"My Contributions Matter"
Mercedes is a hardware engineer hardwired for outcomes. As an early career professional, she admits that she sometimes lacks confidence in her contributions – and her colleagues have been helping her to find her voice.
“My team encourages me to share more freely in the moment, without hesitating to think about how something might be received,” Mercedes said. “No one expects perfection and no one expects that everyone will agree, all of the time. That’s not why they hired me.”
When it was obvious that Mercedes had input yet was not confident enough to share, another engineer asked her directly to share what she thought. It was a lifechanging moment.
“I didn’t even realize I was nodding and smiling even though I had a differing opinion,” Mercedes said. “That’s when I started to gain more confidence and could see that my contributions matter. My team is pushing me because they want to see me learn and grow.”
Two-way Street
Mercedes, who works with people with 30-plus years of experience, credits the group with teaching her everything she knows about real-life hardware engineering and new product development circuit design.
“I would not be the engineer I am without experienced people sharing everything they know,” said Mercedes. “As a younger professional I am helping them adapt to advances in technology that allow us to collaborate online and remotely. The pandemic has been an incredibly challenging time for people, and I like to think that I’ve made it easier for people who are accustomed to seeing their colleagues in person every day. We aren’t losing that personal touch and we aren’t hampered by distance.”
A Culture of Inclusion
“My favorite thing about this company is how supportive people are in raising others up,” she said. “I joined the Culture of Inclusion team and the Rockwell Automation Supporting Women in Engineering (RASWE) employee resource group, because I care about our culture. I know how it has helped me and now I want to help other young engineers.”
This work is receiving recognition, as Rockwell Automation just earned the Diversity & Inclusion Program Award from The Society of Women Engineers (SWE).
“As a company we have come so far with engineering and diversity and there’s still work to do,” Mercedes said. “I look forward to the day when we no longer need to discuss the mix of engineers on a project because diversity will be our natural state.”
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