How to become a Future Engineer

This morning, on this International Women's Day - I had the excitement, stress, and joy to present for 15 mins on "How to Become a Future Engineer" to my daughter's first grade class at St. Joseph School in Seattle, WA. For any parent that is wanting to have a fun moment with their kids on future careers, or how to make engineering "fun and cool" - please leverage the presentation link below. The content is fun, simple, and will take less than 10 mins to go through with your children.

https://tinyurl.com/SJSengineers

https://tinyurl.com/SJSengineers

My goal with this presentation, in order, was to make my daughter proud, to inspire kids to think about their future, to have kids go home and talk to their parents about what interests them. And last but not least - to inspire hopefully a few girls in the class to know that engineering is not "just for boys" and they can do anything that they want in life - especially something as fun, cool, and creative as "engineering".

My 6 year old daughter was excited to bring her Dad to school today. In more ways than one. But in the week leading up to my presentation, as I was stressing out about the content and asking her on what I should share... she brought up to me that "most people think boys are engineers". I kept telling her "girls are engineers, you know that, right? You know that right?". She knows that girls can be engineers, and she said that to me "I know... Daddy. I know." But... there is something wired into our society or social norms that is messaging to my daughter that there are limitations on what she can do in life.

I want to change that. Thus, my secret mission to present today at my daugher's school.

There are many many women that have guided and mentored me in my life and career. Most of the best Engineers, Lead Engineers, Technical Fellows, or Chief Engineers, Directors, Vice Presidents that I've worked with in my 19+ years at Boeing have been women, especially in my current function and space within the company. I am lucky to have this kind of guidance and perspective given to me (through diversity) in my career at Boeing. I am hoping little girls in my community can learn about that kind of future and opportunity ahead of them.

This is not a paid sponsorship - but I wanted to thank a few organizations that are being proactive, leaning forward, innovating, and helping to make moments like mine today, at my daughter's school, possible... and helping to change the world for the better.

1) St Joseph School, Seattle, WA: https://www.stjosephsea.org/

Thank you for letting parents get involved and share their careers to young students. It's really important for communities to help young children be their best, be inspired, and reach their full potential. There are a lot of great parents, women and men, with awesome careers that have shared their experiences over the last several weeks to the class. Thank you to them too.

2) The Boeing Company: https://www.boeing.com/

Thank you to our communications team for the time lapse video of a 787 being assembled in our factory. The cool video, upbeat music, and content helped inspire 45+ 1st graders today on what is possible. And it helped one Dad be able to explain "that's what I do" to a group of children in my community.

3) NORWEGIAN AIR UK LIMITED - https://www.norwegian.com/

Thank you for letting us film your 787 getting built in our Boeing production system. One of the 1st grade students asked me "what is that airplane doing today?". I said... "Probably flying somewhere in the world to connect friends and family." They loved your exterior livery too.

4) 微软 Sway: https://sway.com/

This incredible storytelling software was much better than PowerPoint and helped make my message much more engaging to a group of young students. I hope this becomes a standard offering for MS 365 within Boeing for our internal stories that we need to communicate. Microsoft - Thanks for innovating on tools that help us create simple stories.

5) Microsoft Designer - https://designer.microsoft.com

The ability to prompt a tool to "create an image of a girl and boy in a lab testing things. Make it cool. Make it fun. Use the color purple."

Or "show me a girl on a computer designing airplanes" made designing this presentation with images very cool.

And it saved me a bunch of time. And it made a huge impact. My daughter's eyes lit up and she smiled ear to ear when she first saw a young girl using a computer in my pitch. That was exactly the result that I wanted. Thank you.

6) Lifeprint Photos https://lifeprintphotos.com/

Every 1st grade student today went home with a 3 x 4 "badge" that had their photo, name, "Future Engineer" and a Boeing logo. Your simple printer made that possible. I was able to design and print from my phone (for those of you that know me, that is very important), and have my young daughter and son be part of the process for printing the images during the week.

It was fun, simple, and engaging. I hope that there are a few students today putting their "Future Engineer" badge on their parent's fridge tonight, with your sticky back printer paper. Thanks for making that moment easy.

Thanks everyone for reading this. If you want any help inspiring your little girl or boy to pursue engineering - just reach out and let me know how I can help.