Women of color bring diversity to engineering

Business, government and academic organizations realize the value of a diverse workforce in the competitive world

ChE, aero, CS, EE and ME; BS through PhD; these eight technical women are essential to the success of their companies

Christine Willard Heinrichs
Contributing Editor

Women engineers of color are working in every area
of business and government across the U.S. Many have come here from other countries: as children with their families, as students, or as adult techies ready to work. Many more were born here, as second-generation or multi-generation Americans. They bring their own perspective, as both women and minorities, to the engineering world.

Not only businesses, but government and academic organizations realize the value of diversity in the competitive world. At Intel Corp (Santa Clara, CA), for example, president and CEO Paul S. Otellini says, “We strive to hire and retain the best talent from an increasingly global and diverse labor pool. We believe this will result in a better understanding of our customers’ needs and better products tailored to those needs, and ultimately make our already great company an even better one.”

Dr Ebony L. Mays: next-gen technology at Intel
Ebony Mays, PhD is all about the future. As a process engineer at Intel Corp’s Hillsboro, OR R&D site, she’s always looking at least two years ahead, at next-generation thin-film technology.

“Despite the economic downturn, we expect to have
the next two-year cycle out on time in 2010,” she says.

Mays works with colleagues in functional groups. The groups form around specific equipment types and manufacturing processes. Each group has engineers dedicated to a different part of the semiconductor manufacturing process; Mays is the backend dielectric thin-film deposition guru in her group.

Integration engineers work with engineers from each group to integrate their work into the larger process. “That becomes the recipe for making an Intel microprocessor,” Mays explains.

“My job is in path finding: research, development and training,” Mays says. “We work with each other across groups. I’ll work with my counterparts in integration, lithography, etch, polish and all the other areas, bringing the individual processes together. Once we’ve developed an integrated process technology, we teach it to our large manufacturing sites.”

Growing up in Riverside, CA, Mays wasn’t always sure that her career would be in engineering. “But my mother always thought so,” she says with a smile. And mom was right: Mays’ strong interest in math and science led her to the minority engineering program at the University of California-Los Angeles, where the Science, Math Achievement and Research Technology for Students (SMARTS) program helped her get through the first two years successfully. She was accepted into the upper-division materials science program, “and I stuck with it,” she says.

Mays completed her BS in materials science and engineering in 1995 and went to work for Intel. After two years she went on to an MS in materials science and engineering from UCLA, adding a PhD from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2003. But she was happy to return to Hillsboro and take up her path-finding work.

After hours she spends all the time she can outdoors, cycling, skiing, kayaking and loving nature. “The countryside here is so green,” she says. “They have conserved the land so well.” Her significant other works in the medical field.

Intel has a company program to support employee involvement in community activities, and through it Mays works with girls in after-school programs. “It’s always exciting to impress on the kids how important engineering and education are,” she says.

She’s a member of the Materials Research Society and a lifetime member of Keramos Honor Society, a professional organization for ceramics engineers. “One of the best things I’ve learned is how to keep my options open and swing from one branch to another,” she says
with a smile.

Danielle Hilliard: Sea Power 21 at JHU APL
Diversity at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory (APL, Laurel, MD) is “multidimensional,” observes Karen Greene, a supervisor in the diversity management and employee relations section of the HR and services department. The lab values diversity in culture, background, expertise, experience and ideas, she says, giving APL an edge in creativity and innovation.

Danielle Hilliard is carrying out these ideals as she works on the U.S. Navy’s twenty-first century planning. Hilliard manages the Sea Power 21 program in the lab’s warfare analysis business area. The program is the Navy’s comprehensive plan to meet the new century’s national security requirements. Hilliard works directly with deputies of the chief of naval ops
to develop strategy for naval preparedness over the next twenty years.

“The government labs are working on things that are not ready to be fielded yet,” she says. “It’s very futuristic.”

She uses analytical modeling and simulation tools to update information for decision-makers. Sea Power 21 includes manpower strategies as well as technology. For example, determining what kind of personnel will be needed to staff ships will guide what kinds of training the Navy needs to offer.

Hilliard is well prepared for this work. She served eight years in the Army as an enlisted soldier and officer, followed by nine years in the reserves.

Hilliard grew up in South Carolina, surrounded by education and technology. Her father was one of the first computer scientists at his university and her mother is an educator. Her brother took the pure science route, earning a PhD in chemistry.

