Since 2015 we have celebrated the International Day of Women and Girls in Science on February 11, a declaration made by the United Nations in an effort to build awareness and further achieve gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. Despite these types of efforts and a shortage of skills in most of the technological fields driving this fourth industrial revolution, women still account for only 28% of engineering graduates and 40% of graduates in computer science. These facts made me wonder how TechFlow ended up with so many amazing women applying science to develop forward-thinking solutions for our customers. What I found was not what I expected.
I targeted one of TechFlow’s top-performing employee-owners and asked her about the path that led her to where she is today. The biggest surprise I learned was that she did not initially considered herself a woman of science. She took a circuitous route to her current role so while she applies engineering and computer science principles, among other areas of science, to her work, she is not counted among those engineering and computer science graduates. And yet, she is doing the work.
Sheryl Haley is Senior Program Manager for TSA EDS and she found her way there through accounting and finance. She spent her early career as a financial analyst and started to grow bored. A co-worker mentioned he was taking a course to get his Project Management Professional (PMP) certification and at the same time she had taken a career aptitude test and realized she enjoyed working with people and finance was too solitary for her. She started working on her PMP and returned to work for a former employer that she knew had a program manager position opening up. She found herself in a similar world of security technology (eventually meeting up with Lauren at a stop they both made before TechFlow) and made a name for herself in the industry as someone who gets things done. Sheryl told our team: “I guess I have a bit of impostor syndrome. I’m doing the critical thinking, I’m doing the data analysis, I’m coding…but I didn’t stop to think that I’m working in science.”
This conversations made me wonder, are we as a society too narrowly defining what a career in science looks like? Sheryl was not a biologist or chemist or physicist or medical doctor or computer scientist or engineer…and so she concluded that since she did not fit into any of those classic roles, how could she be a women of science? However, she analyzes data, solves problems, and builds solutions employing many of these sciences that she has taken the time to learn about through studies, certification training, and on-the-job experience. Would she have found her way into these roles sooner had she known there was a career in science outside of the traditional roles that would appeal to her and her interests and strengths? Could that be the answer to bridging the gap of both getting more women and just people in general to develop the skills that are in short supply? All I know is TechFlow and the world at large could use more women like Sheryl doing what she does to help us solve the problems that this fourth industrial revolution has presented. I am grateful that despite the lack of a clear path, she found us. We are all better and safer for it.
