FEBRUARY 2018
February 2019
eng.auburn.edu/100womenstrong
Greetings 100+ Women Strong Members, 2019 Events
Nominations due for 100+WS Awards eng.auburn.edu/awards
Mar. 6-7:
GEARSEF*
Apr. 4:
100+WS Member Meeting
3–5 p.m.
Apr. 4:
An Evening of Networking and Development* 5:30 p.m. Check-in 6 p.m Keynote Speaker
mar. 1:
WIE Camp 100+WS Luncheon*
Jul. 16:
Aug. 16:
Fall New Student Welcome
Event* and Member Meeting
Sept. 27:
Making a Difference in Engineering (MADE)*
*Volunteer Opportunities for 100+WS members
I am thrilled to be on board supporting the great work of 100+ Women Strong! I am continually impressed with the passion our members have and the energy you pour into fulfilling the mission to recruit, retain and reward Auburn women in engineering. Before coming to Auburn, I was a development associate for Scholarship and Legacy Gifts in the Educational Foundation at the University of North Carolina. Diane Sherrard I earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Florida in sports administration, minoring in business administration. While at UF, I lettered in swimming for four years. After graduation, I worked in the UF Athletic Association, where I gained experience in operations, compliance and administration that eventually helped me establish a successful swim school in Lakeland, Florida.
Originally from Lafayette, Louisiana, I was raised among engineers; my dad, stepmom, grandfather, uncle, cousins, brother-in-law and sister-in-law are all engineers. Naturally, I was interested in becoming an engineer as well, and I toured several engineering schools (including Auburn). Although I ultimately opted for Florida, and switched out of engineering in my sophomore year, it feels like a great fit for me to be supporting the 100+ WS mission to recruit, retain and reward Auburn women in engineering. My family is very fortunate that my husband, Duncan, was recently offered the opportunity to serve as an assistant coach for Auburn’s excellent swimming team. We are looking forward to putting down roots and raising our family on the Plains. Our 12-year-old daughter, Reagan, and 10-year old son, Nathan, are enjoying cheering on the Tigers at every athletic event we can make! As I settle in to my role serving as 100+WS program administrator, I hope you’ll share with me your ideas for the future of our program. I’m eager to work with you to increase our membership and, in turn, increase the impact we have on the next generation of female engineers. You are our most valuable recruiting tool, and I welcome your assistance. Please contact me at dtsherrard@auburn.edu or 334-844-5280 if you would like for me to send 100+ WS information to a prospective member. War Eagle!
Success Story: Jordan Ryle / Savannah Smith
Jordan Ryle was all set to follow in her father’s footsteps. She’d go to Georgia Tech and major in engineering, just like dad. It was going to be great. There was only one problem.
“Being able to connect to other females in the industry has helped me connect here [at ExxonMobil] with some pretty incredible women who came from Auburn — friends I can reach out to for professional advice and personal advice.”
Jordan ryle
She visited Auburn. “I just loved the culture,” said Ryle, who graduated in mechanical engineering in 2018. “I really enjoyed the people I saw and interacted with.” And she enjoyed what she saw in 100+ Women Strong. “The mentoring and the networking — it’s just an incredible group of women who support each other and who have the Auburn Spirit in everything they do,” Ryle said. “Being able to meet so many different people in so many different industries and gain insight on how to be a woman in the workforce was great.” Ryle has only been an analytics advisor with ExxonMobil in Houston since July, but she’s already experienced the professional networking benefits 100+WS provides firsthand.
Last spring, Ryle and fellow 2018 mechanical engineering graduate Savannah Smith became the first two women to join 100+WS as professional members before graduation.
to,” said Smith, who served as Society of Women Engineers (SWE) president her senior year. Despite being, as she puts it, “still fresh out of college,” Smith feels she can bring plenty to the mentoring table thanks in large part to taking early advantage of 100+WS programs as a freshman. Of particular value? Her mentoring relationship with 100+WS co-chair Olivia Owen. In fact, had it not been for Owen, Smith might have said “yes” to her first job offer— an offer for a job she didn’t want.