Hilliard picked aerospace engineering for her path. She completed her BS at Tuskegee University (Tuskegee, AL) in 1995. She got her first work experience as a co-op at George Marshall Space Flight Center (Huntsville, AL) in 1990-91. “Your first job doesn’t have to be flipping burgers,” she advises kids. “Don’t set your bar too low.”

She met her husband when they were both undergrads. She went on to earn an MSIT from Capitol College (Laurel, MD) in 2000; her husband is an aerospace engineer for APL.

With three children, ages eleven, six and one, Hilliard has reduced her workweek to thirty hours. APL’s flexibility about working from home also helps. But Hilliard finds time to be active in the PTA at her kids’ elementary and middle schools, volunteer in the classroom and serve on the executive boards of both schools.

“I love giving an hour of my time,” she says. “I like to pull people together and work on problems.”

She notes that women are showing up more frequently in technical areas like human systems integration, IE and modeling and simulation projects. Her role as program manager gives her
a wide view of defense programs, and “It’s as if there are pockets that women have gone into,” she says.

Hilliard finds ways to be a mentor through the Tuskegee Aerospace Alumni Association and APL’s MESA (Math, Engineering, Science Achievement) program. She also works with APL’s African American Culture Club, which brings in summer interns. “It’s a great gig if a kid can
get it,” she says.

Engineering problems are just one piece of a puzzle, she explains. “At some point you have to come out of the cubicle and answer questions. You’re selling your ideas all the time.”

Nina Emanuel, ChE at Talecris Biotherapeutics
Nina Emanuel is a Native American of the Lumbee tribe of North Carolina, thought to be the largest tribe east of the Mississippi. Emanuel is developing her talents in ChE as a project manager at Talecris Biotherapeutics (Clayton, NC). Her current project involves three temperature control technologies. Emanuel notes that she and several other women engineers hired four or five years ago are working their way around the company’s various businesses.

“Management is really supportive in finding projects that challenge us,” Emanuel says. “It was a way of bringing new engineers into the company.”

Talecris Biotherapeutics discovers, develops and produces critical care treatments for people with life-threatening disorders such as immune deficiencies and hemophilia. The company has more than 4,300 employees worldwide and its revenues exceeded $1.4 billion in 2008.

Emanuel started at Talecris as an intern during her senior year at North Carolina State University-Pembroke. After she received her BSChE with a minor in biotech the company offered her a job in qualification and validation engineering.

Currently she spends about half her time in the office and half in the field. She’s also managing a project to connect the Talecris site, where about 1,500 people work, to the public water system, overseeing new water lines, storm-water runoff and other issues. Her ChE background is perfect for the work. “It’s pretty much the same as what I did in my first qualification job, but from a different perspective,” she says.

She likes the Talecris location, close to her Lumbee tribal roots in Robeson County. She grew up in Raleigh, NC, returning with her parents to her hometown of Pembroke every weekend. And she still gets there at least once a month with her ChE husband, who works in nearby Research Triangle Park, and their young son. They are active in the Evergreen Holiness Church there.

Emanuel is also an active board member of the American Indian Alumni Society at NC State. “This is a group of people I can ask for professional advice and also discuss family issues with,” she says. “We support each other in raising American Indian children to understand and identify with their culture.”

She’s also a member of the Project Management Institute and hopes to go on to a project management professional certification. She accepts every opportunity to tutor that comes her way, at church and at NC State, and is an informal mentor for new employees at Talecris.

“Supporting women in the workplace should begin with young girls in school,” she says. “We must cultivate them to be engaged students and future leaders, with the skills necessary to be equal to their male counterparts through their educational and professional lives.”

Kari Heerdt, HR SVP, notes that “Diversity is a way of life at Talecris. We adhere to our vision and practice our values of inclusion of all the cultures in a safe, nurturing and successful environment.”

Yasheka Williams manages projects at Sprint
As a project and program manager at Sprint (Overland Park, KS), EE Yasheka Williams is the communications bridge between the customer and management. She works to keep projects on task, within budget and on schedule. Currently she’s working with several 911 management projects in the interconnection solutions group.

Her projects involve internal customers who request enhancement or changes in the way they do business. She handles requirements gathering and takes the project to management for a leadership perspective. Then she works the need back through the IT development team.

