Breaking Barriers in Engineering

Welcome to the Industry 4.0 Club's fireside chat. The club's purpose is to engage the power of diverse worldwide talent to accelerate the global evolution to Industry 4.0. We accomplish this by hosting and supporting respectful, thoughtful, and interdisciplinary open conversations and creating quality content on wide-ranging Industry 4.0 topics to expand the reach of our community. My name is Mike Ungar, and I'm the CEO of the club. I have over 40 years of experience in leadership and manufacturing, with most of that being at Michelin. I'm joined today by my co-host, Mike Yost. Mike, would you mind introducing yourself, please?

Not at all. Thank you, Mike. As Mike said, my name is Mike Yost. I am the volunteer chairman of the organization and one of the co-founders, along with Mike and his co-host here on the Fireside Chats. Been in industry for over 35 years. with the last 15 dedicated to the industrial nonprofit side. And so we're very excited today that we have the pleasure of speaking with Kathy Siqueiros, a leadership coach and HR advisor, and also with Katie Carnes, a mechanical engineer at SSOE. Both Kathy and Katie are going to be on a panel at MD&M South in Charlotte, North Carolina on April 23rd, and the panel is called Breaking Barriers in Engineering. Give me just a second to introduce them both and then we'll jump into our conversation. Kathy is a leadership coach and HR leader with 20+ years of experience in global organizations. She leads her own practice called Thermo Coaching and previously held HR leadership roles in Syngenta Corp Protection, GE, and GE Healthcare. She's passionate about helping people align their strengths with purpose, and believes that growth is limitless with the right mindset. Katie Carnes is a licensed professional engineer with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and over a decade of experience spanning manufacturing, operations, and consulting. She spent 7 years with Toyota before transitioning into engineering consultant, and she now supports projects in chemical, battery, and refinery industries. Katie is, uh, Mentors and empowers the next generation of engineers, fosters technical growth and career confidence. Both Kathy and Katie are leaders in the Society of Women Engineers Charlotte-Metrolina chapter. We welcome you both to the show here today. Thanks for being with us.

Thank you. Absolutely.

Well, that's fantastic. One of the questions when you talk about breaking barriers in engineering, if we jump right in, So maybe we'll start with you, Katie, and then go to Kathy. But what motivated you to become engineers? What was the thing? What was the it, the thing that said, I would like to do that? Katie? Excuse me.

I came into engineering on accident because I was rejected from another program, and it ended up working out really well. But I had actually applied. I knew the university that I was going to go to, and they had a biological sciences program that I had applied to, they only took so many students and I got rejected from it. And I was really disappointed. I had thought this is for sure what I'm gonna do and I'll apply to this program and I'll get in. And I got this rejection notice before my freshman year started. And so I had to kind of think, okay, well now what am I gonna do? And so my dad was an engineer and he said, okay, well you wanted to do this biological sciences because you're good at math and science. And so— maybe biomedical engineering, maybe engineering would be good. And I said, okay, that sounds great. I got really good advice. This was in 2010. Biomedical engineering was really new, and so companies didn't really know how to hire them or what jobs they would do. So I got advice from a professor to go into mechanical engineering because it's very, very broad, and you could, you know, focus in the medical industry, you could focus in a lot of different industries. And so I ended up, you know, deciding to go into mechanical engineering, and it's worked out really, really well for me. But Maybe rejection is what sparked my engineering journey.

That's neat. That's really cool.

Yeah.

Kathy, how about you?

Sure. So I am from Indiana. And so Purdue is like an hour and a half from my house. I grew up in a medical family. So dad is a doctor, have multiple family members who are doctors and dentists. So that was one path I thought of. And then the other path was I was very passionate about environmental issues at that moment. So at the time, you know, Greenpeace was very popular, World Wildlife Federation, Silent Spring had come out in that recent past. And I just had some actually female science teachers who, you know, who kind of identified that, oh, Kathy really likes science and We really like science. And I just really felt like science is one of the things that I'm passionate about. And of course, you can do science and medical or engineering. But as I finalized my decision, I was like, I think I'm the most passionate about environmental engineering. Now, that was having said it without actually knowing really what an engineer was. I knew what environmental was because I had done some recycling programs and I was very passionate about recycling. That was very practical to me. I'm still very passionate about recycling. my husband and I get in all kinds of conversations. That's recyclable. Put that in the wrong place.

Yeah.

