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Friday 12 June 2020
BUSINESS DAY
LEADINGWOMAN ASHLEY GANN, the chief meteorologist and aerospace engineer, passionate about gender balance, inclusiveness on their needs.
KEMI AJUMOBI
Ashley Gann is a Chief Meteorologist, an Aerospace Engineer and gender balance advocate. She is one of the 8 percent of women who are Chief Meteorologists in the United States. She has learnt the value of gender diversity in business and in leadership. For her, ultimately, equity leads to equality. Ashley is also a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) advocate and she does this by telling her story, sharing how a pageant girl became a rocket scientist then meteorologist and outlining the many lessons she learnt as she overcame hurdles and stereotypes. She believes it’s time to remove the social stigma surrounding women in STEM by celebrating the uniqueness of each person, especially girls and women, because she believes that we need more women in STEM, as it’s good for business and the bottom line. For Ashley, seeing more women in more leadership positions in STEM is one of her goals, but STEM industries are not the only ones that benefit from an increase in female input. In her opinion, any corporation that’s lacking women (or any minority group) is missing out on some of the most creative, organised and systematic minds. According to her, a woman brings flexibility and complimenting skill sets to teams and the leadership ladder. She was recently Live on Intagram, on the program Inspiring Woman With Kemi Ajumobi Series, where she shared on mental and emotional wellness, and striking the balance with work, family and everything else, how reserving your priorities and taking an investment inventory of your time, will set you up for success in all areas of your life. This article explains in details the conversation. Why Aerospace Engineering? get that question a lot about why I went into the field of weather professionally. But I’ve always loved to study the space, the clouds, and everything in our atmosphere and I developed a love for space at a very young age. Here in The United States, we’ve a programme called Space Camp. It is where students can go and learn how to be an astronaut when they are young, and I did that and fell in love and knew we would be cool. I knew I either wanted to be an Astronaut or Meteorologist when I grow up. So, I continued on the school and when I went to college down to the university, they only had Engineering. They didn’t have the Meteorology programme in that particular university. So, I started with Aerospace Engineering and said well, if I get to the end of my school, then I can always get my masters in Meteorology, if that’s something I really want to do. And that was exactly what happened. Now, I’ve now been a meteorologist for 15 years. My background and love for space started at a young age and that’s why I did Aerospace Engineering. But so much of what I’ve learned in Engineering has applied to Meteorology. So, it’s been nice because there’s been a lot of similarities, they are both science-based and math-based programmes.
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Meteorology and Aerospace Engineering In Aerospace Engineering, we learn things like physics, thermodynamics, but we might apply it to a rocket ship or airplane, where
we take those same principles or weather, and just apply it to a raindrop or a moving cloud. So, the fundamentals are very similar but how we apply it is very different. So, in Aerospace engineering we might build an airplane or build a rocket ship, but in meteorology, we are forecasting the future of the atmosphere based on the principles. I went to a school here in the United States that specialises in broadcast meteorology, so, a lot of the students in my programme would go on to be television meteorologist and I did something called internship. In my summer, between my years of graduate school, I went to a local TV station in the community and I learned the ropes and from there, I graduated and got my first job in TV. And here I am. I’ve always said if the whole weather thing doesn’t work out, I guess I can always fall back on being a rocket scientist. How are you using STEM to encourage more women to come on board? STEM, for those who may not know is Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, and I am very passionate about it. Obviously, my background is heaped in STEM, engineering background. I had masters in meteorology, so, I’m a math and science girl. I love math and science. But one of things I tell the younger generation is, STEM creates opportunities. In the next 15 to 20 years, 80 percent of all jobs in the world will have a STEM component. It doesn’t mean they have to be technical jobs, it just means that there will be an aspect of every job on the globe that has a STEM component. So, there is www.businessday.ng