“It means keeping track of a lot of project components,” she says. “Being a project manager is demanding but rewarding. It’s up to you to get things done right and be the liaison between the groups and the customer.”

Sprint offers full communication services, and had more than 49 million wireless customers
at the end of 2008. Williams has worked there since 1999, when she started as a network systems engineer.

From her hometown of Fort Wayne, IN she went to Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN) for
a 1996 BSEE. She moved to the post of IT systems engineer for Honeywell FM&T (Kansas City, MO) and entered the masters program in computer resources and information management at Webster University (Kansas City, MO).

Sprint hired her as a network systems engineer even before she completed her MS in 1999. Soon after she took on project management responsibilities; she earned a master’s certificate in project management in 2001.

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse says, “We take great pride in our inclusive workforce made up of diverse, talented employees, enabling us to provide the best customer experience for our diverse customer base.” Sprint’s six affiliation organizations promote the spirit of inclusiveness.

Dr Gilda Garreton: staff engineer for Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems (Santa Clara, CA) offers software, systems, services and microelectronics to power everything from consumer electronics and developer tools to some of the world’s most powerful data centers.

Diversity is global at Sun. The company employs more than 33,000 people worldwide and does business in more than a hundred countries. It sponsors affiliation organizations and supports many diversity-related activities for its employees.

When she first joined the company, senior staff engineer Gilda Garreton, PhD was mentored through a Sun program. Now she’s a mentor herself, both at Sun and through MentorNet, the e-mentoring network for diversity in engineering and science. She’s also a member of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI), and one of the fourteen founders of Latinas in Computing, which originated at a session of ABI’s 2006 Grace Hopper Conference.

“Sun is quite open and very flexible in encouraging employees to do volunteer work,” Garreton notes. “The value for Sun is the many opportunities to get minorities involved in the company.”

Sun sponsors a chapter of Engineers Without Borders, in which Garreton is active. A recent project brought Wi-Fi to the rain forest in Panama, and the company also installed sensors to feed data back for research.

Garreton is a senior staff systems engineer at Sun Systems Laboratories, the company’s Menlo Park, CA advanced development group. One of about 200 people in the lab, she focuses on VLSI CAD algorithms for Project Electric, an open-source CAD tool. Her team includes twenty-five people, fifteen of them engineers. Contractors and interns also participate.

Garreton is an advocate of open-source alternatives to commercial software. She helps develop tools, and seeks collaborators both within Sun and in external open-source communities.

Her international background is an asset. Born in Chile, she earned her BA in engineering sciences and an advanced degree in CS at the Catholic University of Chile (Santiago, Chile).
A professor encouraged her to go to Europe for her doctorate; she completed her PhD in CS
at the Swiss Federal Institute’s Integrated Systems Laboratory in 1999.

Then she went to work for UBS Warburg AG (Opfikon, Switzerland) as a systems analyst, offering IT support for the bank’s systems. In 2001 she and her husband moved to the U.S., where she continued working for UBS Warburg in Connecticut.

She took a year off when her first son was born in 2003, then joined Sun in 2004 as a staff software engineer. She was promoted to senior staff engineer in 2007.

She has two children now, and finds Sun’s flexibility about working hours very helpful.

As a student in Chile, Garreton was one of just a few women in the engineering program. In Europe she began to take note of the disparities women experienced. Eventually she overcame her natural shyness and now at Sun she’s found her voice on this important subject. “I’m paying it forward,” she says.

At ITT, Rita Mobeka manages advanced DOD projects
ITT (White Plains, NY) is a global, multi-industries company that serves three strategic markets: fluid technology, motion control, and defense electronics and services. ITT is focused on building a culture of inclusion and diversity. “We want all employees to feel valued, inspired and excited about their opportunities for professional growth,” says Robert L. Ellis, global chief inclusion and diversity officer.

ITT’s defense electronics and services business provides sensing and surveillance, space, advanced engineering and integrated services and communications to government and commercial customers. The company employs more than 40,000 people around the world.

Rita Mobeka manages two Department of Defense (DOD) projects for ITT’s advanced engineering and sciences division: the spectrum management transition initiative future release planning tasks, and the net-centric spectrum data transformation task. Both projects are the responsibility of the DOD’s Joint Spectrum Center. Mobeka is located at ITT’s Bowie, MD site near Washington, DC, where she manages a team for each project.

