Technical Recruiting and Career Coaching is an encore career for me. I’m a Chemical Engineer and have 25+ years of experience working in the chemical, polymer & thermoplastics industry in various engineering and technology leadership roles. Throughout my career, I have been very passionate about developing the next generation of leaders. Now, as a Recruiter and Career Coach, I would be honored to help you explore your next career move.

What was the most exciting job that you held during your industry experience?

By far, the most exciting as well as challenging experience was when I was the Site & Operations Manager of the company’s India Technology Center. My husband and I lived in Bangalore, India for 2 ½ years. We both love to travel and enjoyed the opportunity to explore India as well as see other parts of Asia. We found the India people to be very inviting and personable. It was, however, a real challenge. Every aspect of living and running a technology center required an adjustment – from how you get around (we had a private driver), to buying food (we enjoyed having fresh breads / croissants delivered everyday), to constant power & internet interruptions.

How have you seen the industry change for women in engineering?

When I started working, in 1979, I was part of a group of 5 women that were hired into the engineering department of a Fortune 500 company. However, given the size of the organization, women were not well represented; I think there were only 4 other women engineers on the entire headquarter campus. There were NO experienced women engineers that we could look up to as mentors. Companies are hiring more women and there are more women today entering many STEM fields, but have only reached 30% of the STEM workforce. Personally, I have made an effort to mentor other young women and strongly believe that mentoring can play an important part of inspiring others to be success as an engineer.

What inspired you to pursue your profession?

When I left industry, I found that the part of my former career that I missed was being involved in developing employees. I was involved in conducting interviews, hiring top talent, mentoring personnel, identifying training/development opportunities for employees, and building high-performance teams. In post-retirement, I started informally coaching people that were searching for a new job. I also found that people were seeking me out to ask questions when they were struggling with a work situation. Eventually from the urging of many people, I decided to pursue Recruiting and Career Coaching as an ‘encore’ career.

What do you do for fun?

A new interest of mine is to develop my ‘artistic’ side. At the risk of finding out that I have no artistic side, I have tried many things. I enjoyed tap dance lessons and tried a few painting classes (not my best work). I plan to learn embroidery and hope to relearn the piano (I played for many years). My favorite artistic outlet so far has been cross stitch; I made a beautiful Christmas stocking for my grandson.