Realists, you will be powerless to the inspiration

This year for Design World ’s annual Diversity issue, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to interview three women whose stories have touched my heart.

A bit of a confession here: While I recognize the immense value, I’ve never quite been able to feel emotionally connected to any initiatives to promote women in engineering. I’ve always resorted to a mildly disingenuous politeness to respond to people who’ve happened to notice I’m indeed a female engineer and expected me to be very passionate about gender equality in our field. Maybe it’s because I had a bit of a kooky childhood, and my dad (especially where math and science were concerned) treated me more like a small gender-generic human than a girl who might not be interested or capable in such fields. I honestly don’t know.

In college, I did join the Society of Women Engineers, but more for the pizza parties and camaraderie.

Sometimes, I think about how it’s statistically unusual that my aunt on my father’s side (my Aunt Karen Knopf at Rockwell) is an engineer, as are my first cousins Heather Busse and Stefanie Knopf . All four of us also share a good-natured sardonic wit and other traits. Was the interest in engineering simply baked into my genes?

Certainly, nobody ever promoted engineering or really any other field of study to me as an option.

I settled on mechanical engineering after marching down to the career-services office at Cleveland State , our local cost-effective university for budding realists. I asked to flip through binders of dot-matrix-printed data detailing which four-year degrees paid the least and most. With a calculating eye and pragmatic finger, I traced down the juiciest page until I found the biggest numbers. Business didn’t suit me —?after all, I started college as an art major with purple hair — so engineering it was. To prove how old I am, at the time, a newly-minted engineer could expect to make $42,000 per year as a starting salary. This was good money.

So, imagine my surprise this year when I was assigned to profile three women for the Design World Engineering Diversity & Inclusion issue, and I found myself extremely inspired by all three of their stories.

I ask that you please read my interviews with Fiona Miller , Christine King , and Alicia Gilpin Mu?oz (Ali G) on engineering.com — especially if you are normally unmoved by leadership biographies and inspirational narratives.

These three very different women are exceptional people who share a relentless determination and nonchalantly plucky spirit that have benefitted and advanced our field, society, me, and maybe you.

— Lisa Eitel ? linkedin.com/in/elisabetheitel