Extending the Ladder with Nancy Novak > Empowering Women in STEM with San Diego State University Students

Lily Astete – Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering Joint Doctoral Program SDSU and UCSD, Dani Hunt – Master in Civil Engineering with a specialty in water resources SDSU, and Juliet Luevanos – Bachelor of Science in Construction Engineering SDSU, are all navigating the world of STEM and come together to discuss the barriers, challenges, and opportunities in their journey.

In a round table-type episode, Nancy has the opportunity to ask a new generation of women in STEM their thoughts on the industry, as well as opportunities they see for the industry to change to become more inclusive and accepting of all groups.

How to Empower Women in STEM

Empowering women in STEM isn’t just a matter of gender equality—it’s essential for driving innovation and progress, including:

Breaking Stereotypes: Encouraging Early Engagement

Empowerment begins with challenging stereotypes that discourage girls from pursuing STEM interests. Providing engaging educational opportunities, showcasing diverse role models, and organizing interactive workshops can foster an early love for STEM, setting the stage for lifelong exploration and achievement.

Mentorship and Networking: Building Supportive Communities

Effective mentorship and networking can significantly boost women’s confidence and career trajectories in STEM. Establishing mentorship programs that connect aspiring female scientists and engineers with accomplished professionals helps bridge knowledge gaps and provides guidance through challenges.

Inclusive Education: Creating Equitable Learning Spaces

Equitable access to quality education is paramount. Promoting gender-neutral learning environments, incorporating diverse perspectives in curricula, and implementing bias-free assessment methods can ensure that all students, regardless of gender, receive equal opportunities to excel in STEM fields.

Advocacy for Equal Opportunities: Championing Workplace Equity

Empowerment extends into the workplace. Advocating for transparent hiring practices, pay equity, and leadership roles for women in STEM careers is vital. Companies and institutions that prioritize gender diversity cultivate a more innovative and inclusive environment, driving organizational growth.

Promoting Work-Life Balance: Sustaining Long-Term Careers

Balancing demanding STEM careers with personal responsibilities remains a challenge. Encouraging flexible work arrangements, parental leave policies, and wellness programs acknowledges the diverse needs of women in STEM, enabling them to thrive both professionally and personally.

Visibility and Recognition: Celebrating Achievements

Celebrating the accomplishments of women in STEM reinforces their contributions and inspires others. Highlighting success stories through awards, conferences, and online platforms amplifies their impact, showcasing the tangible results of their dedication and hard work.

Empowering women in STEM is a collective responsibility that yields transformative results. By fostering supportive environments, advocating for equal opportunities, and celebrating achievements, we not only level the playing field but also cultivate a diverse pool of talent that drives innovation. As we continue to empower women in STEM, we usher in a future where their brilliance shapes the world’s technological and scientific landscapes.

Read the full episode transcript below:

Nancy Novak:                Hi, everybody, this is Nancy Novak, Chief Innovation Officer at Compass Datacenters, and welcome to the next episode of Extending the Ladder. Today we have with us the wonderful San Diego State University, we have three amazing students. And I would love for them to be able to introduce themselves with a little bit of information about each one of them. So please give us your field of study, any experience you have in the field, how did you get interested in the STEM trades, and then what are your goals in this chosen field? Let’s start with you, Dani.

Dani Hunt:                    Thank you. My name is Dani. I am currently pursuing a master’s degree at SDSU and doing civil engineering with a specialty in water resources. My current research is on modelling post-fire vegetation management effects on urban stream systems, and I also did my undergrad at Colorado School of Mines in geotechnical engineering, entered the workforce in January, and I am working currently as a civil design engineer as well for a small engineering firm. So getting my hands in a lot of different things. I was first, I guess, drawn to STEM, I was really good at math and I am very competitive and honestly just wanted to do something impressive and I ended up really liking it. So I’m really enjoying where I’m at right now. And future goals, I actually would really like to learn more about the business side of engineering and moving forward after mastering the design and technical side, I’d really like to move into management and get to hopefully be a part of running a business someday.

Nancy Novak:                That is fantastic. Thank you so much, Dani. How about you, Lily?

Lily Astete:                    Hi, my name is Lily Astete and I’m a fourth year PhD student at San Diego State. So I finished my bachelor’s degree at San Diego State in environmental engineering. And unlike Dani, I was not good at math, not that I know of anyway, so I actually was in the military years ago, and when I was getting out of the military, they gave me an aptitude test and told me I’d be a good engineer. I thought they were crazy. Turns out that I am a good engineer. So I’m in environmental engineering and I do research on sanitation systems. So these are different types of onsite sanitation systems that are used to provide access to sanitation or toilets for people that live all around the world without access to good barriers to prevent public health issues, and also to minimise the impact on the environment. So I work with a lot of different systems, I’ve worked on a waterless flushing toilet for mobile sanitation units to provide unhoused community members with access to a toilet, and I’m currently working on patenting a device for improving septic systems.

Nancy Novak:                Wow. That’s fantastic. Thank you so much, Lily. And Juliet, how about you?

Juliet Luevanos:            Hi, yes, my name is Juliet Luevanos. I’m in my last year at San Diego State University. I’m studying construction engineering. I currently work at Balfour Beatty as a virtual design and construction intern, and then before that I was a project engineer intern at a construction site. I’m president of the AGCCMA Student Chapter, which stands for Associated General Contractors Construction Management Association of America. In regards to getting into STEM, I think it was just the fact that I did pretty well in math and science too, so I figured why not go into a field like that. Also, I feel like my parents encouraged me to pursue something like that. And then lastly for my goals, I think I just want to integrate technology in the construction industry and just find more efficient solutions to building, in addition to just staying involved with my alma mater, because I got a lot from my programme at San Diego State.

Nancy Novak:                That’s fantastic. Yeah, it’s a great programme there, I can attest to that. The reason I wanted to go through these introductions is just to really frame the diversity we have on the call. Everybody is in similar fields, but different fields, and different stages throughout your academic and work careers. So I really feel like this is going to give us a great perspective when we ask certain questions, for our audience, about the industry that they might be interested in entering or are already in. So I would love to, what we’re going to do is a bit of a round-robin here, and I want to talk about, in the beginning, let’s hit it right off the bat, some of the challenges that you all have encountered in this male dominated field.

And I can give some examples of these challenges just off the bat, but you don’t have to… If any one of those resonates with you, I would love to hear from you, just which ones you would like to impart wisdom and experience and maybe some thoughts about for the audience. So challenges that are typical in this industry would be things like either sexual harassment or even sexual biases, imposter syndromes, implicit biases, and then possibly just behaviours within the industry when it comes to being able to hear your voice and have authority and those types of things. So if you guys wouldn’t mind giving me some feedback on one or the other, then maybe we can dig into one of the ones that would resonate really well with the audience, one or two of those. Dani, it would be wonderful if you could start us out.

Dani Hunt:                    I guess I would say I was lucky enough, I grew up with a lot of boys, and I was the only girl, so I’ve always been relatively comfortable with men and I had to learn very quickly how to defend myself. I found how to be competitive, be a competitor, and to stand up for myself around people who may look down on you or may not. I’ve been really lucky in that I’m surrounded with a lot of really good men in my workplace that I haven’t experienced a lot of, I don’t know if you want to call it coming against me, or someone looking down on me just because I’m a woman, I’ve actually been given a lot of things simply because I’m the only woman there or whatever.

My perspective, I think, is a little bit different on it, but I definitely would always want to say I have a lot of friends who have a lot of different stories, and I think it’s important not to walk into a room and assume that you’re going to be looked down on because you’re a woman. But also, I always had to come to an understanding if someone thought of me in the workplace as lesser because I’m a female, that’s their problem, that’s their thought. For me, I take it as a motivating factor. I like to encourage a lot of people too, a lot of women, don’t let it put you down. This is the way it is and if we’re going to start somewhere, we got to start by motivating ourselves to be like, “Hey, okay, you think I’m less because I’m a woman? Then I’m going to show you that I’m way better than any of these men in here.” So I have that kind of outlook on it so I’ve never had a situation that really put me down before, but I do like to encourage women.

Nancy Novak:                You offer good advice. Honestly, it really is. Because statistically, we’re very underrepresented, and there’s reasons for that, and the reasons are all valid reasons, but I think that’s good advice as far as having that kind of mentality. I liked it because I’m a lot older than you all, and it was a little bit more explicit than the old things, and it was kind of a different world. 30 years ago was a long time ago in construction years. But I do have to say, I’m always fascinated because we’re trying to figure out how to advance and bring word of our gender into the industry, and there’s still statistically a big problem with that, so there’s reasons that we want to be able to overcome. And that’s why I like this type of feedback, this type of advice, and just still being plugged into what’s actually happening in the field.

And before I go on to Lily, I wanted to say, the biases that exist, especially the implicit biases, in most industries, especially in construction, definitely one of them, the implicit biases are usually dealt with good intentions. So it’s somebody who’s systemically brought up in a certain way who makes decisions on your behalf, sometimes without you even knowing it, and it’s not even something that they’re aware of. So we have to keep that in mind, that it doesn’t mean there’s no nefarious characters everywhere trying to cut you off, but it can happen because this is just human nature and, as humans, we all have biases. So I wanted to frame a little bit about that. It’s not about complaining, it’s more about just understanding and elevating the conversation. So Lily, let’s hear from you on this.

Lily Astete:                    Yeah, I actually resonated with what Dani was saying because I have noticed that women in STEM are there because they like a challenge. So if that challenge is math or science or technical issues or other people’s opinions of us, we’re going to overcome that. So I have noticed actually throughout my entire time in STEM, and I’ve looked this up several times, like psychology articles, like social science articles that actually cover that, women actually do perform better in STEM or they work harder in STEM. I’ve noticed it personally, had to look it up, and I think that is a conditioned response. But whether it is or it isn’t, it doesn’t matter, because we come in and we know it’s stacked against us, or maybe we assume what’s stacked against us and we’re going to overcome it. So we work really hard and we kick ass.

As far as imposter syndrome goes, I had it really bad. I have experienced it really bad over my time. But I have been in so many places, so many spaces that I never thought I would be, and I didn’t think were open for access to women or just any other demographic that I fit. I always felt like I didn’t belong there. They’re going to discover me. But I have found over the years that for as many people as I thought were smarter than me, better than me in their careers, or I could never be at their level, or I didn’t belong in the room with them, people also see me that way. So once you start to demonstrate your skills, your knowledge, your experience, you are the person that people feel like an imposter around. So that has suppressed this feeling for me, really, one, seeing that I’ve accomplished a lot because I work hard and I’ve overcome all of those challenges, and two, that sometimes I’m the expert.