But, um, but I did, you know, go to do environmental engineering. I co-oped at a Department of Defense location in Tennessee. And, um, that's how I learned that I love the South. So I'm, I'm back here in North Carolina. But, um, I did environmental engineering for remediation. So a lot of the research for, um, World War II was done at this Tennessee facility, and they had a lot of environmental liability. And so I did that. And then I also did some consulting where I would— I was back in Indiana, and I would do environmental remediation at gas stations and GM manufacturing facilities. So I did the co-opping because I was like, I really don't know what engineering is. I know what the environmental is, but I got to figure this out before I go commit to it. But I had a lot of fun learning and doing that, but I didn't end up staying, which we can get into why that is. And there's some interesting statistics around that kind of thing. But I'm still very passionate about engineering and technology. I've never left the industry because I've worked in for 25 years in manufacturing, and I have a contract right now that I'm working in manufacturing still. So very close to engineers, still love engineers, just don't want to do the calculations. I want to do the people part.

So that's fantastic.

Very weavy story. And actually, Society of Women Engineers was very key into me making the transition to HR because I was like, if I could do SWE all day, what would that be called? And that's how I figured out HR. So.

Well, that's great. That's better than Mike's. Both your reasons for getting into engineering is better than Mike's because He just, he said he couldn't sing or dance.

So I can't sing or dance either.

So I guess we all have that in common.

Yeah. But I do tell, I do tell bad dad jokes when I'm mic'd.

Yes.

I adapted that.

Well, thank you for the background. And yeah, definitely interested in learning more as we can here. I'm just wondering about if you're able to share some of the challenges that you faced in advancing your careers and some of the lessons that you've learned in facing those challenges?

Katie and I probably have some similar stories, but there's one theme that's still present today, and that is, I'm the only woman in the room and I don't like that. I look up and I don't see women up here. I don't see women over here. I don't see that still that many women down here. So, um, that, that was something. I grew up, I was one of 5. I had 2 older brothers, 3 younger— 2 younger sisters, and I missed, you know, women, being around women. And I didn't— I felt like I had to act like a man, and that was not, you know, that wasn't enough to have me leave by any means. I'm, I'm a woman who likes a challenge, but, um, I just didn't see people. And my most poignant example of that is I was working on constructing, designing and constructing an environmental remediation facility at— it was Allison Engine in Indianapolis. And I had to manage a construction crew. And man, you talk about a nightmare. Like, I felt like I was doing HR before I did HR, and I would actually use that in my examples when I would interview about HR. I'd say, hey, I—

Mm-hmm.

—managed a construction crew on a remediation design-build, and people thought I knew nothing. They questioned everything, which they should have questioned some because I was still a pretty young engineer, but just like, you know, didn't think I could do anything and made me aware of it every single day. And then also, you know, sexual harassment as well, like hitting on me and propositioning me at work. So it's like, you know, that again, that didn't deter me. Those weren't the reasons that I left. But those were the reasons that it was hard. And those reasons still exist today. Like, you can still find those stories today. And so, you know, that's not why I left. But those were not easy things to deal with as a young female engineer out in the field. And I wanted to be out in the field. I was like, I really felt like engineering, I wanted to— I hadn't been one of those tinkerers at home, but I was like, I must tinker to know how to do engineering well. Like, I knew I wanted to be in the construction.

Get your hands dirty.

Get my hands dirty. I had started off doing design engineering in the office, and I was like, I don't really know what I'm doing. Like, I gotta go to the field and figure out, like, can I really understand physically how this all works? I understand theoretically, but Right. So, um, that was, that was kind of— and, and Katie, I assume, has maybe similar but not as bad, hopefully. I, I date— I predate her. My experiences well predate her experience.

Hopefully it's better.

Yeah, I think there's, there's a lot that I have in common with Kathy's story, and I, I got lucky to learn these lessons when I was new. They were hard lessons to learn. I started at one company that I worked in maintenance, loved it. I loved being in the field. I loved being with the equipment. I never got to, never had to sit at my desk. I was out with the operators. That part was great, but I didn't understand how to advocate for myself and I didn't understand how isolated I would feel because I grew up, my mom taught high school algebra. I have 2 older sisters. And then when I was in college, I was part of SWE. I lived with my roommates were other women in engineering. So I had this network built in. And so I thought, oh, well, of course I belong here. You know, I go to class with Allison and Amanda and we're all doing great. And then I went into maintenance and I was the only woman. And it was a little bit of shell shock because I didn't know how that would impact me. And I started to believe this message that I heard or that I felt of don't speak up. Don't make a fuss. Okay, you know, you're out here, people are going to say stuff. Nobody else is bothered by it. Don't make a big deal of it. And it started to create this self-doubt. I ended up leaving and going to a different company still in maintenance, and it was so different. There were women in leadership. There was an employee resource group at this company. I felt so psychologically safe, physically safe. And to me, it kind of informed— sometimes people will say things to you, you can't control other people's behavior, but the response from the company was different. At my new company, somebody said something to me inappropriate, and my supervisor called it out. He talked to me one-on-one. He said, we, we want to let you know we're talking to this individual. It's not appropriate. Are you okay? What do you need? And it just made this huge impression on me of like, oh, how we Respond to other people, how we treat these other people, we can build this really good system, even though we know out in the world we can't control everything that people say. We can't eradicate some of these stereotypes that exist overnight. And so that made me think a lot about, okay, how, how am I going to show up? What job am I going to do? Just like Kathy's saying, so that the women that come after me don't have to go through exactly the same thing that I did. And so we can make it better, right, for each group that's entering the workforce. Yeah.

