Last month, DMC attended WE22, the "world’s largest conference for women in engineering and technology," hosted by the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). The two-day conference featured career fairs, networking opportunities, keynotes, and educational seminars for women in STEM.
First Impressions
It was the first time at the conference for most of DMC's four attendees and DMC's first time attending as a company. Everyone was excited for the opportunity to connect with more women in engineering and expand the DMC talent pool.
Cecilia Tetlow, Project Engineer at DMC's Houston office, was a first time conference attendee.
"I thought, this is going to be a great opportunity for DMC to reach out and increase our diversity," Tetlow said. "It was exciting to show up and see that many female engineers and engineers in general supporting each other at the conference."
Jason Mayes, Senior Director of DMC’s South Region, is no stranger to gender disparity in the tech industry.
"I sit on the Industry Advisory Board at Notre Dame and diversity is a constant challenge we discuss each year. Engineering has been a male dominated industry for a long time so it was exciting to see so many talented engineers at WE22 and know that the gap is narrowing."
The annual conference boasts companies, engineers, and universities from all over the country.
"Once you actually go in to the conference area and you see all the different booths and [...] big names that are showing up like Apple and Siemens and Tesla, [...] its really exciting,” Tetlow said.
Mayes was also glad to see the variety of exhibitors at the conference.
"So many great tech companies from across the country are all here for one reason: to find the best engineers and their future leaders."
Making Connections
DMC got the opportunity to connect with many students, engineers and organizations during the conference.
Caroline Courbois, systems engineer at DMC's Houston office, attended SWE for the first time outside of college.
“It was cool to meet so many other women engineers," Courbois said. "A lot of them were college students, so we were talking about their studies, their experiences in their programs, and their accomplishments. A lot of people, who were not neccssarily looking for jobs, [...] would come by and ask about our Tilt Table and then talk about their own work and careers as a woman in engineering."
Natalie Pippolo, systems engineer at DMC Houston, also enjoyed the welcoming atmosphere.
"Even when I was still setting up the table, people would come up and chat with me. It was cool to see all of these booths from big companies just full of women," Pippolo said. "You get to see all of the women who work at all of these big, male-dominated companies."
In addition to making new connections, Tetlow and Courbois got to reconnect with some friends from their undergraduate programs: which was really fun, according to Courbois.
WE22 was also a great opportunity to connect with some of DMC's partners and clients.
"It was really cool to see a lot of companies who are also our clients doing recruiting there and interact with a few," Courbois said.
Pippolo also had the opportunity to connect with some familiar organizations.
"We were right next to the Siemens booth, so I got to talk to some people who knew about DMC at Siemens," Pippolo said.
DMC’S Tilt Table Demo
DMC was excited to share the Tilt Table Demo with WE22 attendees.
"We were getting a lot of attention for it from people who were interested in DMC and those who had never heard of DMC," Tetlow said. "That was definitely a lot of fun just explaining how the ball demo works and how it relates to what we do at DMC."
"It was fun to get to share that with some other companies," Mayes agreed.
Conference Takeaways
DMC is grateful to have had the opportunity to connect with the many talented women in the engineering and technology community.
"It was a great opportunity to get exposed to a lot of great candidates that we don’t typically get to make impressions on [...]," Mayes said. "It was great to be a part of it, [and] it was fantastic to meet a lot of really talented engineers. Hopefully we can widen our candidate pool and find an even better cross section of engineers."
Tetlow also noted the significance of attending WE22.
"Hopefully people who read this blog will see that DMC cares about diversity and supporting women and gender minorities in engineering," Tetlow said. "I think its good that DMC is being involved in this space, with the added benefit that it will help us to recruit more smart people."
Upcoming SWE Chapter Events
DMC is a proud sponsor of the SWE chapters at University of Notre Dame and Rice University. We look forward to connecting with SWE members at future events!
Learn more about DMC's commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.