Nancy Novak:                That’s true. That was one of the things that we mentioned when we talked earlier, and that was if you look around at your peers, typically you can figure out that you know as much or more than they do once you get into a position, and really trying to, like you said, benchmark yourself against them is helpful because, again, there’ll be situations where the rules are reversed, and you know that you’re an expert on it. So that’s, again, very good and very confident and wonderful advice.

Lily Astete:                    We’re all imposters and we’re all faking it until we make it.

Nancy Novak:                Love it. Before we move on to Julia, I wanted to ask a quick question about STEM. So I love the STEM fields and I’m interested in how we’ve really highlighted this because we are going through the fourth industrial revolution of digitising everything on the planet, and that means that humanities are all now digital as well. So photography, art, music, literature, all digital. So there’s STEM components to both the humanities and the sciences and technologies and engineers and math.

So my question is, and this is something too, Juliet, that you don’t have to answer right off, because you still have to get to the challenges, but my question was, this diversity of bringing our gender more into our industry, I’m hoping is going to help us pull some of the humanities back into STEM. And Lily, I think your project is a perfect example of that, because you’re working on ways in which you can solve for human problems through the use of STEM. So understanding cognitively what’s going on when we’re making the decisions in technology or engineering, and using math to do that, I think is something that we should strive towards. So instead of just focusing on STEM, bringing those humanities forward and having that blend and hoping that our gender helps that blend get to be where there’s more equal parts to it.

Julia, let’s hear from you about your challenges and then we can have a little bit of a discussion about the lenses that our gender will bring to this industry.

Juliet Luevanos:            So my experience I think is pretty similar to Dani and Lily in the sense that I got used to being around men. I think even learning how to weightlift, I got used to just being around a lot of testosterone and just learning how to navigate that. But I think another experience too is the fact that, so I’m president of this club, and all the other eight members are men. So it’s just learning how to put myself in a role of a leader and learning how to delegate to men, it can be a little challenging. So I think that was something for me to learn how to navigate.

I think another thing too is that just being on site too, I learned that sometimes I’m seen as a woman first instead of just a worker on the field. I think one time that really put things in perspective because I was just talking to this person who was part of the trades and he asked me like, “Oh, have you been harassed yet?” And it was just something that I wasn’t really expecting to be asked and I didn’t think was appropriate to be asked, but it was just a moment for me to take a step back and realise, okay, this stuff still does happen sometimes, so I think for me it’s just keeping an eye out for that kind of stuff too.

Nancy Novak:                Yeah, if you look into the surveys that Catalyst and McKinsey have done, it is actually very prevalent and still more than 60% of the folks that they surveyed, that they experienced some form of harassment. So it’s a serious thing that we should all take to heart. And I love being able to be glass is half-full positive about the changes that have happened in the industry, because it has gotten much, much better, but it’s still something that we have to stay diligent about. And I did want to mention there is a wonderful programme that the Steel Union has, and it’s called Be That One Guy. So it’s really about getting the advocacy from our male counterparts and speaking up and not staying complicit when they do see things that are going awry or something that’s inappropriate in the field, be that one guy that stands up and advocates and amplifies for their women coworkers. And anyone can look that up. It’s a fantastic, very successful programme that they started.

So some of the things we talked about earlier, before we got onto the live podcast here, was the behaviours and stuff when we’re trying to really have the voice of authority or be heard in a room and some of the tips in order to be able to do that. And I think it’s worth talking about because I experienced this myself, I’ll never forget, it was way late in my career when I was a national VP, where I had one of my regional VPs say to me that they thought I was getting excitable or getting emotional. And I remember at the time just pausing and saying, when I’m really excited about any initiative, and use the word passion, use motivated, whatever you want to use, I have a tendency to speak faster and my octave might go up a little bit. And sometimes that gets received as being emotional, excitable, whatever you want to call it, something that’s uncomfortable for the person receiving it.

So I just basically said, “This is what happens when I’m excited about an initiative and it’s in my DNA and I have no control over it, so I think we just need to get used to it.” And it was a fantastic conversation that I wish I could have told myself 15 years earlier, but it worked out really well because it was all about getting to know the individual that I’m working with. And it’s no different than understanding someone’s sense of humour, or someone’s tolerance for risk. The way that we receive people is getting to know them better, and that’s really where I think the challenge is, in getting to know each other on more of a personal and organic level as well as a professional level.

And what I’ve found, and this is where I want your feedback from all of you, is where there’s been situations where we’ve had to change ourselves, the way we speak, the way we dress, the way we walk, the way we do certain things, so that we get received differently versus being able to just be our true individual selves and being able to explain that it’s hard, because a lot of times you don’t have the opportunity to explain it and so you’re trying to get in that room and have a voice, and I just would love to hear from you all about those types of experiences.

Dani Hunt:                    Awesome. It’s really neat, actually, because I never really was able to put it into words or think about it, but of how I act differently if I’m in a room full of men versus a room for a woman and I’m like, oh yeah, I do do that. For sure, do that. And I never really thought of it very deeply, but I have that same issue where I am a very emotional person and I get really excited and I find myself sometimes, and my coworkers are awesome, they never make me feel this way, but I do feel like I’m the only woman on my team and I’m like, “Hey, don’t get emotional. Don’t get emotional. Contain it. Don’t let it out.” And I think that there is a time and a place for it. I try to stay professional, try to be. But where is that line between being myself and then still maintaining professionalism as a woman? I think I’m still trying to learn that. And I find myself, I swear a lot more when I’m around men. I don’t know if that’s just to exert my dominance, I don’t know. But I tend to do that. Because I don’t really swear that much, but I find myself like, sometimes when I’m talking to men, it comes out a lot easier then.

Nancy Novak:                I feel you, Dani. I feel you. Don’t worry.

Dani Hunt:                    I definitely have that same thing of like, oh, I’m getting too emotional. This is not the right place for it. But also, I still want to maintain me. I would love to hear everyone else’s perspective because I think I’m still learning.

Nancy Novak:                It’s thought-provoking. It really is. And I think it’s not about being able to solve it just today, it’s about just thinking about it and understanding it and then figuring out different ways that we can handle or manage that. So Lily, what do you have to say about that?

Lily Astete:                    Yeah, I definitely have adopted behaviours to assert my position in spaces where there are mostly men or I’m also concerned about sexual harassment. So before I go places, I think about how I’m going to do my hair, how I’m going to do my makeup, so that I present fine or well, but I’m not inviting unwelcomed comments, what I’m going to wear, even down to the type of bra that I wear, because how much support am I trying to… So outside of that, I’ve adopted other behaviours, like a walk, the way I look at people, the way I talk. And mine is, if I’m comfortable, it definitely gets into some vulgar language. But when I’m not, it’s more of like a stonewall. I’m showing you you’re not going to get past this professional interaction, it’s not going any further than this. But as far as you were saying with the passion, this getting excited and everything, I have been called a bulldog in my field. Yeah, okay.

I’m definitely the type of person that if I’m passionate about something, I get very serious about it. I have a very strong boundary between what’s right and wrong to me. And I think, as people who have faced adversity, that we are often very empathetic about these things. And let’s be real, STEM, most actually, I guess all, STEM disciplines have implications for people’s lives. You should be passionate about this. There’s no room, really, in my opinion, for tone policing, when it comes down to really what’s right and wrong. And I know there’s a grey area for the old boys, but for me, there’s just really not.

Dani Hunt:                    I was going to say, I was like, “Ooh, [inaudible 00:21:08].”

Lily Astete:                    I would find that inappropriate. So I’ve never been personally called out for that but if I had been, then I probably would’ve said, “Don’t you want someone to give a crap about this?”

Nancy Novak:                Excellent point of view. Really appreciate that. I have learned something, and I do like that term. Julia, how about you?

Juliet Luevanos:            So I think, behaviour wise, I do see myself changing how I am based off of who I’m around, especially with men. When I’m shaking hands, I try to having very firm handshake, whereas with women, I’m not too concerned with that. Or even going to construction sites, I tend to wear baggier clothes. I just want to blend in. I’m a five-foot-one woman, so there’s only so much blending in I can do. But I definitely do try to adjust how I behave, just because I don’t want to stand out too much and be called out for certain situations. So I think that’s how I’ve chose to.

Nancy Novak:                That makes a lot of sense. And I do think that handshake is a big one too. And I’ll be perfectly honest, here’s my implicit bias. I actually judge people by their handshakes sometimes. A firm handshake to me is a very welcoming handshake, but sometimes culturally it’s just so different. And I don’t know if you guys remember this story, but when we were on our pre-call, we talked about, again, this presence of authority, and it’s assumed authority because sometimes you don’t really have the opportunity to get to know the group or the person that you’re going to deal with for very long. So way back when, earlier in my career, I literally would go and buy refurbished suit coats, like old men’s suit coats, and wear those on the job, versus a Carhartt or some type of jacket, so it would appear that I had more authority, so that I would get treated as more of a management level versus just one of the workers out there.

And it was somewhat effective, I don’t know for sure. But again, it was just like the way we dress, the way we talk, the way we walk. It is about, if I don’t have a lot of time and I just want to have my voice heard, sometimes I do these things because it helps me get to where I need to go. But I did want to point out too, for the male audience that we have, that there are ways that you can advocate for and amplify the women in your group and on your team and in the industry. And that is, again, to be that one guy who sees and recognises what’s happening and just is supportive and makes sure that our voices get heard. Because as you’ve seen with this fantastic group of women here, having our voices heard is going to make a big difference in society and in the world.

Speaking of that, and that’ll segue really beautifully into mentorship and advocacy, I would love to understand a little bit more about how that’s been for you all in your career, both academic and professionally. And I really want to dive in a little bit, Juliet, on your role as president of the construction club for AGC, and what that’s been doing for you in your career and how that relates maybe back to mentorship and advocacy with women and with men.

Juliet Luevanos:            In regards to just having an advocate, I really have to give a shout-out to my Professor Alves and Professor Macquarie. Both of them have been extremely passionate women that I’ve witnessed in the construction industry, they’ve shown me what it means to be empowered and knowledgeable and just own your role. I think that it wasn’t until I actually went into construction that I saw how much support is offered to students, and I really took advantage of that because they really have helped me navigate just situations throughout my career in college. Just going back to the AGCCMA Student Chapter, Professor Alves is my advisor, so she’s always there to give guidance and she’s always someone I can count on to ask questions. So I think that just goes a really long way for helping me navigate what’s best for other students that are a part of the club and wanting to get more career involvement. And I’ve been able to make a lot and create a lot of relationships and network significantly through that club so it’s been a huge blessing for me, I think.

Nancy Novak:                That’s fantastic, and that’s great advice too, to get involved in organisations that are all about the advancement of women in the industry, or just in the industry themselves. Whether it’s a blended group or not, those kinds of organisations are going to build those relationships and I’m so happy that you found those great mentors there. That’s fantastic. Lily, do you want to give us your perspective about advocacy and mentorship?

