March 14, 2025 • 30 mins
In this She Builds Nation special episode, Michele Heyward, founder and CEO of PositiveHire, shares her journey from being a civil engineer to creating more inclusive workplaces for women of color in STEM. Michele discusses her experiences as the only black woman on job sites during her 12-year career in construction, highlighting the challenges she faced and the lack of diversity in the industry. She emphasizes the importance of moving beyond surface-level diversity efforts by focusing on cultural change within organizations. Michele also provides insights on how women of color in STEM can advocate for themselves, such as leveraging Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) and finding sponsors who can support career advancement. Her mission with Positive Hire is to address these systemic issues and foster more equitable environments in STEM fields.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, i'mlu Perez, your host of The Builder Upper Show,
a podcast where we talk about everything in construction and trades.
We have a special co host today, Jennifer Hires, who
will be interviewing women in Construction for Women in Construction Week.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hey Jen, how are you doing? Hi, lud, Thanks for
having me.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Who is your special guest today?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
All right, welcome to the show. Today we have an
incredible guest I owned welcome Michelle Hayward, an engineer, entrepreneur,
and absolute powerhouse in bridging the gap between tech leadership
and diversity. So as the founder and CEO of Positive Hire,
Michelle is on a mission to create more inclusive workplaces
(00:49):
for women of color and stem and with her background
in civil engineering and her passion for equitable career opportunities,
she really brings that wealth of knowledge and insight into
today's conversation. So just get ready for an engaging discussion
on leadership, career growth, and the future of diverse workplaces. Michelle,
(01:11):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Thank you for having me. Jennifer.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Yeah, absolutely, let's just jump right into it. I want
to first off and like background and journey, so can
you share with our listeners your journey from being a
civil engineer to founding Positive Hire.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
See where do we start? So I will start with
selecting civil engineering in undergrad When you come into at
least Clemson University, which is a public, great engineering program
here in the state of South Carolina. You're a freshman engineer,
don't You can't declare a specific type of engineering, but
(01:51):
they have you go visit different engineering buildings as part
of at Least Back then in the nineteen hundreds, you
would do a on of a campus tour in the
evening and go visit the different engineering buildings that you
were interesting and majoring in. And I visited the civil
engineering building and they did it a hurricane demonstration. And
(02:12):
this was literally six years after Hurricane Hugo, which is
a Category five hurricane, had hit the state of South Carolina.
And that demonstration of a plexiglass house and pepto bismal
with a huge floor fan convinced me I should become
a civil engineer so I could help people design and
(02:33):
build structures that didn't fall apart or get damaged during
a hurricane. That's not what I did, but at the
time that was what interests me and why I declared
a major in civil engineering, finished Clemson undergrad as the
class of two thousand and On our hats, we spelled out,
if we build it, they will come. That's not how
(02:55):
it work. We built it when they pay us, now come.
But look, if you know the movie Feel the Dreams,
that's you know, that's what they If you build it,
they will come from there. I eventually ended up in construction.
I did a few stops, you know, I worked in
technology transfer, went to grad school, did an apprenticeship and
(03:17):
technology transfer. It was interesting, but it wasn't what I
do and now be on the tech side. It's funny
because I did that in two thousand and two, two
thousand and three. Then I did technical sales working for
Eaton in their electrical division. So I was still selling
into construction. And at the time, you know, somebody called like,
(03:38):
we're building such and such and we need this piece
of equipment. I'm like, oh, what are you building? Like, oh,
you need this for your panel. You're going to hardwire it.
And it's like, oh, yeah, we do. And they're like,
what do you like, I'm a sales engineer, and so
we would you know, as a whole group of us
like fourteen engineers fresh out of college. And so this
young person like, they don't know anything about what I do.
(04:00):
And we were like, oh, it's a hard why are
you got a two forty vote? And so we've been
talking talking to but they also make an assumption to
probably because I was a woman. So I hated that job.
Can I just say how much I hated that job?
And so I remember being at the nech Sided Black
(04:20):
Engineers National Convention in two thousand and six running into
one of my classmates from undergrad and she goes, hey,
you should come check out out the booth for the
company I work for. Well, it happened to be a
construction company. I ended up working for that company for
over twelve years. I started out in their their what
(04:41):
they call their power I'll say, a business unit. And
from there I went start out in fossil fuel retrofit
for a fossil fuel power plant to improve clean air
admissions in western Pennsylvania. We were right outside of Pittsburgh.
