Disruption Interruption podcast host and veteran communications disruptor, Karla Jo Helms, interviews Janell Nelson, Senior Engineering Manager at Canon Medical Informatics — and learns that diversification in STEM occupations benefits both businesses and consumers, and its success relies on the choices of grade school children.
TAMPA BAY, Fla., Oct.18, 2022 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) occupations comprise 7% of all U.S. jobs and play a critical role in global competitiveness. However, even though women comprise nearly half of the active workforce, they only make up 27% of STEM workers.(1) That number drops closer to 15% when looking at engineering, depending on the type.(2) Meanwhile, women who forge careers in STEM are sometimes paid less for the same work, rarely see other women in leadership positions, and experience fewer opportunities for advancement than their male counterparts. (3) Enter disruptor Janell Nelson, Senior Engineering Manager at Canon Medical Informatics, explains to Karla Jo Helms, host of the Disruption Interruption podcast, that while engineering firms benefit from the varied perspectives that diversity brings, the applicant pool is primarily men.
Janell Nelson entered engineering with a passion for building solutions and found her natural understanding of the big picture made her an invaluable leader. She experienced workplaces that were diverse, as well as workplaces where she was one of the very few women. One day, when Janell was already an engineering manager with many successful projects under her belt, a new leader came on board. When she introduced herself, she handed her a credit card to order lunch for everyone. She said THAT'S IT — I'M DONE WITH THE STATUS QUO and became an advocate for women in STEM and in leadership roles. Seeing that the problem reached beyond hiring choices and into the applicant pool, Janell has become an active advocate for engineering and STEM programs at every level of education.
Janell explains:
- Being a woman in the STEM industry, particularly engineering, is especially challenging. There are not a lot of role models. In my 20-year career, I've only had one female leader in the engineering side above me.
- Approximately 22% of people in the engineering field are women, and only about 18% of new engineering graduates are women. It's hard to grow a diverse workforce and leadership team when there are just not many females out there with a background or an interest.
- Having leaders above you that look like you are important because they have experienced that path before you and can give you advice.
- In the larger sense, if you don't have diversity within your teams, including women, people of color, LGBTQ, and so on, then you lack diversity in thought patterns. It's hard to produce products for a global community with a narrow view of the world.
- We build software that takes the images from your CT machine or your MRI machine and puts that into the hands of your radiologists, where they can view 3D modeling of what's happening inside your body. However, if we're not considering the different body types, we're only going to build it for what we look like. In that case, we're not helping our entire patient base.
- On top of that, men and women look at the world differently. While there are always exceptions to the rule, women come in with some of those softer skills that help communicate and build bridges between teams. If you don't have people in your company and in the industry that do that, you get very siloed, and that is a detriment to all of us.
- Men, on the other hand, tend to go after opportunities more than women might. We don't teach young girls, in all cases, how to go against hardships and go after what they want.
- Without enough women applicants, we aren't interviewing as many, and they still have to prove themselves in that interview. We can't get diversity on our teams if people aren't applying, and if people have already self-selected, then we're never going to have the thought patterns that we want. We won't increase women in leadership roles.
- If you want to change something as fundamental as what people want to do for their careers, that has to be at a local level. You do that by going to schools, going to colleges, showing up at career fairs, and being that model that young women can emulate.
- Honestly, it starts at grade school because, by the time young women are moving into middle school, they've already selected out of this because their STEM program classes are all male and peer pressure in middle school pushes kids to conform rather than stand out. It takes a really passionate individual to handle any teasing you might get. We solve that problem by getting more girls into those classes.
- We started within an all-female program, and I saw firsthand the challenges of third, fourth, and fifth graders. Being there as an encouraging adult really helps some of them take to it. I see some of them that were struggling at the academic achievement award ceremonies. Because of their early success, they continue picking those science classes in middle school.
- If you show up, if you are there, you can make a difference.
Disruption Interruption is the podcast where you'll hear from today's biggest Industry Disruptors. Learn what motivated them to bring about change and how they overcome opposition to adoption.
Disruption Interruption can be listened to via the Podbean app, and is available on Apple's App Store and Google Play.
About Disruption Interruption:
Disruption is happening on an unprecedented scale, impacting all manner of industries — MedTech, Finance, IT, eCommerce, shipping and logistics, and more — and COVID has moved their timelines up a full decade or more. But WHO are these disruptors, and when did they say, "THAT'S IT! I'VE HAD IT!"? Time to Disrupt and Interrupt with host Karla Jo "KJ" Helms, veteran communications disruptor. KJ interviews bad a**es who are disrupting their industries and altering economic networks that have become antiquated with an establishment resistant to progress. She delves into uncovering secrets from industry rebels and quiet revolutionaries that uncover common traits — and not-so-common — that are changing our economic markets… and lives. Visit the world's key pioneers that persist to success, despite arrows in their backs at http://www.disruptioninterruption.com
About Karla Jo Helms:
Karla Jo Helms is the Chief Evangelist and Anti-PR(TM) Strategist for JOTO PR Disruptors(TM).
Karla Jo learned firsthand how unforgiving business can be when millions of dollars are on the line — and how the control of public opinion often determines whether one company is happily chosen or another is brutally rejected. Being an alumni of crisis management, Karla Jo has worked with litigation attorneys, private investigators, and the media to help restore companies of goodwill back into the good graces of public opinion — Karla Jo operates on the ethic of getting it right the first time, not relying on second chances and doing what it takes to excel. Helms speaks globally on public relations, how the PR industry itself has lost its way and how, in the right hands, corporations can harness the power of Anti-PR to drive markets and impact market perception.
About Janell Nelson:
Janell Nelson is a Senior Engineering Manager at Canon Medical Informatics. She is an experienced app development manager with a demonstrated history of working in Health Care and Insurance industries. She is proven in Team Building, Leadership, Requirements Analysis, Enterprise Software Delivery, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Agile, and DevOps Methodologies. Janell and her husband also own Method Grips, an indoor rock climbing supply store. You can find out more about Janell here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janell-nelson-6376794/
References:
1) Martinez, Anthony; Christnacht, Cheridan. "Women Are Nearly Half of U.S. Workforce but Only 27% of STEM Workers." January 26, 2021. Census.gov, census.gov/library/stories/2021/01/women-making-gains-in-stem-occupations-but-still-underrepresented.html
2) SWE. "Employment of Women in Engineering." Society of Women Engineers, 2022, swe.org/research/2022/employment/
3) AWIS. "Transforming STEM Leadership Culture 2019 AWIS Membership Report." 2021 Association for Women in Science, 2019, awis.org/leadership-report/
Media Contact
Karla Jo Helms, JOTO PR™, 727-777-4621, [email protected]
SOURCE JOTO PR™
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