Lily Astete:                    Sure. As far as being a woman in STEM, since I was about to finish my bachelor’s degree, so all of my professional experiences have been led by women in engineering. I worked for two years under a really supportive mentor right before I finished my bachelor’s degree, so I wasn’t really young, but I was younger. She was one of the people who really taught me to fight for myself and advocate for myself, stick up for myself when other males in the office were either sexually harassing me, to actually report it. Because, well, I was in the military, it’s not the same culture. You don’t really talk about those things, unfortunately. She was like, “No, you have to say something.” So she taught me how to actually stick up for myself in that sense. And then also, with a male in our office who was aggressive in his approach with me, and I’m not sure what that was about, but she was like, “You do a great job and you need to recognise that.” She always said, “You have a gold star. All you need to do is polish it.”

So then I worked under another female engineer and additionally, my advisor that I’ve had for the last four years, and the one thing I really appreciate about them is that they’re always there for support, but they really send me out there to figure things out on my own. It’s like being a kid in a pool, but your mom has you on one of those old leashes from the nineties. They’re there, but you got to figure it out on your own, and it’s really helped mould me and form me into someone that’s really independent at working and very competent in my field. So it’s almost like a mama bird who, “You have to figure out how to fly, I’m not going to fly you.” They’re like, “Okay, here’s how I did it. You do it, you can do it,” and they’re very supportive in that way.

Nancy Novak:                I’m right here if you need me. I think that’s great. I think my dad did a lot of that for me, and I think it does help you when you get into the field because it gives you that sense of confidence, which is super important. And Dani, let’s finish up with you on the mentorship and advocacy because I think it’s so important. And if you wouldn’t mind, I think it’d be nice to, if you have any stories about it, but just that full organic conversation that happens on the golf course, how does that really build deeper relationships and ability, basically, for our coworkers and our superiors to mentor and advocate for us?

Dani Hunt:                    As far as mentorship goes, I actually have only had one female advisor, which was for my master’s, Dr. [inaudible 00:28:39], and she’s amazing and has been a great supporter of me, and she’s currently having her second baby so she’s just a total awesome go-getter and she’s doing things and having a family, and it’s just really cool to see how strong she is through everything. And all the rest of my advisors through my education have been men. And also the men I think, as well, in my family, taught me so much about my worth and they picked me up when I was down and they taught me how to be independent and how to be a go-getter and to go and go forward and not let anything bring you down. And I think having their support really shaped me as well, just having men around did that for me. I wish I would’ve had maybe a little bit more of women in STEM as a mentor because I think I would’ve been able to talk more about this kind of thing, does help me see how important it is to have mentorship and specifically a female in your field.

Nancy Novak:                And I do think that it’s important to note, honestly, it’s about that networking and being able to really draw on different experiences and different backgrounds and different lenses and [inaudible 00:29:46].

Lily Astete:                    Have conversations, right? Yeah.

Nancy Novak:                But we do [inaudible 00:29:49].

Lily Astete:                    Actually, golfing is a great way to start conversations.

Nancy Novak:                Yeah. One of those ways where you spend hours with someone organically and things come up that would not come up in a business meeting or in a circumstance where you had your staff or your family member or somebody with you. And it’s human nature to advocate for those the best. It just is. I do it. I did it when I was promoting people. If I knew more about an individual, how the decision-making process was, things like that, you tend to advocate for them. So it’s a little bit more of a challenge for women when there is a male dominated environment, but it’s not unworkable, you just have to really be conscious of making sure those things happen. And let’s hope that if any of the firms are listening, it doesn’t have to be on a golf course or in a bar, there are other ways to organically be together and get to know each other, and that’s really where I think the challenge would be easier to overcome, if they could make those environments for us.

So let’s finish up here quickly with basically just what would you guys like to see change for future generations coming into our industry? Anything, if you had this crystal ball and you knew it was going to happen and you could have done something differently or you wanted something to be different in your experience, what would that have been? Let’s start out with you, Lily.

Lily Astete:                    Yeah, so this actually touches on what we were just talking about with this mentorship thing. And for me, it’s really important that I extend that to the people who are coming into my field after me. So I’m especially an advocate for women in STEM, but also anyone from minority groups. But that hasn’t been something that I’ve experienced everywhere I’ve gone, and so that’s called gatekeeping in the social world. And I think one thing I would change is that when I’m around or I’m in spaces and I see that I’m in a group and we are some of the only women in the room, it would be nice for us to uplift each other. I’ve had a lot, they want to be the only woman there, they think that they’re the only one who’s-

Nancy Novak:                It makes me sad when I hear that. I get very sad about that.

Lily Astete:                    They think that they’re the only one who’s worked harder than everyone to get there, to be the only woman in the room with the men, they think that they are smarter than you, and especially when you let loose a little bit, for some of the women that I’ve encountered, especially at… I go to two universities and UCSD is my other school, it’s a research school, very high prestige, and the women I’ve encountered there were really the ones that were very cold with me and wanted to leave everyone else in the dust.

Nancy Novak:                Sometimes I wonder if society hasn’t created that problem by only making room for one at the table versus strength in numbers kind of thing. So that’s an interesting thing to think about because it is sad and I sure wish that could get better.

Lily Astete:                    Yeah. It’s not their fault whatsoever, but I just wish that things could be different so that we don’t feel threatened in a way that we have to be that one person there and gatekeep the opportunities from other people. We should definitely be uplifting each other and sharing these experiences with one another.

Nancy Novak:                Thank you so much for that. Dani?

Dani Hunt:                    Lily was spot on. I honestly, unfortunately have seen a lot of situations. I haven’t [inaudible 00:33:15] personally, but with some of my really good friends in the industry of it’s a women against women type of thing because they get, maybe it’s a competitive thing with each other because there’s not very many, and I think it’s so important to lift each other up and to push each other forward and I totally back that up. Like I said, I’ve had a very, really great experience with the men in my workplace, I wouldn’t necessarily want to change anything, but I got to figure out how to get more women in there that… I don’t know. I think taking the right steps forward.

Nancy Novak:                And sometimes I have to say, it’s one of those things where we’re reflecting internally and say, “This has worked out well for me, but then if you look externally at the statistics, something doesn’t feel right here. Something needs to change overall.” That’s where I think you’re giving back. This podcast is an example of saying we need to be more inclusive, because inclusivity and diversity equals more innovative thought. If you have more innovative thought, you solve problems, including problems that are worldly problems. And if you solve more problems, you become more profitable, and don’t have profitable, you can solve more problems. It’s just this really wonderful cyclical way to do things, so we need to be more inclusive. And Juliet, I would love to hear your thoughts on this before we finalise our wonderful episode of Extending the Ladder, which is exactly what we’re talking about when it comes to mentorship, right?

Juliet Luevanos:            Yeah, absolutely. So just going based off of what you said about having women bring new perspective and innovative solutions, I really, really agree with that. I think that one way that that can be accomplished is by having more women superintendents. I think that they bring a really special set of skills to problem solve, especially out on the field, and I feel like that’s a little bit lacking right now. So I would really, really love to see more women superintendents.

Nancy Novak:                Oh my gosh, that’s such a good point. Such a good point, Juliet.

Juliet Luevanos:            Right? Yeah. I love seeing women operators on the site. I love seeing women superintendents. I get starstruck seeing women superintendents. And just creating a space for women to feel comfortable and welcome and just empowered in this space where they’re expected to just hone their skills and their passions in the industry.

Nancy Novak:                Excellent.

Lily Astete:                    If there’s one thing I would always want to put out there, it’s that I think that most women, what they want in this field, is to be seen the same as everyone else. So we should be looking at men and women the same, and we would like for people to look at us the same. So that means if you wouldn’t make that comment to a man, don’t make it to me, in a professional space. If you would not look at a male doing the same work and think that his competence is not at the level that I expect, but you do feel that way because it’s a woman, then that’s wrong. Just change your lens of me. Imagine I’m a man, and then rethink your response to me.

Nancy Novak:                Lily, you hit it spot on. If you can mentally roll reverse, most of the time you’ll know whether what you’re saying is appropriate, or fits. And I think that’s really a really good way of putting those lenses on. I was going to say, we just did a podcast with Kabri Schmid from Hensel Phelps, who’s the superintendent on a $100 billion project, and this all resonated so much. And it’s interesting to me because she’s so good at about bringing her own perspective to the leadership role, which is different, but it’s celebrating the differences and enjoying the differences and understanding differences are okay. But you’re right, Lily, we don’t want to be received and treated as this or that, we want to be treated as a superintendent, or a manager, or a professor, or whatever, or engineer, not female engineer, female manager, or that sort of thing. Let’s utilise that and let’s be treated as professionals in the same way.

So I think that’s a great way to close our Extending the Ladder Podcast, and I just so appreciate all of your perspectives. Thank you so much for being on the show.

 

Extending the Ladder with Nancy Novak > Women and Sustainability

Nancy Novak is joined by Brittany Marley, Senior Global Client Executive, Platform Alliances at Equinix. They dive deep into the role of women in sustainability, the need for collaboration, and the importance of measuring impacts.

Marley and Novak discuss:

– The importance of women leaders in sustainability, and why their underrepresentation could mean missing out on critical solutions.

– How corporate sustainability hinges on collaboration, specific metrics, and reduction of emissions throughout the supply chain.

– The need for improving efficiency in data centers to reduce energy usage and carbon emissions, with a special focus on Microsoft’s Azure platform.

– The complexities of solving carbon emissions and the necessity for collaboration at all governmental, corporate, and individual levels.

– The challenges in supporting digital transformation within energy constraints and the shared responsibility of corporations and consumers.

– The pivotal role of diversity, inclusion, and equity for success, specifically, the representation and involvement of women in decision-making processes for quality of life improvements and climate change mitigation.

– Despite the complexities of sustainability and digital transformation, Marley underscores the need for holistic approaches, collaboration, and the invaluable contribution of women’s leadership.

Brittany Marley, with her extensive experience in developing scalable infrastructure solutions for hyperscalers and cloud providers, has been instrumental in creating strategic partnerships with global clients. She prioritizes operational excellence for complex compute and edge networks, ensuring rapid delivery to meet market demand. Her expertise offers invaluable insights into the need for diversity and innovative thinking in tackling sustainability issues.

Read the full transcript below:

Nancy Novak:                Hi everybody. This is Nancy Novak, Chief Innovation Officer at Compass Datacenters. And we are excited to introduce you to the next episode of Extending the Ladder, Women and Sustainability. We have with us Brittany Marley. Brittany, we are so excited to have you and we would love just as a beginning introduction to understand a little bit about your path and what makes you so passionate on this subject.