The spectrum management project addresses the challenges of moving DOD spectrum devices out of certain RF bands. The initiative was a response to the Commercial Spectrum Enhancement Act (CSEA) of 2004, which allowed the federal government to auction off some of its assigned portions of the electromagnetic spectrum to the private sector. The team for this project includes systems architects, EEs and RF engineers at the doctoral level, doing algorithm analysis and software development.

“It’s not just a matter of moving from one RF band to another,” Mobeka explains. “There’s a lot of other equipment in those bands and they’re getting congested. We have to be very smart in the way we allocate radio frequencies.”

The net-centric project is database-driven, requiring DBAs, architects, programmers and engineers. They are redesigning legacy structures to support a more dynamic RF environment.

Mobeka’s role as project manager is to prepare and manage budget and schedules, oversee and guide the team and work with the customer. Her experience as a DBA, combined with her background in engineering, helps her communicate with the entire community.

Mobeka grew up in Maryland. Her career-Army father retired as a lieutenant colonel, and her mother was a mathematician. They worked with Mobeka in physics and math, and she wanted to be an engineer for as long as she can remember.

At first her aspirations took the form of building race cars and engines, an interest that led
to a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA) sponsored by General Motors (GM, Detroit, MI).

She worked at GM in the summers, completing her BSME in 1985. But working fulltime for a
car company meant moving to the Midwest. She consulted her mentors, who suggested that she build on her research-oriented degree with advanced study. She entered Columbia University (New York, NY) to earn a 1987 MSME.

Then Mobeka joined Grid System, Inc (New York, NY) as a senior system engineer, consulting on software and hardware products. After four years she moved to project manager at The Wiz electronics distributors (Carteret, NJ). Managing electronic tools at the distributors’ three warehouses and twenty-plus retail locations involved work with RF devices, T1 lines for telecom and serial multiplexers for terminal ops.

“In ME you learn all the basics,” she says. “I worked in spread spectrum, as a logistics developer and as a DBA.”

In 1996 she joined ITT’s systems division to work on communications for the U.S. Department of State. At that time electronic communications were changing the way embassies and posts communicated, with all communications to and from Washington, DC going through a messaging center. Mobeka got involved in support for software development, database upgrades and network communications. She started as a senior analyst and moved up to lead analyst, supervisor and program manager.

When the DOD project came along in 2007 she was ready for the challenge. This is more analytical than the work she’d done at State. “It allows me to use program management as well as my technical side to solve problems,” she says.

Informal and formal mentors have helped her along the way. “They were not only interested
in my career growth, but also what I had to give back,” she says. “I appreciated that they saw something in me, a willingness to learn and grow, to push myself outside the boundaries.”

She’s passing that on by informally mentoring a group of bright young women of color in engineering. “Giving them the confidence to continue to vocalize their ideas is something I consider one of my responsibilities,” she says.

At home, Mobeka’s family includes her husband, fourteen-year-old daughter and twelve- and nine-year-old sons. “As a parent you’re always making choices,” she says. “The first priority is that the kids have what they need.”

She and her family are active in community outreach efforts of the Greater Baltimore Church of Christ, and she participates in weekend activities with local schools.

“Women engineers have a different perspective,” she says. “We are just as analytical and detail oriented, but we also bring unique creative solutions to the table. When we are confident and articulate our ideas it improves the team, the organization and the end result.”

Dr Yan Xu researches power systems at Oak Ridge National Lab
Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU, Oak Ridge, TN) connects the academic, research and government worlds. “ORAU believes that diversity is
a strength in any setting,” says Ron Townsend, former president and director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE). “Its mission is to put this belief into action by creating innovative ideas, attracting exceptional people and achieving impressive results.” Townsend recently left his Oak Ridge post to fill a similar role at Battelle Memorial Institute.

Yan Xu, PhD is one of the exceptional people at ORISE. She brought a deep knowledge of power distribution systems with her from China, and now at the lab she’s continuing her
studies as a post-doc researcher on power systems.

Until recently the U.S. power grid was considered a mature entity. Most research focused on generation, and on transmission of power from plants to urban users.

With the current advent and future expectation of distributed renewable energy resources
like solar and wind, attention has focused on distribution systems. Distributed energy sources increase the need for intelligent devices like microprocessors and computers to incorporate
the renewable energy sources, and to provide more services to customers.