Savannah smith
“Now, from an alumni perspective, the biggest thing for me is to help fund scholarships to keep women encouraged in pursuing engineering degrees,” Ryle said. “College isn’t easy, and it’s not easy to pay for. So if I can help provide that for someone coming through and struggling, that’s the kind of impact I want to make.” Smith feels the same — so strongly that’s she already volunteered to be a 100+WS mentor. “I haven’t had a chance to get to know my student that well yet, but I’m really excited
“We were at the Five Guys downtown and she helped me realize that I didn’t have to take it,” Smith said. “That it was OK to be picky, OK to be selective.” Smith said no. Soon after, she was offered exactly the kind of position she’d hoped for. Since June, she’s engineered car seats for Newell Brands’ Baby Divisions in Atlanta. “100+WS really helped me develop throughout my career and still does to this day,” Smith said. “That’s why I became a professional member, too. I wanted to be able to give back.”
Future engineers
100+WS WELCOME MORE THAN 100 FEMALE FRESHMEN AND THEIR PARENTS AT THE 2019 FALL FRESHMEN WELCOME EVENT. THE 2019 WELCOME EVENT IS SET FOR AUG. 16.
EIGHTY-EIGHT HIGH SCHOOL JUNIORS AND SENIORS ATTENDED THE 2018 MADE AT AUBURN EVENT. NEXT YEAR’S MADE AT AUBURN IS SET FOR SEPT. 27.
Corporate Spotlight: Lockheed martin
When J.D. McFarlan, vice president for F-35 Test and Verification for Lockheed Martin, says that his company values women, you can believe him. “Our CEO happens to be Marillyn Hewson,” McFarlan said. That would be the same Marillyn Hewson voted 2018’s CEO of the Year by Chief Executive magazine, the same Marillyn Hewson named the 20th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes Magazine. Hewson graduated in business and economics from the University of Alabama, “but I don’t hold that against her,” McFarlan joked, “except when Alabama beats Auburn.” McFarlan earned his mechanical engineering degree from Auburn University in 1984 and said he’s increasingly excited to tap his alma mater’s growing pool of female engineering graduates. “Lockheed Martin has placed a renewed emphasis on recruiting at many major universities, which is why we have engaged with Auburn’s 100+ Women Strong program for the past few years,” he said. The aerospace giant first partnered with 100+WS in 2015 and is currently a Visionary Sponsor.
“It’s critical that engineering colleges like Auburn produce highly talented female engineers in order for us to have an engineering workforce that represents the population at large,” McFarlan said. One of those highly talented engineers? Brittney Pierce. “When I attended Auburn, I was one of six females out of a total of about 60 individuals in my upper-level engineering classes,” Pierce said. “I believe I never felt like a minority in any of my classes because I, and my female peers, had organizations such as 100+ Women Strong and Society of Women Engineers to support us.” Pierce, a former president of the Auburn chapter of the Society of Women Engineers, began her career at Lockheed Martin upon graduating in software engineering in 2017. Today, she works as a software engineer in the Lab Software Conceptual Simulation department on the Rapid Prototyping Development Simulation team. She currently leads development efforts for an F-22 traveling cockpit. “I believe it is mutually important from both a company and community standpoint to support organizations such as 100+ Women Strong,” Pierce said, “and I am proud to be a member of a company that does so.”
Member Spotlight: Antoria Guerrier
Antoria Guerrier says that participating in 100+ Women Strong “has been really, really rewarding said.
information technology teams to deliver data architecture strategies based on product performance and statistical methods.