Brittany Marley:            Thanks so much, Nancy. It’s my pleasure being here. I’ve been very lucky to be in the data centre development space, which is at a forefront of understanding sustainability, predominantly from the use of energy and its impact on the carbon footprint. So as I got into this project, I had a great opportunity to meet with a lot of people who have a lot of opinions about the state of renewable energy and just the more I learned, the more actually impassioned I am about this. And happy to have this conversation and hopefully share some ideas with your STEM leaders.

Nancy Novak:                Well, I’m really excited because I know you’ve done some extensive research and you’ve interviewed quite a few leaders in this space. And I think the first thing I wanted to ask you is, do you think women are in a unique position to address sustainability and why would that be?

Brittany Marley:            It’s a great question. And I didn’t presume to have the answer actually off the top of my head, so I sought out the opinions and experience that some fellow women leaders had and this included the head of sustainability for Accenture and SAP and Microsoft. And we even met with Julie Davenport, who is an officer of the most excellent order at the British Empire because she was the first female founder for a renewable energy company. So I really put the question to them to help get a much broader view of what women’s role is in sustainability and how they could affect change. And I think the dominant point of view was really that they’re just not at the table. When you don’t have women involved in leadership roles and they don’t have a seat in the decisioning and influence, you’re literally missing half the story and that means you’re literally missing half the solution.

Nancy Novak:                That’s absolutely true. I love thinking about that from a gender diversity standpoint, we are half the population. And I do think it’s fascinating too that you had mentioned earlier that change is driven by individuals. And that’s really what you were trying to dig into is these really powerful individuals and how they have a position to address sustainability more at those grassroots levels when it gets right down to who makes decisions in the household versus an individual and a corporation. Correct?

Brittany Marley:            That’s true. And in fact, Tamara Walker from SAP has done a lot of work on this, not just in her professional role, but she’s very active in the local community and local governments. And I think that was a unanimous sentiment in that women have a grassroots mentality that they’re great at mobilising communities and they actually have a unique role in many lower socioeconomic communities in particular where they’re the household provider, they’re the nurturing, they’re caring for children and they’re making most of the purchase decisions. So that’s at a very individual level. And then you go to the community level and then you go to the corporation level and then you get to the government. And we just see a lot of disparity between the women and their presence in each of those levels and how all are important in order to affect change.

Nancy Novak:                Yeah. I just find that so fascinating. And I know there’s a lot of empirical evidence that supports exactly what you’re saying, but having the perspectives from these women that you interviewed is just really, it feels like it’s hitting close to home. I know that you probably have seen with social media that I speak a lot about diversity and inclusion and being Chief of Innovation, I like to point out that diversity helps innovation, which then helps problem solving, which then can make more money, which can in turn affect change. And I wanted to ask you to give us more of your lenses on being the only in the room and the benefit of being the only in the room.

Brittany Marley:            Well, I’ll give a funny example from Julie Davenport and she said, look, even in say the automotive industry, it’s not specific to data centre development or high-tech, but the ergonomics of the female anatomy is very different. And when they went to do industrial design for the cars, the test dummies were replicating a male physique. And so as a result, most of the whiplash and concussion cases coming out of cars, women were 40% more likely to incur those types of injuries because the seat belts didn’t sit on them properly.

And just by having women involved in the design process, they were able to make a change that was beneficial not just to the health and safety of the individual, but also the integrity and the safety of the manufacturer as it rolled out more cars. So I mean, it seems like a simple example, but really it’s not, there’s definitely a unique point of view. Whether it’s the ability to communicate, to advocate, to get people I invested in the betterment of all, the good of all and not just for the individual. I think it takes that long view that women, I think, are uniquely positioned to do in order to motivate everyone and at every level.

Nancy Novak:                Yeah. And women do represent all forms of diversity, which I think is another important point to make when it comes to the gender diversity versus diversity overall. Because you’re right, those different perspectives I think are so critical. I love how you brought up the story of the contribution of the female in the decision making room is when they’re in the design stages. I have the story I always tell about GM, which is also the automotive business where Mary Barra achieved parity on her board and it was through the assistance of her teams telling her that, “We’ve got to have more diversity in order to really stay relevant.” And they wanted a steering committee and she said, “Well, then the board should be the steering committee if it’s really that important.” And sure enough, that came from the top down, so it made a really big difference.

And I just really love the fact that… Oh my gosh, I have to tell you that the whole Ford Explorer commercial where they said this is a Ford made for men or by men specifically and it was literally missing all the parts that were designed by women like windshield wipers and heaters and GPS and things that were invented by women. And therefore kind of silly, but really captured our attention over how important it is to get other perspectives when you’re not just designing but using. And I think sustainability fits right into that category because there’s such big problems to solve. And it just would be devastating, I think, for us to leave half of our talent on the sidelines by not having them at those decision making tables. So I have another question for you, Brittany, on the state of sustainability, let’s talk a little bit about where we’re at, how we’re measuring it and what kind of changes we’re looking for through these processes that will allow us to get better and better?

Brittany Marley:            Yeah. Well, it is a global problem and it’s a global opportunity to solve. So I always want to focus on what can be done and not just doom and gloom because I think we’re in a position now and I think it was very well said, that people make societies and societies make economies. And those economies now have to be making decisions that are now going to support those very same societies and individual and people that are in them. Sustainability and global climate change, these are not for one person to solve. And I think when you look at even G20 and the World Economic Forum and Davos and the people who are trying to collaborate across governments, across corporations, thought leadership and innovation, they have membership that is upwards of 30% of women, but they have almost no presence in the board level in making decisions. And what a great opportunity to start there because of, again, teamwork, collaboration point of view.

I think from a corporation standpoint, I really got a lot of great insight from the women that I spoke to and the things that they’re advocating for. Both Accenture and SAP and Microsoft, they all are dealing with the largest corporations in the world and are also the largest corporations in the world. And one of the things that they have that is unique is the ability to look at the full supply chain. A lot of companies have mandates, they know they want to be carbon-neutral, they have aspirations to be net-zero. And let me be very clear, carbon-neutral is making sure your carbon dioxide emissions are either accounted for or offset by renewable energy credits. Either you’re not producing them or you’re doing energy credits to offset them, which is sort of a rob Peter to pay Paul, really want to focus on the elimination and reduction of emissions. But net-zero is really focused on all green gas house… No-

Nancy Novak:                Greenhouse.

Brittany Marley:            Thank you, I got tongue-tied on that one. All of the emissions and not just limited to CO2. And so the only way to effectively do that is through metrics. You have to know what you’re producing. Is it from manufacturing? Is it from operations? Is it further downstream in the supply chain? Is it upstream in your distribution and your ability to deliver to your customers? And if you’re not measuring it in this entire circular ecosystem, then you don’t even know how you’re making an impact. And if you don’t have a benchmark or context around what those metrics mean, it’s very hard to find out where you’re able to make change and where you’re able to show successes. So with all of the systems that are in place, CRM systems, ERP systems, systems that are already being provided, there are ways to capture that data and we just have to get smarter and better about looking at the whole picture and having the whole ecosystem involved and not just a point to point or a business unit solution.

Nancy Novak:                So Brittany, I’m super happy that you mentioned the importance of understanding what measurements actually mean and including the holistic view of the supply chains upstream and downstream. Here at Compass, we’re trying to coin a phrase called Scope Four. And really all that means is that benchmarking that you’re talking about, about making good decisions through product selection, means and methods, design decisions, use of technology or whatever it is that actually shows that you’re making a good decision. And that decision is offsetting carbon that would go into the atmosphere had you not made that better decision. So really changing the narrative around that I think is so important. I really loved also what you said about learning from other industries. If we could just dig into that a little more, I think that would be fascinating.

Brittany Marley:            Yeah. I mean, just parlaying off what you said on Compass, even at Stack, the production of the data centre itself, it is improving the efficiency of power. It is reducing the use of water. But that’s just industry specific. And one of the things that I thought was really unique that Microsoft is doing for their Azure platform is they have tools inside that allow enterprises to measure the impact that it has from going on on-prem infrastructure into cloud infrastructure. And really being able to see how it affects their use of energy to support their day-to-day operations. And it’s just one data point, but it’s one worth mentioning. Another one that came out of SAP is that 1% improvement in your carbon emission upfront can create a 45% improvement downstream.

Nancy Novak:                That’s crazy.

Brittany Marley:            And that’s incredible. And again, if you’re not measuring it, we really don’t know how to then improve it. So I think there’s a lot of opportunity for the individuals to get together, again, at the grassroots level, do what you can locally, do what you can as an individual. I’ll give myself as an example, in a small hiatus from technology, I decided I’m going to start a skincare line. And I worked with some of the largest companies to bring that skincare line to market. It won Most Sustainable Product because we looked at packaging, we looked at the ingredients, we looked at our carbon footprint when we brought that to market. So it’s something I’m very proud of.

And it has nothing to do with technology, although certainly the innovation, and I know you mentioned this earlier, is really you’re most successful when you have all parties at the table, when government is aligned, when corporations are aligned. When corporations are designing and developing innovations that truly make an impact. For instance, moving to graphene, using batteries for lithium-ions versus having a graphene based battery. What’s the whole ecosystem and how are governments looking at this, countries are looking at this, environmentals are looking at it? It’s not just a point solution, it has to be looked at a holistic point of view.

Nancy Novak:                Yeah. And I think that’s important too and that’s why the whole ES and G also need to be taken into consideration. So when you look at sourcing raw materials and where those come from on the planet and any unintended consequences around coming up with these innovative ideas, I think it takes all the lenses at the table in order to really understand that cognitively and also just from a scientific point of view. And I do know that there are things that we can do in the built environment industry that could garner us a lot of momentum if we learn from other industries who have partnered with some of these raw material suppliers and some of the largest suppliers on the planet. There’s still an issue, but we’ve improved a lot just by understanding how we use the materials, how we logistically ship the materials and through means and methods on how steel is smelted and how concrete is produced and things like this.

We can learn from other industries and we can really make a big difference. I always like to point out to the audience that the built environment is close to 50% of total greenhouse gas emissions. And out of 100% of greenhouse gas emissions concrete, the most abundant material on the planet, has a component called cement and the cement is 7% of total greenhouse gas emissions. So imagine the move that we could have if there was a replacement for that product or a reduction on that product on a global scale. I mean, just huge opportunity here. So let’s talk a little bit about learning from other industries as well as just when it comes to larger infrastructure changes, how do we mobilise this and how do we solve for these things that we’ve been discussing, Brittany?

