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Women with Impact! Working As a Woman in Mobility Engineering Brings Challenges and Rewards

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Women with Impact! Working As a Woman in Mobility Engineering Brings Challenges and Rewards COVER STORY Women with impact! Working as a woman in mobility engineering brings challenges and rewards. At GM, Laura Wontrop Klauser has navigated positions in four areas, each one posing unique challenges. "My position in racing reminds me of my Formula SAE days, but now I’m also capable of leading the design of the racecar on the technical side,” she told Update. Women constitute just under 50 percent of But this is only part of the story. For the workforce, a number not too far off from decades now, focus has been placed on their percentage of the general population. determining and counteracting the For women in STEM fields, that percentage contributors to these low statistics, with one reduces to only a quarter. However, for potential solution which is nothing but not women in engineering, their relative obvious, albeit still proven difficult to representation is even less: only one in six effectively execute: you have to be engineers is female. Mechanical engineers intentional about achieving any important make up a large majority of engineers in the goal. This can be said for companies as a automotive, aerospace, agriculture, and whole as well as at the individual level. other subdivisions of the mobility industry. “Women are still a minority in Women comprise less than 7 percent of engineering at General Motors, but I am mechanical engineers. more likely to work with another female 10 April 2020 UPDATE COVER STORY engineer at GM than I was when in college, which is a testament to GM’s drive for diversity in the workforce,” said Laura Wontrop Klauser, Cadillac Racing Program Manager and one of 13 womens in SAE’s 2019 Top Contributor Class. At GM’s Canadian Technical Centre (CTC) in Oshawa, Ontario, the ratio of women to men is one to four. According to GM’s WOMEN WITH Diversity & Inclusion Report, in 2017, 33 IMPACT! percent of global hires were women. Winner of the 2019 SAE/InterRegs Standards and Similarly, in Japan, about 4 percent of Regulations Award, Sue Bai is a highly revered panel managers are female across big businesses, session organizer for SAE. but Nissan has achieved 10% after that company started a push for equality back in “With diversity in engineering comes 2004, a decade before Toyota and Honda, the intersection of different perspectives all of which are vying for scarce female and different ideas that might not have college engineering graduates. come about otherwise,” said Rhonda As engineers are inherent problem- Walthall, Fellow, Prognostics & Health solvers, this situation begs the question: Management, Collins Aerospace. “New “What’s the problem here?” Furthermore, perspectives and ideas are important in why is this push for more women even driving innovation and building teams that necessary? perform at a high level.” In 2000, Rodica Baranescu (far right) WOMEN WITH IMPACT! became SAE International's first female President, and now has an award named after her. The Rodica Baranescu Award for Technical and Leadership Excellence celebrates the successes of women in the engineering profession and recognizes their leadership and technical contributions in the mobility industry. Shown here with her are the 2018 recipients of the award (left to right): Rhonda Walthall, Michele Kaiser, and Leslie Kilgore. UPDATE April 2020 11 COVER STORY Women with impact! it needs to be encouraged and celebrated to feed an upward spiral of improvement and More and more innovation! If you do what you’ve always women are done, you’ll get what you’ve always had. That seeking is clearly NOT where the mobility industries leadership roles at SAE. Whitney need to be at the moment, but I will trust Roberts, you to be up-to-speed on all of the trends in pictured here, electrification, AI, cybersecurity, etc., which currently serves are all moving at a breakneck pace! These as the Chair of WOMEN WITH are issues that will impact us all, so everyone the SAE Detroit IMPACT! Section. needs to be a part of developing the solutions. That's the bottom line here. The hurdles to implementing the desired degree of diversity are well-known by managers and those working in human resources, so I won’t be introducing anything new here. In addition to the available number of qualified engineering applicants, there are many retention pressures in keeping women in the workplace: the cultural environment of a primarily male workforce; pregnancy, breastfeeding, and child-rearing, the WOMEN WITH responsibilities of which fall IMPACT! disproportionately to women; as well as Pioneering female racing engineer Alba Colon burnout and career shifts outside of always finds time to give back by volunteering at engineering in order to improve conditions Formula SAE events. relating to work-life balance. In my personal experience, the stress of Women and men have different thought infertility issues before finally having a young patterns and