Antoria guerrier
“I really wish this kind of program had been around when I was coming along.” Guerrier graduated in 2000 with an electrical engineering degree. Having served a two-year co-op assignment with KimberlyClark, she immediately accepted the corporation’s full-time offer for a traditional electrical engineering position. “After doing that for several years, I wanted to learn more of the business side of the company,” she said. “That’s when I decided to do a cross-functional role in supply chain management.” In 2013, after a three-year stint with Newell Brands, Guerrier joined the Coca-Cola Company as a senior analytics architect, serving as liaison between business and
In other words, if you want to know why your local grocery store stopped stocking your favorite Coke product, track down Antoria. She recently executed the company’s efforts to refranchise its bottling system in North America in order to, as the press release touting the project’s success put it, “return the ownership of bottling operations to where they best perform – in the hands of local bottling partners.” Guerrier is currently managing the migration of Coca-Cola Company databases from on-premises storage to Amazon cloud servers. She readily acknowledges that Auburn — especially its commitment to diversity — is one of the secrets to her success. “I feel like Auburn fostered a collaborative
environment where you could have study groups, be tutored and, like myself, become a tutor,” Guerrier said. She says her involvement in 100+WS allows her to return the favor. “100+ Women Strong has been very important to me because, as an AfricanAmerican, woman it is very important to me to give back by supporting women in engineering,” she said. “I know how it felt to be in the shoes of some of these young ladies in college with very few females in the courses and [experiencing] moments of second-guessing if engineering was truly for me.” Despite taking what she calls a nontraditional career path, Guerrier said she uses the analytical decision-making and engineering skills she learned at Auburn every day. “I love the opportunity to really help young women with the decision to stick with it,” she said, “because (engineering skills) are highly sought out.”
Mentor spotlight: the legend of nelda
Calling roll on the first day of class was always fun. “John, Michael, Robert — Nelda?”
All of which is to say her qualifications to serve as a mentor for 100+ Women Strong are second to none.
“Young lady, this is an engineering course— you must be in the wrong room,” the professor would inevitably say.
So why did she initially feel unqualified for the job?
Judging by her career, Nelda Lee was most definitely in the right room. After becoming the second woman to earn an aerospace engineering degree from the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering in 1969, Lee went on to a phenomenal 45 years in flight and ground test engineering with Boeing. In 2017, she was honored with Auburn University’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Calling her an Auburn legend wouldn’t be an overstatement. Nor would calling her a pioneer in women’s aviation. On April 29, 1980, Nelda Lee became the first woman to fly an F-15 Eagle, the plane she helped design and devoted nearly half a century to. In 2004, she was voted into the International Women in Aviation Pioneer Hall of Fame.
“Well, I didn’t want to come up with an excuse, but I’m a lot older,” Lee said with a laugh. “I thought the things I did once upon a time might not really 100 percent apply in the real world today. I thought, ‘well, maybe they should find a younger person. The job environment has changed. I went with one job forever. These days, people change jobs every two years or something.’ I said ‘well, maybe I shouldn’t do it,’ and I tried to back out.” But when she learned that not one or two, but five women studying aerospace engineering were in the market for mentors, she couldn’t say no — to any of them. Turns out, the unique perspective Lee thought might be irrelevant to her mentees was exactly what they were looking for out of the 100+WS mentor program. “I wanted to learn more about the struggles that women have gone through before me and to get her take on the struggles we still face being in STEM and in a working environment that’s predominantly men,” said sophomore Lucy Bone. “She’s really
awesome about listening to all of us and talking about the things that she faced.” Bone still hasn’t decided which facet of aerospace she wants to pursue after graduation. “But,” she said, “I would feel comfortable reaching out [to Lee] about almost anything, especially career moves and what comes next.” Sophomore Sydney Flynn, another one of Lee’s mentees, agrees. “I really enjoyed meeting with her,” Flynn said. “She worked with a lot of things I’m interested in. She’s just really sweet, and it was exciting talking her. She gave me a lot of good advice. As a woman in engineering, there’s a not a whole lot of us. I was looking to someone for some guidance whose gone through it before.” Though Lee readily acknowledges that plenty of obstacles still remain for women looking to enter the industry, she takes pride in the huge strides made in the 50 years since she roamed Ramsay Hall. She laughs. “Sometimes they’d even say I was in the wrong building.”