Brittany Marley:            Yeah. So there’s a lot to unpack there and it’s not an easy solve, which is why the more people at the table, the better, so you can generate those ideations and innovations. So I’ll start at the basics in the environment side. The carbon emission has to be solved. And that is a universal solve, it’s going to be at every level. Governments are in a position to create policies, policies are hard to enforce and you also still need to have the right metrics in which to measure success or failure against those policies. And those are areas that are still under development.

Corporations are in a unique position because they have mandates. They have mandates to their own values that they have with their employees, their clients, but they also have answers to the street. They need to make sure that they’re leaning forward and they’re being good citizens and that they’re addressing their investors’ goals and values as well. And that’s where a lot of these corporate mandates come from. And then you have at the individual level, how are we creating jobs for ourselves? And if our job in some countries is based on deforestation, so they can have lumber or they can get coal or they can get other natural resources to benefit their economic position, how do we then incentivize them or monetize a way for preservation?

I spoke with my friend Yobie Benjamin, who’s very active in this space, and he pointed out, look, there’s only so many ways you can create oxygen or deplete carbon from the environment. Where are your carbon sinks? How are you going to… If you are not monetizing or incentivizing people to preserve the largest oxygen producers, these beautiful forests in the Amazon and Congo and in Indonesia, then we are not solving it at the most basic level. And so I think there’s a lot to be done there. And corporations have never been more empowered than now in terms of directing policy and creating their own charters. So I think in that instance, it’s really that working hand in glove together to address these at a universal level.

Nancy Novak:                So Brittany, I was just talking about how we were in the West Coast together at a conference and I think it’s really interesting to wrap our brains around the data centre industry and the opportunity they have to really pivot in the built environment. And I wanted to frame this up so that you could talk a little bit more about this entry point and the policymaking from a blank slate approach. While we were over there, I thought it was fascinating to hear about how we’ve been building enterprise level colo-data centres and now cloud data centres for the past 25 years here in the US and in the developed countries, basically. That’s really how I was trying to frame this question to where you could let us know that hindsight is 2020 and now we’ve got some foresight, what should we do really?

Brittany Marley:            Yeah, so great question. What I’ve heard and discussed and shared ideas about is just this role of government policy, government public utilities. We are in a market that’s one of the most dynamic and fastest growing, anywhere in the world we cannot produce enough energy to support the demand for digital transformation. And is that the responsibility of the corporation, the end user, the local utility, the subsidies from the government? It is not an easy solve. The grid that is put in place today was not intended to support the amount of demand and it hasn’t been hardened to the degree that it needs to be to support all of the digital transformation that’s happening in the market. So going to renewable energy and going to other sources of energy, battery, solar, wind, hydro. All of these are great, however, our system today doesn’t allow the equitable distribution of all of those resources.

And I’ll give you a perfect example. Michelle Lancaster, again, from Microsoft, she was citing, “It’s great that we’ve moved to electrical vehicles and trying to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.” Great. If you’re driving an electric vehicle in Montana that’s being charged and powered by the local grid, that grid is on fossil fuels. So here we have the gap. Now, whose responsibility is it to solve? And the answer is, it’s everyone’s. It’s not just the government, it’s not just the corporation, it’s not just grassroots or environmentalists, it has to be everyone. Which means the challenge is these silos. Then how do you collaborate? How do you innovate when the cost of entry is going to be different for each party? The enforcement is going to be different, the operational changes will be different. There’s a bit of leading with the paycheck and it’s going to take money.

And that money might come from a government subsidy to help do some of the enhancements and reinforcements, but it might also fall on the consumer for paying higher prices on the products produced or to the corporations in order to literally change their existing systems, their existing operations and take a step forward. And that cost is typically in the early adoption phase. It’s amortised, it grows, it propels you forward. Going back to the sentiment that our societies build these economies, well, now these economies have to shift to now support the people and these societies. And the only way to do that is to invest in it. And in fact, Julie Davenport has one of the only 100% women led investment funds that was just listed on the London Stock Exchange and their entire charter is going after renewable energy and sustainable practises. And insofar as even helping consult companies on how to be a green startup, how to look at it from a holistic point of view. There are definitely mavericks out there, we just need more of those mavericks to be at the table.

Nancy Novak:                I love that. I love the term maverick. So on that very note, so ESG and DE&I, how do they intersect? And then we can close out with really how can female leaders lead the charge towards this more inclusive and sustainable practise? And there’s an intersection there. Let’s talk about that.

Brittany Marley:            Yeah. Well, it’s not just a sentiment to have diversity, inclusion and equity. And I think we’ve shared enough examples today on the importance of having women at the table, having the empowerment. If we can’t represent 5% of the CEOs when we’re 50% of the population, there is something missing. And it’s not just an advocacy, it’s also an awareness that the way we all process information is different individually, not men or women, just individually is different. But we need to round it out and have putting our best foot and holistic point of view forward, we need to have more women at the table and helping making those decisions. You won’t see the improvements in our quality of life, you won’t see the improvement in climate change and making it the most hospitable place for anyone to thrive, any company to thrive, if we don’t have that social engagement, the diversity engagement and the metrics to support it and show that we’re truly making an impact.

Nancy Novak:                Hey, Brittany, that has been just a fantastic conversation. You are a wealth of knowledge. We are so excited to be learning from you. I hope our audience can take away some really good nuggets. And I would just love for you to just leave parting words about if there was one thing you want them to really grasp and maybe a call to action, what would that be?

Brittany Marley:            Likewise, Nancy. Great conversation and I’d like to take credit, but I really can’t. I was very fortunate to be talking to a lot of thought leaders in this space and will continue to do so. And so that’s a perfect takeaway for anyone listening. Don’t stop learning, don’t stop asking questions, don’t stop advocating and using your voice. Make the move, challenge your companies, challenge your communities to do things differently. It does take a village and that village includes the women here on the call. So thanks so much, Nancy.

Nancy Novak:                I love it. Very good. Thank you so much, Brittany.

Extending the Ladder with Nancy Novak > Bringing the Next-Gen into Construction

When you picture a stereotypical worker in the construction industry, for most individuals, the first image that probably comes to mind is likely a male. But the number of women working in construction is increasingly growing. Female-based apprenticeship programs such as the ANEW in Seattle, Building Pathways in Boston, and Tradeswomen Inc. are facilitating this, according to EHS Today.

Why is this growth occurring and what are organizations and businesses doing to catalyze this growth?

On today’s episode of Extending the Ladder by Compass Datacenters, podcast Host and Chief Innovation Officer of Compass Datacenters, Nancy Novak, speaks with Jennifer Sproul, President of Maryland Center for Construction Education and Innovation, Inc. (MCCEI), about what MCCEI and other companies are doing to boost the number of females in construction-based roles.

Novak and Sproul also discussed…

1. How Sproul entered the construction industry and the challenges she faced as a female in the field
2. Recent growth of female involvement in the construction industry and why this is occurring
3. What Compass Datacenters is doing to promote female engagement in construction

Despite the small proportion of females in the construction industry, Sproul said there has been an upswing in numbers since 2018. “I’d say probably the first few years or so we were in the industry and out in the workforce we were stuck at about 9 percent, a little under 10 percent of the industry. And now, nationally, we’re at 14 percent. In fact, in Washington, D.C., women make up 17.6 percent.” She believes part of the reason for this upswing is education of women realizing construction opportunities.

Jennifer Sproul is President of Maryland Center for Construction Education and Innovation, Inc. Prior to her work at MCCEI, she held various marketing roles in a variety of companies and organizations. Sproul has also served as the National Professional Development & Education Committee Chair and the Northeast Region Director of the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC). She holds an AAS in Construction Management from Catonsville Community College and a BA in Communications from Loyola University Maryland.

Read the full transcript below:

Nancy Novak:                Compass Data Centres is proud to present our next guest, Jennifer Sproul. Jennifer is the president of the Maryland Centre for Construction Education and Innovation with 22 years of experience in the construction industry. She recently served on the National Board of National Association of Women in Construction, NAWIC, as a Northeastern regional director. She is passionate and advocates for women in the a AUC industry. And I know a little bit about Jennifer, Jennifer and I are friends, and she has a very interesting career path in this industry. So I’m not going to read her entire bio because I would like for her to share how she got into the industry, and then we can then dive into some more of these wonderful topics that we’re going to talk about.

Jennifer Sproul:             Hi. Good seeing you, Nancy. So like, I think, a lot of women in the construction industry, at least that I’ve spoken to, I accidentally joined the construction industry. I was a communications major in college. And when I graduated I got a job working for Whiting-Turner in their marketing department. And I remember sitting in my interview asking, “Oh, what do you think about working in construction?” Well, honestly, before I answered the ad, I hadn’t even thought about it. That wasn’t my answer, but that was the truth. And here I am 22 years later, I’ve gotten some really amazing opportunities in this industry and it’s been… I can’t imagine meeting anywhere else.

Nancy Novak:                That’s so great to hear. And honestly, at Compass, we love hearing that, Jennifer, because we do love promoting to bring women into the industry, and also promoting those who don’t have any background so that it can be trained on site. And I have to tell you, the ones that we have here in the US… Right now, we’ve got 100% of our CMS in the US are women, and the ones we have here in the US are just crushing it. They love it. They’re like a part of the family, they’re a part of the teams, it’s exciting. So I can’t wait to talk more about the construction industry so that we can [inaudible 00:02:00] some excitement with our audience, and then maybe they’ll have some questions on how they can get into the industry. I do have to say though, starting out, just all women who are in a male dominated field, but in particular construction being very male dominated, I’m sure you face some challenges along the way.

Nancy Novak:                So we would love to hear a little bit about some of those challenges so that we can relate to that, and then kind of talk about some of the ways you worked through them.

Jennifer Sproul:             So I would say when I was… I would say one of the biggest challenges I faced was when I was starting a family. I was working for a small general contractor who had never had someone take or need maternity leave before. So they were great in that they worked with me and asked me what I wanted, but also as a young person, I was in my late twenties, early thirties, it was also kind of scary having to decide what I wanted. So I would say that was a challenge, a hurdle. Being on a job site while I was trying to breastfeed my first child, and not having a place to do that was really hard. Actually after my pregnancy, they gave me a conference room to pump in, and somebody actually walked in on me because it didn’t lock. I have horror stories without trying to breastfeed. I’m sure any new mom can relate to those things, but working for some place where you are the first to do something is kind of hard.

Nancy Novak:                Oh, I totally agree. And honestly, I want you to know I relate. My youngest is only 23 years old, and I also was with a company where I was the first ever person running work that was going to have to go and have a baby physically, and then return to work. And I also hear a lot of stories about women who had to make those difficult decisions. Like you said, your company was kind enough to say, “What is it you want to do?” And some of the decisions around that end up being, well, let’s work for a while till I normalise my life. And then what you find, and I found this pretty much across the board, is this part-time work effort ends up being a full-time with part-time pay.