I didn't feel in my early engineering career that I could speak up. I was just like, I have to be one of the guys. I have to have no issue with people making inappropriate statements to me. You know, I predate Katie, so I think things are better now. More people can speak up. But like back then, like, You couldn't have convinced me to speak up because I really didn't want to be seen as weak or a burden or like not able to do it because I had worked very hard to do what I did. And I was not giving it up for anybody because somebody said the wrong thing to me. So I think that I'm really glad to hear you found that. And I feel like I'm part of that today in what I do. I'm like, okay, if we have that trap going on, we address it.

That's really important. I know, Mike, you have experience in HR on the engineering side. Any perspectives to share?

Well, I think that what I appreciate, and I'll share some of what you share is unique, and some of what you share is not unique. For example, a young employee doesn't always know how to advocate for themselves. This is independent of any diversity dimension. I think that's a really important thing today. Whenever we can coach a young engineer, young employee that, look, how do you advocate for yourself? I think that's a really important element and I appreciate you bringing that up because we don't. Then something happens and either the person's potential is hurt or they They don't feel like they're allowed to achieve their potential. I would love to ask you a question around this because I think it's a really challenging thing. Something you said, Kathy, sticks with me and it's very interesting. What you said earlier is, I didn't see anybody above me like me. I spent a few years in recruiting and one of the challenges that we wanted to change this picture. No one wants to get hired because of their diversity dimension. You want to get hired based on your skills.

Yeah.

The question is, you said it, there's not a lot of women engineers. How do we change that picture where there are people in leadership roles? One of the things that we used to think about is at least for every job opening, we would ensure we presented a diverse candidate. At least we would present candidates who are qualified and allow the most qualified to be selected, but that didn't always ensure that we had the right.

Yes.

What are your thoughts on how do we create, how do we help this issue about if I see it, I can be it, having those people in front of us, Given that there's not a lot of women already in engineering today.

Yeah. So there are 16% women engineers in the workforce today. But there are a ton more getting engineering degrees. So like, you know, there are 30 or more percent at many universities getting degrees. but only 16% in engineering jobs. And so I pulled that— SWE does a lot of research in engineering and specifically minority and women engineering. And so I pulled those stats from the SWE website today. And, you know, there's tons of research out there. So for me, it's getting women— and this isn't just engineering, but generally getting more women as people managers. Because then there aren't the— there are things called unconscious bias, right? I think lots of people have heard about these unconscious bias. So, you know, we could, we could spend just the whole podcast on unconscious bias. But essentially, the summary statement is that in the interview process, you need people who represent the people that you're trying to attract.

Right.

If you don't have that, it's not just about presenting diverse candidates. If you still have a non-diverse panel of people selecting, the unconscious bias still comes in. You really need to have people who are similarly situated in the process because that will naturally eliminate some of that unconscious bias because hopefully in that interview debrief, you know, a picture is coming about. But I've literally been in interview panels where it was a very sort of plain vanilla, all one-way looking panel. And, and like 2 of the 4 candidates are female, and 2 of the 4 candidates get ranked lower despite higher qualifications and more relevant experience. And I'm like, how does this happen? And how do you all not notice? that this is happening? Well, it's unconscious bias. I think there has been progress made on unconscious bias because I think it's out there, but we still have to be willing and self-aware to say, hey, I agree that I have unconscious bias. By the way, everybody has it. I need to agree that I'm part of that population and then I need to say, okay, what might be my vulnerable areas? Did I grow up in a household? So I grew up in a household where my mom stayed home. She did not work. So like, if you're used to that household, you might have a hard time imagining a woman engineer. Because like, the women, you know, work outside the home. They had a lot of work. There were 5 of us. But like—

She was working for sure.

She was working for sure. Being a working mom, I think it's easier to work than actually stay home with my 2 kids. No days right now, but I think we need more women in management, diverse people in management, and then that will naturally occur. We need to have processes that combat the unconscious bias.