Xu is doing the sort of work that will make that possible. She sets up computer simulations
to model and analyze power systems, and experiments with control methods in the lab.

Southern California Edison is testing Xu’s work on a small distributed-energy system. She’s working with the utility to use distributed energy to regulate local voltage.

“It’s a good project,” she says. “Utilities realize that change is coming and are willing to accept new technology. But they have technical problems and we are working to solve them.”

Xu came to the U.S. in 2001 to go to grad school at the University of Tennessee. She had a 1995 BS from Shanghai Jiaotong University and a 2001 MS from North China Electric Power University, both focused on electrical power engineering. She worked as an engineer at Anhui Province Electric Power Co for three years after earning the BS.

As a grad student she interned at Beijing’s Sifang Automation Co Ltd, developing software for power system digital protection devices. Before leaving for the U.S. she worked at Beijing’s Pengfa Xingguang Power Electronics Co Ltd, developing software for the motor drives of Beijing’s subway trains.“In China it’s more common for women to be in engineering,” she says, because engineering offers secure employment.

In the U.S. she entered the University of Tennessee’s program in 2002 and finished her PhD in 2006. ORISE invited her to work on its projects even before she completed the doctorate; she did, and continued there afterward.

She married a professor at the university who is also an EE. Their daughter is two years old. Xu’s parents have come to visit her twice, and once Xu took her daughter to China. “Going to China uses up all my vacation time with travel,” she says.

Delaina Allen: super printer inks at Eastman Kodak
“Kodak’s commitment to diversity and inclusion is rooted in our belief that everyone counts,” says Essie L. Calhoun, VP, chief diversity officer and director of community affairs at Eastman Kodak Co (Rochester, NY). “For Kodak, diversity and inclusion are competitive advantages.”

Delaina Allen’s prominence in pigment inks and research in other materials and inks for inkjet printers has helped the company take its share of a competitive product line.

It was 2007 when Kodak went head-to-head with competitors in the inkjet printer market. Having the right inks is crucial to the effort, and that’s where Allen’s work on premium pigment-based ink comes in.

As a research associate in the Kodak R&D labs’ inkjet system division, Allen works to develop superior inks. She’s a recognized authority on pigment inks and also works with dye-based inks.

Her other areas of expertise include inkjet materials, colloidal stability, polymers and surface science. “All the printer components have to work with the ink, and the ink has to work with many different parts of the end product,” she explains.

She and her team of technicians work in the lab to formulate inks, test them, and sometimes even create the test apparatus. “Sometimes the biggest piece of the puzzle is finding ways to evaluate the inks,” Allen notes.

It’s also up to Allen to know what the competitors are doing. Poring through patent literature and studying press releases help her understand where the market is going.

Growing up, high school advisors encouraged Allen to check out engineering. The University
of Virginia’s engineering program was tough, but she persevered. “It was hard but I just stuck with it,” she says. “I enjoyed it.”

After receiving her BSChE she went to the University of California-Berkeley as a GEM Fellow and was supported by an Ida Louise Jackson fellowship while working on her MS and PhD, also in ChE.

At Kodak, Allen’s interest in mentoring and supporting others makes her a magnetic recruiter. Kodak sponsors a fellowship through the National Organization of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE), and so she’s recruiting both for the company and the organization. “It’s good outreach and puts me in touch with students and professionals in other fields as well as my own,” she says.

She’s involved in mentoring junior colleagues through Kodak’s employee networks, and works with students at Rochester Institute of Technology and other local colleges. Her activity in NSBE and NOBCChE brings her contacts from farther afield; she mentors some of them online.

Within the company she’s active in the women’s and African American employee networks.
Ten years ago she helped start up Kodak’s African American R&D council, a group focused on technical employees.

Home life is interesting, too. She met her husband in grad school; he works in entertainment, hosting a program on local radio and coordinating a Black History Month film festival with the local PBS station. He also operates a nonprofit youth soccer academy. “We’re left-brain and right-brain,” Allen notes with amusement.

They have a four-year-old son and an infant daughter. “In an ideal world I’d have more time
to spend on reading, writing, cooking and decorating,” says Allen. But she manages to juggle childcare and work successfully.

“I have found my career rewarding,” she says.

D/C

Christine Willard Heinrichs is a freelance writer who lives in Cambria, CA.

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