Jennifer Sproul:             I do remember everyone kept asking me if I was going to go. And honestly, part-time is hard to do if you need daycare, especially if you want to use a centre and not a person’s home. It’s almost more expensive. I actually found that it was more expensive to pay for part-time care than a full-time salary, a full-time weekly care because you’re taking up the spot. And it just didn’t make sense. There was no way I could survive, we could survive paying daycare on a one salary, or one and a half salary. So it was never something… Plus, I love working, and just because I was a mother didn’t mean that I was going to stop. I guarantee nobody asked my husband if he was going to go part-time when we had our child.

Nancy Novak:                That’s a good point. I like to encourage doing the role reversal when we’re talking about these kinds of choices. And it’s also a very good point on just the affordability of daycare or nannies and what the expectation is there. But I also think, and you and I talked about this earlier, it’s really not a right or wrong thing. It’s about having the decision and feeling good about whatever that decision is and feeling strong in that decision. And men and women should both, in my opinion, be able to make those kinds of decisions about how they want to split that caregiving time and still maintain their financial viability as a family, as a unit, right?

Jennifer Sproul:             Absolutely.

Nancy Novak:                So that’s great. Well, so let’s pivot over here to what we see coming up and what’s current, what’s future, what changes you’ve seen related to welcoming more women into the industry. And then really, I’d like to dive into a little bit of how the Maryland Centre for Construction and Education can enhance that and help us with this diversity conundrum that we face.

Jennifer Sproul:             Absolutely. I’m sure we’ve seen this and your viewers have seen the stats on the increase of women in the last couple years. I would say probably the first 40 years or so that we were in the industry and actually out in the workforce, we were talking about 9%, little under 10% of the industry. And now nationally, we’re at 14%. And in fact, in Washington DC, women make up 17.6%.

Nancy Novak:                Wow. That’s outstanding.

Jennifer Sproul:             Really amazing.

Nancy Novak:                That’s huge. That’s huge.

Jennifer Sproul:             And it’s been quite… Since about 2018 is when the numbers started to decline. But within the last, I would say 24 months is when we’ve seen the major jump.

Nancy Novak:                Is there why behind that?

Jennifer Sproul:             I think a lot of it is just education of women realising the opportunities. It’s like the message is finally getting out there. It’s probably the biggest [inaudible 00:07:18].

Nancy Novak:                I was wondering if… One of the popular topics nowadays in social media and on the news is a whole student loan, student debt, and then the promotion of the vocational trades and how you can make a really good livelihood doing that. And that’s from the tool carrying aspect, not necessarily the management part of things, because we’ve struggled in the industry, both in the trades, and then also in the management ranks and or supervision ranks. So I am curious about whether the trades have gone… They used to be at about 3%, I think women, and you’re right, the management was always nine or 10%. And now we’ve seen increases, I think in both areas, if I’m not mistaken.

Jennifer Sproul:             Yeah, we’re still under 5% in the trades, but it has gone up. And I hear anecdotally from all the apprenticeships here in the state of Maryland that there are numbers of women are increasing. For example, I was talking to IBW and they were saying I think they were at 15% of their current apprentices were women. And I personally have just seen more women. And I think honestly, social media is really helping.

Nancy Novak:                That’s helping. Yeah.

Jennifer Sproul:             Yeah, there’s some trades women that are really out there and are influencers, and I think… And they’re not some stereotypical gruff person. They’re young and fun, and they’re advancing steadily in a male populated career. So it’s pretty cool to see, and I think encouraging for young people.

Nancy Novak:                That’s also a good point. Social media does help. And I would like to encourage our audience to spread the word and share the podcast because we… I was just on a call this morning with a group called WiMCO, Women in Mission Critical, right? And they were looking at one of the struggles we have, which is advancing women. And I think you and I, Jennifer, talked last time that we were together about the fact that the industry is really good in the fact that there’s not a huge pay gap based on classification of labour or certain levels. But when it comes to the advancement part, being able to push women up into those leadership pro rules, we still see a huge challenge there.

Jennifer Sproul:             Absolutely. And I often think it’s just unconscious biases of hiring practises, of promotion practises, of not recognising the leadership qualities that women have versus men. Transformational leadership versus transactional leadership and those types of things, I think are what are holding women back when we’re being held to the double bind of being too aggressive but not forceful and just-

Nancy Novak:                All those double language standards, right?

Jennifer Sproul:             Exactly. Yeah. So I think that’s a lot of it. And honestly, I know that if any man in leadership, or even a woman, because we often are our own worst enemies and we hold women to different standards than we do men as women, but I would say you recognise that, just learn, realise it, and then maybe you’ll think about it when you’re reviewing a mid-management level woman. And if you think twice, am I being blind to my own biases, then that might help a little bit. It’s just that education. No, but I don’t think people are maliciously holding women back. I think is just-

Nancy Novak:                That’s out outstanding advice. It really is, Jennifer. You and I, again, we’ve talked about the fact that there’s implicit bias in everybody, right? We all have it because we’re human. And I do believe that most of the time I see it occurring, it’s typically done, believe it or not, with good intentions because someone’s kind of making a decision on your behalf for what they think is best for you. And it’s changing that stereotypical kind of systemic way that we’re brought up that says we need to make those choices on our own and feel good about those choices like we stated earlier. But yeah, I love that comment you made about really conditioning yourself before you get ready to look at promotions or opportunities or hiring practises and asking yourself, put that yourself in that right mindset of, do I have biases? Of course I do.

Nancy Novak:                Okay, what are those, and how can I make sure those don’t interfere with the decision I’m making? Because I tell you, I’ve interviewed folks where I do question myself. I really fall in love with one of the candidates and I have to ask myself, is it because there’s so much like me, or is there a reason I was struggling because this person is not so much like me? And what other attributes am I looking for that will actually balance my team a little better and bring some more diverse talent in which we desperately need?

Jennifer Sproul:             Absolutely. And I think it’s really important. I hear all the time, “I’m hiring the best person for the job. I don’t care their gender, their race, their sexual orientation.” But honestly, a lot of times the best person for the job is someone that looks like the person that had it before or has the same attributes, and so I think we need to try and get rid of that language. I know it’s good intentioned language, but get rid of that and actually implement some hiring practises that try and take away any biases that you would have.

Nancy Novak:                I think you’re right, because I was also… I was kind of laughing it to myself when you said best person for the job because so many times, there’s this idea that we’re going to put women on boards or we’re going to put women in leadership as tokens, and then everyone always warns you, “Don’t forget, we need the most qualified person.” And I always kind of look back and think, yeah, because every single man who’s on a border in a leadership position is clearly the most qualified, and if you’re a woman, there’s a chance that you might not be or something. It’s funny when you actually put it in that perspective, but that is another systemic belief that people have, right?

Jennifer Sproul:             Absolutely. Yeah. It’s been a problem ever since we had any idea of quotas whatsoever. Somebody thinks, especially a lot of women say, “Oh, well, I don’t want to be a quota. I don’t want to be hired because I was a woman.” You were never hired because you were a woman, never. You were hired because you were the right person for the job, but maybe somebody said, I’m going to give this person extra look because they’re a woman.

Nancy Novak:                Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s true. It’s a hard nut to crack honestly, because we also want to make sure that we’re bringing our full selves and our talent, and we kind of respected and recognised for what we know. And I do think that to your… I love the fact that things are improving because we want to be on that trajectory. I also believe firmly, and I think you agree with me, that we can’t rely on our laurels to just continue along this trajectory. As we’ve seen in past statistics where there was about a 10 year period of time where women were being added to boards at a very steady pace, and then there was a backslide, right? Because it’s hard to keep that pipeline full, especially when you’re looking at the advancing roles of women. I do want to really dig in a little bit to what your centre does and how it helps us become more diverse as an industry.

Jennifer Sproul:             So we are a nonprofit workforce intermediary. We were founded in 2009 after the last recession, once the biggest names here in construction in Maryland realised our impending doom when it came to workforce and the pipeline. And you know the stats. Every four people that are retired, only one person’s coming in. So yeah, we were founded then. We are kind of a connector between the education industry, industry and government, making sure that our pipeline starts when they’re [inaudible 00:15:27] K to 12 on a school programme. There’s a lot of people, I think, focus on the person with three to five years experience and trying to get them in, but we really need to focus on as young as elementary school and getting kids interested in careers and making them realise that working with their hands isn’t something that you not shouldn’t be looked down upon, that you have amazing career opportunities.

Jennifer Sproul:             And then it’s working with them as they progress, giving them internship and pre-apprenticeship opportunities when they’re in high school, and it’s just the career exploration. And then working with adult learners too, and making sure that somebody in a workforce development programme from Baltimore City not only realises what they’re being trained in those 12 weeks, but knows all of the available opportunities to them. That’s a little bit of what we’re doing here at MCCEI.

Nancy Novak:                That’s great. And I wanted to focus a little bit on the I part, innovation. Since I’m chief of innovation, I thought we should focus on this. So in the industry, since the beginning of time when you and I first entered, innovation and technology has made some good inroads into the construction world. Do you think that has not just opportunity, but also made a difference in who it’s attracting to our industry?

Jennifer Sproul:             Absolutely. And honestly, I think as an industry, we probably aren’t capitalising enough on the I. And we have made some significant advances in the last even five years on the technology and innovation, but I don’t know that we’re really doing a great job of selling that. And we are still trying to recruit the same people that we were recruiting 20 years ago. So I do think that that is an opportunity, a pipeline that we aren’t really tapping into right now, our kids that are interested in tech. I’ve worked for construction managers that have software divisions. I know now they probably are hiring people to fill those positions with those roles, but so many times I’ve worked somewhere when they’ve got drones or laser scans or anything and they just give it to the young project engineer to be in charge of. And you can be… Why not hire somebody that actually has robotics experience or something like that? So there is no learning curve. And then you can teach them the construction part, because IT is the number one career and technical education pathway in the state of Maryland, I’m assuming all schools.

Jennifer Sproul:             So that’s the most number of kids. You got to be able to pull some of them. Some of them there would be interested in construction if we just exposed them to that.

Nancy Novak:                Well, this is how I look at it, and this is why I love the technology part of it. We are in the middle of the, well, beginning of rather, the fourth industrial revolution, right? We’re digitising everything. So even when you look at the humanities and the sciences, they’ve blended, because now there’s digital literature, and there’s digital art and digital photography and digital music. And it’s really just amazing when you look at this fourth industrial revolution, which is digitising the world. And construction is no different. We build off digital documentation, we collect digital information to understand performance and operations. And now, we’re got these new technologies that can help us neutralise things like the brute strength that it takes and that causes injury and kind of eliminate some of the possibilities of some of the trades by using exoskeletons and robotics and offsite manufacturing in all the innovative ways that we want to normalise our business to make it more productive, more attractive and more diverse.

