It Takes a Tribe
This past summer, I was working with our internal business resource groups on a mentoring program for our summer interns, and it solidified my mission to my core.
First and foremost, our business resource groups are part of a diversity and inclusion effort that my engineering firm committed to. We have groups dedicated to the progression of women into leadership roles, advancing young professionals, empowering black, latino, and LGBTQ+ individuals, the list goes on. The main focus of these groups is to provide resources for both identifying members and allies that really revolve around career progression. This is the type of tribe I didn’t know I needed until I found it.
I had a notion of what to expect from the mentor program, so I put my best face on for my assigned college intern and prepared materials related to soft skills development. I am really my own breed of engineer, so this was less traditional than you would think. Being a summer intern over six years ago, I compiled all of the topics that would have made an impact sooner in my career, such as: let go of the fear of networking, be unapologetically you, tangible time management skills (not theory), more advanced resume building, and commitment to developing yourself.
As we progressed through the summer, we held one hour sessions once a week on those topics, but after a while she started creating agendas with topics on her own. One week, she asked me quite simply: what would you have done differently in college? It caught me off guard. I loved my college experience and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I had written letters to my younger sister and also, pretty recently, my boyfriend’s niece on college hacks, so it’s not like it’s new material. Something was different though: the previous advice I had given was not for engineers. It was generic. My incredibly bright intern would have seen right through the generic aspects and written me off. Needless to say, I was not articulate, but I think that was really the turning point in our understanding of each other. She wanted the raw truth of my “hindsight is 20/20” and I feel like I was word vomiting once I got going.
Fast forward to the end of the summer. On her last day, she popped by my desk to give me a small gift. I feel like I should have anticipated this gesture, but through all the initiatives I had been focusing on, I didn’t really have a moment to give it thought. She was so grateful for the tangible training she received from me that she was almost teary-eyed in the moment of thanking me.
THIS. This was what I needed at the end of my summer to give me another wind in my mission for advocacy in my field. As women in STEM already, we have the responsibility to spread awareness and encourage other women not to follow in our footsteps, but leave their own set of footsteps beside ours. We need to start inspiring women at a younger age, teaching them to really harness their power in an authentic way.
As engineers, we are stereotyped (sometimes accurately) as more introverted. As women, we are inherent “givers”. We need to take this opportunity to overcome the introversion, and give back to those who are leaning in. Many Generation Z individuals have the intrinsic drive to learn more so it’s our job to make sure we are doing our part in the workplace to help them with that. The phrase “leave it better than you found it” is my life mantra and I aim to inspire others to do the same; that’s how you build the right type of community.
We cannot do this alone, and numbers are not in our favor, but it doesn’t just take a village, it takes a tribe.
