So the idea for this came from the lack of role models that I find in my line of work. I am a civil engineer who works in the water and wastewater industry. I am also an African-American female. Working in the old boys club of engineering being a female is painful as it is, but then you add being a minority to that and it becomes almost unbearable. I have been working for almost 15 years and for the vast majority of those 15 years I have always been the only African-American female in the room that hasn’t been some form of administrative assistant.

But in hindsight that shouldn’t surprise me that much. That is how most of my life has been. I grew up about a half hour outside of Philadelphia and went to a small private school. And when I say small, my graduating class was 50 people. In the 13 years I attended my school, I was always one of a very small group of minorities. I was the only African-American in the majority of my advanced science and math classes, the only one who went into engineering, and of all the people in my class who went to college for engineering, I am the only one who is practicing.

In college the situation got a bit better. I went to a college that reminded me of my high school and found my place. I joined a sorority for women in engineering and technical sciences, where again for 3 of my 4 years, I was the token one (what is sad is I had to explain the token reference to someone at some point). It was a situation I was used to so it didn’t really bother me. 

But once I graduated, I had that age old problem of realizing that I had been living in a bubble for the past 4 years and things were going to be different. I got a job in February of my senior year and was preparing to move to Connecticut. I was excited to live on my own and start my career. Oh how naive and uninformed I was. I had thought that my high school was a snobbish place and I was prepared to live in CT; I wasn’t. Nothing could have aptly prepared me for the next 4.5 years of my life. Let’s just say, everyone that I worked with was surprised that I lasted as long as I did and told me every opportunity that they had. I was miserable. I was homesick and not really adjusting well to my job and the people that I worked with. I didn’t make any friends right off the bat, so it was just me in my apartment most of the time. But in the office it was a bit worse. My bosses were wonderful, like I couldn’t have asked for better bosses and they set really high standards for all bosses that came after them (that only one has come pretty close to meeting), but when it came to the role model front there was still no one. And my company had 4 other offices and I visited most of them and it was still just me. 

Finally I was able to transfer to an office back home within the same company (after an acquisition) and it was still just me. There was an African-American male project manager, but I feel like he was pretty far down on the importance meter. Then after another acquisition I transferred offices again and it was just me. But this time it was a bit more painful, there were other African-Americans in the office, but they were both in administrative assistant roles. It was a small office so I had to interact with them a lot, but still it was a bit stifling. Three different offices in the same company, and not one other African-American engineer (male or female). 

When I finally had given up on my first company, I made the decision to make a change and finally find company number 2. And I question that decision everyday since I made it. This is even more of an old boys club, because most people have been here since they started working. It’s like living in a real life episode of Mad Men almost every day. In the 3 years that I worked there the number of women and minorities was higher but not great. There were three women engineers including me and they were all minorities, but outside of the administrative assistants, we were the only women.

I’m now on company number 4, number 3 was only a year stint and it was a great learning experience, but I’m glad to have moved on. I’ve been at company number 4 for a month now and this is the first place that there are women in the upper echelons of management.  While they aren’t women of color, having a woman that I can look up to and aspire to be like is better than not having one at all. So far this place seems the most like my first company; I can tell that my boss is going to be a good person to work with and he wants me to succeed, which is something that I have been missing in my last few companies.

So in almost 15 years of my career it has taken me 4 companies to find a place that has more women than I can count on one hand. And I won’t be the first person to tell you this. Ask any women in STEM and they will say that they are outnumbered. We need to do better, there have been numerous studies that say that companies do better when they are more diverse at all levels. So why has it taken me so long to find a place that is diverse enough that I can actually do that?

Well let’s be honest diversity in engineering is a bit of a pipe dream. you are more likely to find a large contingent of women or a large contingent of people of color, but never both. And if you are stuck with neither, you can only hope that you work with people who are “woke” enough to know that there is an issue and try to do something about it. But most people know that engineering is, and at least until we can fix the pipeline issue, going to basically be an old boys club.

And I am doing what I can to try to make a change. I passed my professional engineer’s exam so now I am one of 2 licensed female engineers in my office and one of two of color. I am dedicated to promoting to get more women of color into STEM and hope that I can use the different stops on my working roadmap to help them not make as many stops.