Nancy Novak:                So I am a hundred percent agreeing with that. Innovation is so important to our industry, and I would love to continue along that road of disruption. And I think that what you’re doing is part of that. It’s a huge part of that, especially when you have to educate people about it and how vast it really is.

Jennifer Sproul:             Yeah, we had a symposium at the end of October, I think. I don’t know, my days are running together. But one of our topics was on innovation and how to harness it when you’re recruiting and retaining your employees, but also just like what’s the industry going to look like? Who should you be recruiting? And you think you talk about prefab and manufacture, the industrialization basically of the construction industry… And think about no one in construction really has logistics experience, but there are people that are majoring in logistics. There are career changers that we could be pulling from manufacturing and companies and whatnot. So there is, I think, a lot of opportunity for the construction industry to really learn from other industries like tech, like manufacturing. And I think I saw a stat that said if you look at productivity of all these other industries they just have steadily gone up in constructions actually, just going down that we need a major overhaul on that. And who we’re-

Nancy Novak:                We do. I spend a lot of my time talking about that very thing because it makes me sad that we have such a great industry, such a large ecosystem, and we have a lot of new in innovative ways of doing stuff, but we really haven’t improved that tool time. The tool time right now, on average, is only about 40% per body, meaning 60% of someone’s time, it’s carrying a tool is waiting on information, looking for data, getting design materials, equipment, you name it, just logistics, like you said. And so it is a really kind of focusing on the person with a tool in their hand. Regardless of what your role is, it’s kind of the beginning part of disrupting the business to make it better, some of these other industries that we could absolutely learn from. And I wanted to branch out just a little bit because I love the statistics, and I love teaching our audience about some of the stats around how big the business is, right?

Nancy Novak:                So when you really look at the built environment, I’ve been very much in tune with our obligation related to sustainability. So again, there’s other roles, right? You’ve got cybersecurity, you have sustainability, like you said, logistics. There’s all these different type of accounting, estimating, all of these different types of roles that we need in this massive ecosystem to build for anybody and everybody. And on the front of sustainability, the way the stats show right now, the way they stack up is somewhere between 45 and 50% of the built environment, including maintaining, operating and upgrading buildings is responsible for global greenhouse gases. So the opportunity to be able to really pivot there and have a meaningful career that can really solve some global problems is huge. It’s just huge.

Jennifer Sproul:             Absolutely. And I just had a conversation this morning with one of my board members about the messaging that the industry is lacking. It’s in lacking in… We are affecting the world more than any other industry out there, and we have the opportunity to change the world the more than any other industry out there. And I don’t think we do a really great job of selling that to young people, to their parents, anything… Gen Z really cares about the impact they’re having-

Nancy Novak:                They do.

Jennifer Sproul:             … in their careers.

Nancy Novak:                They do.

Jennifer Sproul:             Women and minorities do too.

Nancy Novak:                Yeah.

Jennifer Sproul:             And if we’re trying to diversify, we’re trying to attract more people. That’s the message we need to be selling, is you’re literally building the world, you’re building places families are made, hospitals and churches and schools and-

Nancy Novak:                Roadways, everything.

Jennifer Sproul:             Everything. Like you said, when it comes to global warming, we have the responsibility as an industry, but also the tools as an industry to make a difference.

Nancy Novak:                What you said there earlier about people not being exposed to that is fascinating to me because I travel quite a bit, I go to many different conferences and areas, and I do speak about my passions, and one of those is sustainability. And when I talk to other experts who are experts in global warming, climate change, sustainability, greenhouse gases, all of those things, they’re always a setback and a bit surprised at what they hear about the built environment. And that is a challenge that I think is going to become more in the front and centre it. I love the doubt that I heard it during one of the sessions I was in. And it was, if concrete was a country, it would be third in line to China and the US for global greenhouse gas emissions, for contributor. And it just put that…

Nancy Novak:                It’s the most abundant material on the planet. And it’s one of those things where we know we have technology that can help us improve and reduce the amount of cement we use in concrete, which is the major contributor to the greenhouse gases, right? So those types of technologies are exciting and very viable. And so again, I wanted to bring up that one other aspect, not to discount the cybersecurity part and being able to build secure facilities all over the globe and protect privacy and intellectual property and things like that that are so critical to us.

Jennifer Sproul:             Absolutely. And on that same call that I had earlier today, we talked about the growth of mass timber buildings, and they were telling me that they had a six story building going up that was all wood and no concrete at all, which I thought was amazing. Even the floors are wood. And they were able to get over the ratings and whatnot and make sure that it was passcode. And I think that kind of innovation’s really exciting and interesting to see where are the industry’s going to go when the next 10 years or so?

Nancy Novak:                Well, and there’s no one solution, but there’s many, many solutions. And what excites me and gives me a positive outlook is that I know that we have the ability and technology used to do a lot of what we need to do already. It’s just a matter of normalising it, making the business case for it, getting the word out there. So part of me is feels comfort in the fact that we know how to do stuff and we’re continuing to develop things. It’s just literally trying to make it something that the built environment can do and still have their livelihoods in check. And the other thing that’s a struggle… And then I’m going to get down to just what your wish is for the industry, Jennifer, but the other thing I want to point out is we talk about all these opportunities within the built environment, and I just want to make sure people understand that this is a train you just can’t jump in front of, right?

Nancy Novak:                This is something that is perpetual, and it’s exciting to be a part of. So when it comes to just impacting everybody on the planet, the built environment is a way in which we do that. It does with infrastructure, with digital transformation, with water, with power, with like you said, hospitals, airports, transportation, all of that. And I would love to repeat the fact that we need to learn from the manufacturing industry and get better at being able to do those types of things. So we’re in it to win it, and I think that your organisation understands that, and that innovative part’s going to help us a lot. So I would like to know now, if it was blue sky for Jennifer, what would your wish be for our industry?

Jennifer Sproul:             I wish that the industry was a place that everyone felt safe, welcome, and secure, and that they would see that the amazing success they could have in this industry. And right now, I don’t think we’re quite there yet.

Nancy Novak:                That is a very, very wonderful wish to have it. It is. It really is. Having a welcoming environment is so important when you come to work every day, not just knowing that you’re in a noble profession, but you’re contributing, you’re making a difference, but also feeling like you belong there, right?

Jennifer Sproul:             Exactly. Belonging, I think, is the part that I’ve recently realised through conversations with DEI experts that we often forget about. And when we talked about DEI… In fact, it was our moderator from our DEI session at our symposium, Dr. Estelle Marie Montgomery, she talked very much about the sense of belonging. It is, I think what keeps the industry 80% white and 90% male, is that [inaudible 00:28:56]. And I know we’re working our way away… And I guess now, we’re not quite 90% anymore. We’re a little bit better, 86%, but we still have a long ways to go. When the population itself is about 50-50, we still have quite a bit to go to make it a place that women feel a hundred percent like they belong.

Nancy Novak:                I absolutely agree, and that is the best note ever to conclude on. I love the message of belonging. And I would like for our audience to not just think about that and reflect on it, but also share that message, because belonging makes all the difference in whether you want to come to work every day and bring your full self and belong to this wonderful industry that is changing the way we live. So thank you so much, Jennifer. I would like one more tag here at the end, and I would like for our audience to know how to reach you and how to get involved with what you’re doing.

Jennifer Sproul:             So I’m very active on LinkedIn. You can search me out there or go to our website, mccei.org. There’s a million ways. We have sponsorship opportunities, guest speaking opportunities, and would love to connect with anybody, even if you’re not in Maryland. I have cohorts and colleagues all over the country, actually, even internationally as well.

Nancy Novak:                Oh, that’s fantastic. That’s very good to know. Well, thank you again. I’m so happy to have you as a guest on Breaking Glass, and I look forward to us publishing this, and then getting the wonderful feedback so that we can continue to grow and improve.

Jennifer Sproul: Thanks, Nancy.

Extending the Ladder with Nancy Novak > Bridging the Digital Divide: Driving Towards Digital Equity

Digital accessibility is a privilege, one that allows those who have unbridled access to the digital space. Host Nancy Novak, CIO of Compass Datacenters, met with Dr. Julie Albright, a highly decorated technology sociologist who currently serves as a board member for Infrastructure Masons, to talk about the need to mend the digital divide for digital equity and inclusion.

As a woman who has spent her career looking at the digital transformation of society, Dr. Albright is well versed in understanding the digital divide. But what exactly is it?

Dr. Albright described the divide as consisting of three levels. “I kind of think of it as three pillars,” she explained. “One, you might not have a digital device, be it a smart phone or a laptop or something like that. Second, you might not have digital connectivity, meaning internet at home sort of thing. And third, you might not have digital skills.”

The digital divide can be any of the three pillars or a combination. Within the divide, women fall behind.

“What the research shows, is that overall, globally, women are more likely to fall on the wrong side of the digital divide,” Dr. Albright said.

While this divide can be broken down further into more specific socioeconomic factors like race and age, the COVID-19 pandemic put extra pressure on these categories and deepened the issue.

One example of this divide Dr. Albright recalled was witnessing an immigrant woman shed a tear over her inability to access her healthcare needs online during the pandemic. While this example is one of many, women are unequivocally affected by the deepening digital divide.

Within the technology industry, there is a consistent lack of female voices. However, the more experiences and perspectives that can be added to a project, the more innovative. Unsurprisingly, the more women brought onto a project, the less blind spots in the project. “Bringing more women into developed technology isn’t simply a nice thing to do… it’s an innovation imperative. It actually brings more innovative results,” Dr. Albright highlighted.

Extending the Ladder with Nancy Novak > Leverage a Non-traditional Background to Boost Diversity and Inclusion in the Construction Industry

Summary
In efforts to boost diversity and inclusion among the construction industry, Nancy Novak, the chief officer at Compass Datacenters, and Allison Scott, Director of Customer Experience and Industry Advocacy at Autodesk, discuss ways of standing out from the rest of the construction industry.

Notes
In efforts to boost diversity and inclusion among the construction industry, Nancy Novak, the chief officer at Compass Datacenters, and Allison Scott, Director of Customer Experience and Industry Advocacy at Autodesk, discuss ways of standing out from the rest of the construction industry.

Although Scott did not take the traditional route to construction management, she found value in the different ways she can communicate and tell stories through her work. She learned early on “there was always something bigger going on than what was written on the page.” Scott strives to take bigger and abstract concepts and translate them in a way that lets more people gain a true understanding of the situation women face in the construction industry. This was implemented later on in the way she has been able to reach and impact various communities and clients in said industry.