Thank you. Katie, your thoughts on that question on how do we help? change this picture?

Yeah, absolutely. I agree with what Kathy said, and I think in maybe 2 paths. One is personal and the other is procedural or policy. From the personal standpoint, 100% agree with what Kathy said. Everybody has unconscious bias. We do too. And the first step is just recognizing that and trying to challenge some of those narratives that pop into our head. And personally, having conversations, mentoring, and working with people that are not like you, I think, is a huge step. And we tend to think just normally, OK, a woman will mentor other women, and men will mentor other— just because we have that in common. So it's a very natural path. And there's nothing wrong with that. But to Kathy's point, there's not a lot of women in leadership. And so if the only people that are mentoring other women, or any minority group, is the other people up there, it's the one senior manager that's a woman has to mentor the 100 women in the company. I mean, it just doesn't— there's not enough time. And so one, from a logistics standpoint, we should mentor people that are not like us. But then the other reason is the more conversation and relationship you have with people who are different than you, different socioeconomic status, background, race, religion, anything, you start to challenge those stereotypes because you have a conversation with this person, you have a relationship with them, and those stereotypes that pop into your head, they can kind of fade away, or you can ask a question. Well, oh, I heard this stereotype, but I know so-and-so personally, and that doesn't fit. So I think that's a huge way that people can kind of take action on their own. And then the other piece is what Kathy was talking about, the procedure. There's a bunch of studies that have been done about how do you take bias out of interviewing? Should you take names off of resumes? Do you have a structure for performance reviews that tries to mitigate bias? And I think those are all great tools that Mm-hmm. companies can implement where the research has already proven that there's a lot of value there.

Yeah, I'm just— Mike, one comment about something Katie said. You mentioned one woman and 100 women engineers, you can't cover them all. We actually started something where we would do team mentoring. We would have the one woman executive have a roundtable with 10 women at the same time. It would be a group that would meet Rarely like a one-on-one, but it's not one-on-10. It's one way we could multiply that, you know, that leadership and that mentoring process. Yeah, it's a different— it's kind of a creative approach, but it's one way to, given that fact, to kind of leverage the individual's time because it is limited.

Yeah. And I think with things like that, that's a, that's a great idea and setup, 100% support it. I also think There's not one tool that's going to fix it all. And so the more ideas, the more policies or different ways of approaching it, let's give them all a shot. You know, we don't have to say this one thing will now solve all of our problems. We're engineers, that we know that that's not how it works. I wish it was.

There's a really interesting— and go ahead.

Yeah, I was just going to ask you to, if I could Flip us to look to the future for a moment. If I ask you guys to take out your crystal ball, we've talked about some of the actions that you— I mean, some of these ideas are already in progress at different places, right?

Definitely.

Tell me your thoughts, each of you, on are we progressing? If so, what does 5 years from now look like from your perspective? I know it feels like in some cases, sometimes we feel like we're not going fast enough. And yet if we close our eyes and thought about, as Kathy, you described 20 years ago, we are progressing. It's just a question of what does the next 5 years look like? So, Kathy, Katie, maybe you'd start us off.

Sure, absolutely. I think progress has been made, most definitely, because although Kathy and I will share certain experiences, there are things that I have not had to deal with, you know, because of women like her who have kind of helped pave the way. And I'll give you a very engineering-type answer. I cannot predict the future, but I can tell you what I would like it to look like. And, and things like the MDM panel, things like this podcast, are ways that I think we can move towards this.

Mm-hmm.

Nope, she froze on us.

Oh, sorry, can you hear me now?

Yeah, you froze us for a minute, Katie. Go ahead.

I'll give you my 5-year what I would like to see happen from the work that groups like these are doing and SWE. I would love if women are no longer the only people in the meeting, if it becomes rare for you to see one woman or one person of a minority group being the only one represented on a panel in a meeting. in the boardroom. I would love to never have to hear a woman tell me they left a job that they really loved because of how they were treated.

Yeah.

Which is how I felt when I left my first job. I really loved the job, but it was not sustainable for me from the mental health aspect, from the safety aspect. And so in 5 years, maybe it seems like an ambitious goal, but I would love for SWE to be able to help close that gap so I don't have to hear these stories from other women and say, darn it, I thought we had, you know, fixed that. I thought we had made progress there.

