wom(EN)gineer

We officially launched wom(EN)gineer one year ago on June 23, 2022, (which happens to be International Women in Engineering Day – no coincidence here!). This year, to recognize the annual celebration of women in our field as well as our blog’s anniversary, we are reflecting on the success of our blog and a host of other accomplishments during the past twelve months. 

Our initial intention was to create a blog that highlights the experiences and expertise of Altieri’s women engineers and discusses a range of topics relevant to women in the a/e/c industry. We quickly realized that the blog should be accompanied by the creation of our own internal resource group, Women in Engineering (WIE). By taking these actionable steps, we aimed to spotlight the valuable contributions women make in the field and underscore our commitment to gender diversity industry-wide and in our workplace. We hoped that a range of compelling content would also inspire more women to explore careers in the industry.

Our WIE meetings have strengthened the collective identity of our own women engineers who are valuable sources of unlimited ideas, creativity, and problem-solving. We meet monthly over lunch to share experiences, host guest presenters, and generally support and mentor each other. In 2023, we developed specific goals designed to further raise our voices in the industry. Each of us has identified an outreach initiative to complete this year. Initiatives include participating in a career fair, presenting at a school, or finding a women’s group to get involved in. We committed to attending more women-focused conferences, connecting with more schools (with a focus on high schools), and working to increase our blog community. 

Over the course of the year, we attended 3 women-focused conferences and participated in 3 career fairs, welcomed 3 new full-time staff members to our group along with 5 summer interns, hosted a fundraiser benefiting the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), and presented at 4 middle and high schools. We also added guest presenters to our agenda. Our first speaker was a woman forensic engineer, the daughter of one of our WIE group. We learned about her career and her firm’s women support group. As word has gotten out, even our male coworkers have jumped on board. Joe brought us an article about Jamila Lindon and her book Girls Can Be Engineers. We immediately connected with Jamila, and she became one of our first guest bloggers!

As for wom(EN)gineer, we are happy to report that the blog has already generated a terrific following. Blog posts have included introductions to Altieri staff, book reviews, celebrations of our scholarship winners, and our favorite development: the stories and perspectives of guest bloggers! As of today, we have had 5 guest blogs written for wom(EN)gineer, with more scheduled through the year! 

As we reflect on a very productive year, we are proud of what this group is achieving. We hope you continue to follow us on our journey and join our community. We want to have more conversations with you and get more women… and men involved. Please subscribe, reach out to us to share your stories, and tell others about us!