Scott extends her wisdom to the youth population in the way she learned “you are more than just one thing”. Novak and Scott discuss the harsh reality of women still being underrepresented in the construction industry; ultimately there is more to a construction role than “muddy boots,” said Scott. Efforts to include and decrease stigmas are essential for producing strong leaders, as is making sure people feel safe and valuable, which is non-negotiable for companies. Additionally, companies are making strides from the “see something, say something movement.”

For people interested in getting started in the construction industry, Scott says doing research on companies locally and nationwide serves as a valuable start. “There’s innovation …overall it’s a tenant in most construction companies, because they recognize innovation isn’t just about technology, it’s about overall improving the way that we work.”

Extending the Ladder with Nancy Novak > Entering STEM with Michigan State University’s Society of Women Engineers

Summary
The Society of Women Engineers, or SWE, is a non-profit educational service organization composed of science and engineering students and graduate engineers. Nancy Novak spoke with three SWE members to learn more about their mission. Emily Peterson, Professional Relations Director, Noelle Kurien, President, and Megan Giltmier, Vice President, all from the Michigan State SWE chapter, sat down to discuss their passion for engineering and the importance of SWE.

Notes
The Society of Women Engineers, or SWE, is a non-profit educational service organization composed of science and engineering students and graduate engineers. Nancy Novak spoke with three SWE members to learn more about their mission. Emily Peterson, Professional Relations Director, Noelle Kurien, President, and Megan Giltmier, Vice President, all from the Michigan State SWE chapter, sat down to discuss their passion for engineering and the importance of SWE.

Peterson formulated her love of mechanical engineering through Lego building as a youth. Kurien is a chemical engineering major concentrating in biomedical, which she believes will provide her with a breadth of opportunities upon graduation. Giltmier, an upcoming junior at MSU, is a chemical engineering major like Kurien. Giltmier credits her pursuit of a STEM career to her high school A.P. Bio teacher, who encouraged her to go into the STEM field. Her desires include working on climate change.

There are a lot of professional and personal benefits to being a member of SWE. Peterson says the organization helps connect students with other women working in STEM jobs, and on campus, SWE provides a reliable support network of women. “I think it’s really just that network of knowing familiar faces is something you can’t get in any organization on campus.”

Kurien joined SWE to fulfill several criteria she had when looking for a campus organization. “One was community service; one was creating a sense of belonging and finding new friends, and also professional development. SWE was one of those unique clubs that did all three of those for me.”

Giltmier says competition is one of the most significant challenges facing women in engineering. “Both competition with my male peers, feeling like I have to prove myself to them, but also in that same environment, it causes a lot more competition between my female peers, because there are fewer of us, and we’re all working on proving ourselves.”

Extending the Ladder with Nancy Novak > A Closer Look at the Evolving Gender Equality in the Data Center Industry

Summary
Noelle Walsh, Corporate VP for Microsoft, joined Nancy Novak, Chief Innovation Officer for Compass Datacenters, to discuss how gender equality is progressing in the data center industry.

Notes
Walsh stated, “I think unconscious bias plays a role. I believe we are past the days of overt discrimination. But now it’s the microaggressions, the unconscious biases, and I think another level of learning will be needed to peel away the unconscious biases.”

Walsh believes that moving forward, hiring the best candidates across diverse facets will be an important focus for leadership figures. Learning to embrace one’s own differences and help others understand where they are coming from and embrace their own unconscious biases is also part of the growth process, according to Walsh. Networking is a crucial aspect of making the effort of getting to know colleagues.

What is Walsh’s advice specifically for women in the field? She said, “Don’t hold back, don’t be planning for the worst-case scenarios, or the best-case scenarios. Live your life and your career to the full. You’ll adapt as life sends you in different directions.”

Microsoft wants “every person to achieve more.” This involves embracing a growth mindset. “I think underpinning that is diversity and inclusion. That diversity of thought, diversity of gender, culture, ethnicities, industries, and experiences, stated Walsh. Microsoft has capitalized on this by holding trainings on allyship and cultures while rewarding people not just on what they achieve, but how they achieve.

Continued progress in data center gender equality involves taking advantage of growth momentum and truly trying to make a difference. Walsh said that every small step can have a ripple effect.

For more podcasts and thought leadership on this topic, visit compassdatacenters.com and subscribe to the podcast.

Extending the Ladder with Nancy Novak > IM Women Group Aims to Progress Gender Equity Through Education Campaign with Heather Dooley

Summary
Chairperson Heather Dooley shares statistics and advice on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Notes
The pandemic has disproportionately affected women in the workplace. Activists nationwide are concerned for the progress that’s been made once statistics were released, showing that 2.4M women dropped out of the workforce within the first year of the pandemic totaling $800 billion of lost income. Additionally, 38% of women surveyed in the tech industry said they planned to leave their jobs in two years. Chair of IM Women, Heather Dooley, spoke to Nancy Novak on Breaking Glass on the surprising numbers, why it’s happening and how to reverse it.

“All of the progress that we’ve been making in building up the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and building gender parity into our workforce seems to be moving backwards instead of forwards,” Dooley said.

Extending the Ladder with Nancy Novak > Building Your Own Personal Board of Directors

Every fortune 500 and major organization has one: a board of directors. A successful board steers the company’s ship and guides them through the waves, both smooth and choppy. Tiffany English, Senior Director of Architecture for Qualcomm, believes a board of directors shouldn’t stop at the corporate level. Why not build one’s brand with a board of directors too? English joined Breaking Glass’, Nancy Novak, to explore this idea in further detail.

English learned that navigating one’s career isn’t always a piece of cake, and it can be a whole lot easier with some trusted mentors to help create a network of connections. “Building relationships in the industry with other people, especially other women who have a strong understanding of where you’re coming from, and have often had the same experiences you’ve had, was something that could help elevate my career,” English explained in regards to the the lightbulb moment that propelled her career forward.

In addition to her role with Qualcomm, English is the president of CREW Network, whose mission is to transform the commercial real estate industry by advancing women globally. Some of their work is reaching out to girls in junior high and high school through the college level to let them know what the opportunities and diverse professions are in the real estate industry.

“Part of building the pipelines is so we can have a more diverse and inclusive industry is making sure we’re exposing young people, and the younger generation, to what their potential is and where they can go,” English said. “And then making sure that the women who have elevated to that level of C-suite, and executive-level are there to help lift those younger generations and pull them in, and share their knowledge.”

Extending the Ladder with Nancy Novak > Confronting Implicit Bias in the Workplace with Janese Murray

Summary
D&I expert shares practical tips and information about the impact of bias

Notes
Implicit bias is subconscious and not recognized by those impacted by it. So, how can companies confront and address it in the workplace? Taking on this topic today, Breaking Glass host Nancy Novak spoke with D&I expert Janese Murray. Murray is the President of Inclusion Impact Consulting, a firm that helps corporations create diverse workplaces where all people can thrive.

Murray explained, “Building an inclusive environment is a corporate change, and that can take a long time to do. Implicit bias isn’t always visible. It’s not always as concrete as bringing in people with differences.”

Companies and leaders build systems that don’t always align with all workers. However, Murray counseled that it’s “not about being wrong.” She continued, “People think they are making fully formed, objective decisions without recognizing the impact of the bias, such as making choices on behalf of employees without their feedback.”

These reactions can be hardwired, so it’s about undoing that and practicing seeking out other perspectives. “Thinking through things instead of going to a place of shame and blame. It’s about the impact of the decision,” Murray added.

In looking at When considering the roadblocks for implicit bias, are simply not letting those new and different voices be heard is a big one. “When that new person comes up with an idea and is met with ‘that’s not how we do it here,’ they hear they aren’t welcome, and they will leave,” Murray explained.

Murray also provided other advice, “The best friend of bias is speed. Do you really need to make the decision now? What are the questions to ask to get more information? Leverage curiosity to engage in conversation and take the time to think about it.”

Extending the Ladder with Nancy Novak > The Intersection of Health and Technology

The role of women in the workplace evolved yet again during the pandemic. New and returning challenges are shaping what happens next, but the overarching message is to cultivate new opportunities and intentional inclusion. Joining Breaking the Glass and host Nancy Novack, LaShonda Anderson-Williams, SVP, Healthcare & LifeSciences at Salesforce. 

Anderson-Williams began her career at IBM, then spent 15 years at Microsoft, and recently joined Salesforce. While she is playing a key role in healthcare, it’s not the one she considered early on. “Initially, I wanted to be a nurse, but my fear of needles didn’t fit that curriculum, and I ended up in business school. I always had a passion for helping people, and now I’m able to focus on purpose driven solutions to improve the quality of care.”

Tech has an even bigger role in healthcare and every other industry since the pandemic. It accelerated digital transformation, but it also created some inequities. “Many women have left the workforce because of substantial challenges,” Anderson-Williams noted. 

Juggling family commitments and a career left many women at breaking points. Still, it is possible to foster more opportunities and inclusion. Diversity, after all, is good for business in so many ways. Anderson-Williams remarked that the necessity of working from home empowered women. “The reality now is that connecting and engaging on-screen, where you see the kids, pets, and family, we get to see who people really are, and they get to bring their whole selves.”

Anderson-Williams advocated for intentional engagement by leaders in bringing women back to the workforce or making them feel comfortable while they balance areas of their life. “We all have biases. Acknowledging them and asking questions creates a comfort in transparency and the ability to have open conversations.”

Extending the Ladder with Nancy Novak > The Importance of Female Leadership

Summary
Host Nancy Novak and Lakisha Woods, President and CEO of the National Institute of Building Sciences share insights on their own careers and about continuing to encourage women to fill critical leadership roles.

Notes
Women are excelling in a wide variety of roles across every industry in the world, moving up through the ranks to take on positions of leadership and making decisions that shape the course of our collective future.

Those women in executive and other leadership roles, as well as those who are on the verge of these roles, are incredibly important to the future of the way we do business and of our society, at large.

To discuss the importance of female leadership, host Nancy Novak, Chief Innovation Officer at Compass Datacenters, invited President and CEO of the National Institute of Building Sciences Lakisha Ann Woods, CAE, onto this episode of Breaking Glass.

The two leaders are intimately familiar with leading in industries traditionally saturated with men at the highest levels, with Novak fulfilling critical duties for Compass and Woods having spent the entirety of her impressive career in building and construction.

“When you look at the ratio of women to men in our industry, it’s astounding how few women there are, especially the ones who get to this high [of a level],” Novak said.

Part of achieving a role of executive caliber or higher is having great mentors, and that’s especially true for women. Women need to build one another up, help one another succeed, and continue to pay it forward as they achieve their own goals to help future generations of powerful, impactful women follow in their footsteps.

“I am very passionate about the topic of encouraging more women to join this space,” Woods said. “We are a critical, essential workforce. … It is so important for women to recognize their opportunities in the space, but also for other women to encourage and showcase those that are in leadership.”