Career advice from Boeing's SWE National Conference Highlights event

Past Society of Women Engineers award winners described their career paths in a panel moderated by Tamaira Ross, Boeing Associate Technical Fellow.

Angie O'Gorman received the 2005 SWE Distinguished New Engineer Award. Earlier in her career, Angie had spent five years in a job that gave her little scope for career growth. She found her work had become mundane, used SWE to develop her leadership skills, and her management appreciated it.

Terri Morse was recipient of the 2008 SWE Distinguished Service Award. At a time when her job wasn't stretching her, she volunteered for SWE as a way to create a leadership career path, and in doing so proved to her manager that she could handle bigger assignments.

Arlene Brown was nominated by SWE and received the 2008 Puget Sound Engineering Council's Industry Engineer of the Year Ward. Arlene recommended reading "Men are from Mars" to understand gender differences on an intellectual basis. But to really get it, she said "if at all possible, go mentor males" to learn about gender and cultural differences.

Hayley McGuire was recipient of the 2008 Distinguished New engineer Award, and spoke of the time she was disappointed to be turned down for job rotation program. A mentor said "honey, create your own rotation program"... and did she! Hayley's career goal: " to accomplish that's not been done before, such as find a way to use nuclear propulsion to get us to Mars in half the time".