of promoting within, educating employees on new developments both industry specific and the business environment itself. Each employee is encouraged to pursue fields of interest that best fit their skill sets. Our engineering team is diverse and includes people of different areas of expertise, experience and education. We all work together to help solve some of the more complicated opportunities.

Give an example of your involvement in: a design project, a product launch, the development of a new technology.

Throughout the past years, it was a common belief baking electroplated parts with hardness of RC 39+ would alleviate the risk for hydrogen embrittlement. Through extensive testing, the fastener industry has found that baking parts with this hardness after electroplating does not alleviate this risk. So, Würth mandated not selling product with hardness RC 39 or harder that have been electroplated. I have been working with our Quality and Sales teams to identify those parts that are at risk. I then reached out to our customers’ engineering contacts to discuss their corrosion requirements and provide options for a finish that will alleviate this serious risk. This project is one I am proud of because I know we are making a big difference, not only for our customers, but in the consumer market as well.

What first drew you to engineering?

I have always been drawn to research and understanding how things are manufactured and the reasoning for all the processes involved. Early in my career, I found it fascinating as to how fasteners are designed and manufactured. Previously, my mind set was “a screw is a screw.” I quickly found out this is not the case. The amount of detail and engineering that goes into the design and production of fasteners is amazing. When working with customers on cost savings/improvement projects, I enjoy seeing how their products are designed/manufactured. I find great satisfaction when I am able to assist with designing a part/fastener that allows our customer to improve their product life, production processes and save money at the same time. I worked with one customer and we managed to consolidate five fasteners into one part and saved our customer tens of thousands of dollars.

For the rest of Sandy Emry’s insights, visit www.designworldonline.com/WiE.

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Protecting caregivers, treating patients and delivering confidence.

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