great opportunity. The reason it’s extremely opportunistic for women is that they are one of the higherpaying jobs. Traditionally, STEM jobs pay higher and there are so many scholarships for women, for people of colour, any type of ‘minority’ group. STEM is really trying to encourage more diversity and inclusion and that starts with offering these scholarships globally to people that look different than what their company make ups are. So, they are encouraging young people to dive in. There is incredible opportunity as far as job security; there is also great opportunity as far as your financial health. So, these are premiers that can establish you financially and can also promise a job for years to come. How important is gender diversity in the work place? This is a challenging question because sometimes, people don’t want to talk about it because it can be uncomfortable or they think that you’re just trying to be a clinging symbol in the wheel. Here is what we’ve proven…so, I’ve taken this conversation and applied actual facts to it. What we found is that, businesses that have more diverse upper level management both in gender and in race actually outperform their competitors by 8 to 15 percent. One of the reasons we believe is that when you bring alternative perspective to the table, you can lead differently, manage differently and have a different type of outcome. It’s also proven that women in upper level management can often be an example of empathy, and empathy can often lead to better productivity because people feel safe in their
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work environment, they’ll trust those up there, and when you have better trust in a work environment, you increase your productivity and when you increase your productivity, you can ultimately increase your revenue and sales. So, it’s about setting that foundation. One of the things I’ve been very passionate about is that in the United States, we have a 5050 gender representation in the workforce, but, when you look at the upper level management, it is less than 20 percent. Then, when you look at upper level CEOs, only 6 percent are CEOs in Fortune500 Companies. When we started to look at it, from not just an employee standpoint, then we asked, what are we doing? Are we not promoting women? Are they not staying? One of the things I have learned is that, companies are having a difficult time retaining women because of the culture. A lot of time, companies say, “she’s just leaving because she had a baby”, “she’s just leaving because she has some family things”. Well, while there is some truth to that, often times, businesses are not willing to work with that unique circumstance to still allow that person to stay employed while still contributing to the workplace but also being fully present at home. I think that there is a way. That’s the part of my conversations that I’ll like to have with companies, how do we look at this differently? We’ve looked at it with the same lens, with the same pair of glasses for so long that we’ve forgotten the importance of looking at everybody’s situation differently and I’m really big on gender equity which means that we treat everybody’s situation based @Businessdayng
How has the Covid-19 season affected you? We have just slowly started reopening. But, for us, it was a blessing because I was able to spend all this sweet time with the kids. As a working mum, I would drop my kids off at 8 O’ clock in the morning to school and I wouldn’t see them again sometimes into the next day because I work at night. So, that was always so hard. Now, I get the opportunity to spend the morning with them, and teach them and I think I learn from them just like they learn from me. that was fun for me. But the other thing is, my husband and I both have what is called essential jobs, so we were fortunate to be able to keep our jobs. But my husband also owns a business, so he decided to not take a salary so he could pay his employees. We felt like that was the right thing to do and so we were faithful in that and I feel like that God has allowed us to keep all of our staff, but that also came with a lot of balance. Again, I would stay home with the kids, and I would drop them off in the afternoon and the he would take the second shift of the day with kids, he would do dinner and get them tucked in for bed at night. We just had a lot of balance. On ‘Black Lives Matter’ and happenings in recent times I personally think that we need to have these conversations. I think they are healthy for our communities; they are healthy for our society. There have obviously been some negatives. We’ve had some riots that I don’t think are part of the positive parts, but I do think having these conversations and understanding how we can move forward is good, and I think healthy conversations are really good in terms of understanding perspectives, vantage points, and “oh, I didn’t know you felt this way” because not everybody feels same way even within the same race and it’s because everybody’s life is different and it gets back to equity. Everybody’s story is different, everybody’s needs are different and how we look at each individual. If we look at through the lens as Christ looks through life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, the question is, am I exhibiting those behaviours to my brothers and sisters? I think that this is a huge turning point in the United States. I think we’re in a little of a fog right now, I think that we’ll come out of it. I still believe God is fully in control and like I said, I think it’s starting some really good and beneficial conversations here in the US.
Read more about Ashley Gann’s inspiring story on our website www.businessday.ng as she graces our Women’s Hub cover for this week. You are just a click away!