life experiences, as do people of infant at home led me to turn down a couple different ages, races, religions, countries, position offers while pregnant and nursing. communities, etc. The buzzword here is Then while navigating a divorce and dividing “diversity,” and regardless of what you call it, time with a very young child, I couldn’t find 12 April 2020 UPDATE Women with impact! COVER STORY any available part-time, off-shift, or remote The road to the top for women positions available, so I ended up working Thirty-six of the most is Not on the Map the Top to Road The outside of industry for a while. Becoming The Road to the Top is Not on the Map influentialConversations with Top women Women of the in the Automotive Industry involved in leadership at the SAE Section automotiveCarla Bailo | Terry Barclay industry Carla Bailo, CEO of the Center for Automotive Research, and Terry Barclay, CEO of Inforum, bring together over 34 of the most influential women in the automotive industry to share their insight and advice. From suppliers to OEMs, they hail from every | level helped transition me back to the Bailo | Barclay corner of the industry. offerReaders will learn theirhow to take charge of theirinsights and own careers by understanding the experiences The women in this book of these professionals. Topics include: share a passion for their industry I’m so passionate about, but again • Work-Life Integration – How can you careers and a passion for be whole at home, at work, and in the advicecommunity? for colleagues,the industry. They have • Education and Lifelong Learning – Do you encountered obstacles Cover image used under license from Shutterstock.com/Sergey Nivens really need a graduate degree? and the occasional failure, • Mentor and Sponsor Relationships – How as well as successes, but now after a layoff I find myself being pulled do you find mentors and sponsors and form productive relationships with them? they have embraced peers,• Career Challenges – Howand do you evaluate the all of theirnext earned The Road to when to take career risks? How do you say wisdom and generously yes when all the boxes aren’t checked? agreed to share it. • Resilience – Where do you find the internal in the direction of education, which seems to fortitude to keep going? Carla Bailo and Terry Barclay the Top is Not generation• Personal Satisfaction – What do these of women leaders find most joyful about their careers? The Road to the Top is Not on the Map features female leaders who candidly share the habits, motivations, triumphs, defeats, and lessons learned that helped them on the Map be the point at which we lose out on a lot of achieve top jobs in the industry. Their insights have relevance for women at all enteringstages in their careers, whether it’sthe young women interestedworkforce in pursuing a career Conversations with Top Women of in the auto industry, those looking for their next strategic move, or those seeking insight and inspiration . INTERNATIONAL SAE the Automotive Industry potential STEM talent. in the new bookISBN: 978-0-7680-0092-4 Carla Bailo | Terry Barclay The path to becoming a female engineer published by SAE, The is fraught with challenges, but not Road to the Top is Not necessarily specific to the female condition. on the Map: Conversations with Top Women of the Requirements of engineers include a high Automotive Industry. degree of intelligence, common sense, and The book is authored by Carla Bailo, CEO of the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), and Terry Barclay, CEO of Inforum. The book’s 36 contributors—from suppliers to OEMs to higher education—candidly share their in-depth perspectives on the habits, motivations, triumphs, defeats, and lessons learned that helped them achieve top jobs in the industry. “The women in this book share a passion for their careers and a passion for the industry,” said the co-authors. “They have encountered obstacles and the occasional failure, as well as successes, but they have embraced all their earned wisdom and generously agreed to share it.” The book is relevant for women at all stages in their careers by providing real-world experiences to demonstrate how to take charge of one’s career. The WOMEN WITH IMPACT! contributors offer poignant insights on such topics as career challenges, education and lifelong learning, Two highly accomplished engineers took center mentor and sponsor relationships, personal stage at COMVEC 2019: Carla Bailo (left) and Jennifer Rumsey. satisfaction, resilience, and work-life integration. UPDATE April 2020 13 COVER STORY Women with impact! creativity. Soft skills like communication, companies in hopes of grabbing that first time management, and effective decision- job. Regardless of who you are, those things making can make or break you along the take work!” way. Humans are social creatures, but many Nevertheless, SAE recently saw females engineers can be considered introverted, so fairly well-represented among the 48 it is difficult to see or develop the support individuals in SAE's 2019 Top Contributor system to help along the way, especially as Class.
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