Great point. Yeah, I love that. I'm actually inspired by Katie and the younger women engineers that I've met through SWE. I just feel like, you know, when I was looking for mentors, there were a fair amount of mentors that I had in my environment. If they were female, they actually You know, weren't interested in looking behind them and bringing people up with them. And I found myself falling into that a little bit. Their attitude was, I got here through working my ass off, and you should too. And I was like, wow, like that, that's really harsh and not what I hoped to hear. Many of them were not, you know, having children and things like that. And So like, I see all of that changing, you know. I see family, you know, women engineers having families in addition to their careers. And I see the younger generation speaking up. I think that's not just women engineers, but the generation behind us are speaking up. And I'm here for it. I love it. I, I see that as a positive trend for the future for everyone. You know, no matter who you are, I see that as a positive trend. I do get a little bit worried about sort of the political climate. I don't want to really talk about politics, but there are some barriers right now that things are moving a bit backwards. So like organizations like SWE, I stay connected to Purdue SWE where I came from, and so I understood from them recently that they lost some funding as a result of some of the grant scenarios out with the government. And so That gets me a little bit worried. If you'd asked me a year ago, I might— or a couple years ago, I might have had a different answer about the trajectory. I have a question mark on the trajectory now. But if I just look down and around me, I see some really awesome things happening, and I don't think those will not continue. We've also gotten smarter, and specifically in SWE, about you know, making sure that we understand why and how young girls are, are not as exposed to STEM as maybe the boys are. And I have a boy and a girl. So I'm like, okay, we will be taking the boy to the princess shows, and we're taking the girls to the Lego, Lego robotics. So we're doing this on everything. So, but I'm hopeful. that things are going in the right direction. Did the statistics say that? No, actually, the statistics aren't— they're about what they were when I left school, which is kind of crazy. It's a little bit better, but I feel like the momentum has been there, and I'm excited about that. And I hear that in Katie's experience as well.

Well, we certainly appreciate What you've been through, what you're going through, what you're sharing, the work you're doing. Just remind everybody that we're talking with Katie Carnes and Kathy Saccharis ahead of the Breaking Barriers in Engineering panel that they will be a part of at the MD&M South event in Charlotte. And so appreciate what you've shared so far. Just wondering, just quickly from each of you, what folks that are coming to the session, what you, what you might hope that they would learn from, from coming to listen to your panel?

For me, I hope people learn about what SWE is doing. So we are a very supportive organization in the Charlotte-Metrolina area, and we kind of went through a dip period during COVID which I think lots of nonprofit organizations did, but We're sort of building back up. So I'm hoping people say, hey, there is a resource. I have people who want to connect with me, help me, mentor me. We have some mentoring in SWE that I'm a part of. I really enjoy it. It's actually global. And so I'm hoping we get the word out on SWE and bring more lady engineers to connect with us.

That's great. How about you, Katie?

Yeah, I think pretty similar. Our board and the people on the panel are a pretty diverse group, and so I think it makes us relatable to a lot of different people. And so I want people to understand that SWE, this organization, is for them, and we want everybody to participate from the standpoint of if you need a network, if you need somebody who's in your corner, if you're going through a tough time in your career and work-life balance, SWE is there for you. If your career is doing great and you want to pay it forward, SWE is there for you to help with those items. And I think mostly the mission of SWE and especially Charlotte-Metrolina is that this is a space that women belong in, and we need our allies to help us. We need other women, but that should be the main takeaway from the panel. Even if you're going through something difficult or you're having some problem in your career and you're not sure where to go, you still belong in this space. And SWE will help you figure out, you know, how to navigate those difficult times.

That's— yeah, thank you guys. That's, that's super. Well, so just to kind of wrap us up, I want to really thank you, Kathy and Katie, for joining us to give us this preview of your— of the panel discussions you guys are going to be part of at MD&M South on April 23rd. It'll be at the Charlotte Convention Center for those that are Don't know where that is in Charlotte, North Carolina, and we hope that you decide to come to their panel and also join the club at the event. To register at the event, you want to go to www.mx— I'm sorry, mdmsouth.com. Here it is. where you can register and be part of this activity. It's a 2-day— overall conference is 2 days, but this panel will be taking place on the 23rd, so we hope that you plan to join us there. Also would like to share with you that the Industry 4.0 Club, we want to encourage you to take some action relative to helping to deploy Industry 4.0. So that might be reading a book, attending a panel conversation like the one we we had a preview for doing a smart manufacturing roadmap or encouraging your company to take some action. We'd like to know what you're planning to do. Drop us a note on our website at www.industry4o.club or at our LinkedIn page and let us know what you're trying to do to advance, if you will, women in engineering and the deployment of Industry 4.0. If you'd also like to be part of our conversation like this, we'd love to have you reach out to us again on our website, our LinkedIn page, and let us, let us know if you'd like to be a guest. We'd love to have you. So with that, many thanks, Kathy, Katie, Mike, for your time today.

Thank you.

Take care.

Thank you.