Disrupting Women in Engineering with Janell Nelson — Episode #52

Janell Nelson became an engineer because she enjoyed the individual nature of the work but quickly found herself drawn to leadership. She accepted the challenges of working in a male-dominated field and having few women in leadership positions she could emulate. However, when she was already an experienced and successful manager and found herself pigeonholed based solely on gender, she decided to do what she could to bring more women into STEM leadership roles. 

Currently a Senior Engineering Manager at Canon Medical Informatics, Janell is active in her local community. She works with engineering and STEM programs for girls and young women at every stage of education, from elementary school to college. The future of STEM leadership and global competitiveness is in the hands of today’s students. 

Key takeaways 

• I’ve only had one female leader that was in the engineering side above me in my 20-year career. Changing the status quo means reaching back into the community to encourage more girls to be interested in STEM programming and showing them the career path is possible. 

• Graduation rates for female engineers are around 18%, which makes it hard. There are just not that many young women right now who have a background or an interest. Those who are interested face challenges in an industry where they may have to fight harder than their peers and may not always fit in. 

• Diversity is not just a matter of equality; it’s critical for global success and competition. For example, if you only employ people who live in the Midwest, you only have a very small bubble of thought patterns you’re pulling from. You can’t be a global company if you’re only focusing on how you see the world. 

• If we all think the same way, we run into problems such that the AI doesn’t recognize everybody who might use it. A classic example was AI which couldn’t see the facial features of somebody who wasn’t white. That’s a problem. That’s why diversity is not optional — it’s essential. 

• The soft skills that many women bring are also essential to creating connections and building teams. If you step back and look at the whole reality, it’s never just one team that builds anything. You need to connect to other teams and the rest of the business, not just within engineering but with support teams, install teams, sales teams, and marketing teams. Soft skills are a great asset to making that happen, and that helps the whole company. 

• Suppose we don’t have women in leadership roles, being role models for the next generations and helping to influence how we hire and who we bring in. In that case, we will never be able to increase our diversity and increase the number of women within this industry. 

• To change something as fundamental as what people want to do for their career, you make connections and go to local schools. It’s hard to do it globally. Kids resonate with people who show up for them. 

• Elementary school is the most critical time because middle school kids are heavily influenced by peer pressure, and most of the kids in STEM classes are boys. The solution is to get more girls in those classes and normalize it as a choice. 

• I’ve seen it work, even with third through fifth graders who were economically challenged and going through difficulties at home. The presence of an encouraging adult may be all they need to follow through on their natural abilities and talents. Students who I worked with in elementary school are now receiving academic achievement awards in middle school and following through with STEM classes. 

• You don’t have to do it all yourself. An employee resource group is a change to influence your company’s direction and make a lasting impact on children’s lives and the future of our country. 

• There are great companies out there building leaders. I worked at an Aetna company. The Aetna trainings helped me be the leader that I am today. They focused on building their female leaders, which helped me understand how I should be doing things. 

Quote of the show: 

6:23 “If you don’t have diversity in thought patterns, let’s just say we’re only going to employ people that live in the Midwest, you only have a very small bubble of thought patterns that you’re going from. And you can’t be a global company if you’re only focusing on how you see the world… That’s why you need diversity..."

 

Links: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janell-nelson-6376794/  

Company Website: https://www.vitalimages.com/ 

 

Ways to Tune In: 

Amazon Music — https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption 

Apple Podcast — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755 

Google Play — https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGlzcnVwdGlvbmludGVycnVwdGlvbi5jb20vZmVlZC54bWw 

Spotify — https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD 

Stitcher — https://www.stitcher.com/show/disruption-interruption 

YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf2zbLqmHtSHQ7u1V-Is8cA