G&W U.S. On Tuesday, March 8, G&W celebrated International Women’s Day with a special virtual program featuring a keynote presentation from Helen Newell, G&W board member and senior vice president for GIC Infrastructure, and a panel of nine women employees from across G&W U.S. who shared their experiences working in the male-dominated rail industry. The panel included Sheila Cain, freight claims analyst; Julie Eddy, assistant vice president of operations, Northern Region railroads; Allison Fergus, general counsel and secretary; Leila Ford, vice president of sales and marketing, Northern Region railroads; Kathi Harris, vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion; Ericka Kupiec, director of customer service; Kristy Siscoe, yardmaster, Arizona & California Railroad; Kimberly Thompson, vice president of sales and marketing, Southern Region companies; and Andrea Waldman-Sittman, signal maintainer, California Northern Railroad. Cain, who has worked in the railroad industry for more than 40 years, said one of the things she has learned through the years is to “never be afraid to work.” “Show them you can do it…that you’re not afraid to try,” she said. “Be comfortable in yourself. Have a skill in your hand and an education in your head.”
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Waldman-Sittman, whose work can often take her to places where she may not feel safe, said that the best advice she could give to women who are working in male-dominated industries is empowerment. “If you let your work speak for itself, it’s not too hard to earn the respect of those people around you,” she said. “And if you’re willing to crack a few jokes and take a couple your way, too, that sense of camaraderie is also very important.” She has taken self-defense courses since she was young and continues to train at a mixed martial arts gym. “While I know my co-workers have my back, there’s something about being able to carry yourself well, knowing you can trust yourself to take care of yourself,” she added. Fergus talked about how important it was for women to learn from the challenges they face in the workplace and the importance of supporting each other. “When I think about what we can do as an organization to break the bias, I think we have to look around the table, and we have to start speaking up about what we are seeing in the workplace,” she said. Newell, who has worked more than 20 years in the transportation, mining and infrastructure sectors across six continents, shared how she has helped to “break the bias” in male-dominated industries. #BreaktheBias was the theme for International Women’s Day 2022, with the goal of promoting a gender-equal world that is free