And then I switched over into transmission distribution. So transmission
(05:02):
lines out in the middle of farms, cattle ranches, out
in places nobody will go unless you own the land.
And did that and then eventually I left and started
Positive Hire in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Wow, that's incredible And we're going to get more into
Positive Higher as this podcast goes on.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
But let's talk again.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
I want to kind of focus on really like what
inspired you to really focus on pretty more inclusive workplaces
for women of color and stem because you had mentioned,
you know, when you were at that job that because
you were a woman, you know, did they really trust
of what you were saying? So was that part of it?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Positive Hire came about from my experience in the workplace,
and most of my career experience had been at that
point in construction. And when I say construction, I worked
for one of the largest engineering construction companies in the
world or aec Artica engineer construction in the world. For
(06:11):
twelve years, I was still the only black woman on
the job site. And so I traveled and so we
went from twenty five thousand, we got acquired, we went
to fifty thousand, we got acquired again to about eighty
to ninety thousand, So in twelve years, I was only
black woman. And I will explain it this way. I
traveled the US. If there are thirty days in a month.
(06:33):
I was only home five so I was on a
taxable per diem most of that career. Half of my
career had a company vehicle, always had a corporate card,
so my expenses were paid for the most part. But
in that time I was working on capital projects, so
(06:57):
half a billion dollars to one point five billion dollar
from the client side, there were no black women engineers.
Those are the utility companies that I interfaced with. There were,
we hired civil engineering contractors, we hired electrical contractors. Still
(07:17):
no black women that I engaged with, usually very few women.
Towards the end of my time in the industry, I
worked with one woman engineer directly that was on the
job site. She was senior to me. Another woman she
worked in materials. We worked together on two projects. Then
(07:38):
I had a document controls person that I worked with
when I was in Pittsburgh, so I could name roles,
but literally any women engineers one but no women of
color at all on the job site. They might have
been in the office and one of the clients. Their
environmental engineers were women, but not like electrical design engineers
(08:03):
that I had to interface that I interfaced with, which
was a good bit of them. Did I encounter any
women except for one. Again, they were environmental engineers when
I was a project in Pittsburgh, so it was very
few women, but I was always the one black woman.
And then we did have women of color engineers in
(08:26):
our home office and I reported in New Jersey, but
they either quit or were laid off, the vast majority
of them. So I started to remember two thousand and six.
If you've been a while around for a while, you know,
we had that housing crash the economy really had. And
so through that having conversations around twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen,
(08:52):
twenty sixteen, I wasn't happy where I was in my career,
so reaching out to college mentors, other black women and
Latinas in my network, and I was doing career wise
better than ninety five percent of them, and I was like, oka,
something's wrong. I knew the executives in the company, and
(09:16):
I was on the job site. I knew how I
was perceived. I had a spots in an organization, and
they were getting pushed out of technical work. They were
getting tracked out of the things they wanted to do
that they were really good at. They were not getting
very good performance reviews, getting laid off on maternity leave.
(09:39):
They were going through so many different issues in the
workplace that I was like, it's not even good where
I am, but there sounds way worse than me, and
what was it? And so in twenty sixteen, I decided
to host a virtual summit right on the Tale of
(10:01):
right as they were announcing the release of the movie
Hidden Figures. So it was like, this is perfect. And
I look at the movie Hidden Figures, and it's the
nineteen fifties, sixties, and I'm like, these are the same
things we're encountering today, except heaven walk a mile to
the bathroom. And so in the movie, they couldn't use
(10:24):
the women. Black women couldn't use the bathroom, and the
building was whites only, so they literally had to go
to a different part of the facility, walk out of
the building they worked in, and go to a different
building and used the bathroom. And so it was really
really interest Yeah, and it could be like that on
job fights, just so you know, because it is very,
very difficult to get a women's portagoon on construction site.
(10:45):
Some of you are probably listening to me and going,
oh my god, is it because like well it was
only one woman. Why does she need her own portagon?
Oh no, yeah, it's so that's why I started positive higher.
So let's talk talk about you know that experience.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
So how can companies move beyond like surface level diversity
efforts to truly like creating this inclusive environment.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
It starts with your culture, right, and some people like,
how do we know what our culture is? How do
we figure it out? Right? Now? There's such a big
push around data oftentimes, what I start to tell leaders,
especially in engineering design firms and those that have engineering construction,
(11:37):
we don't get a lot of women. Like, let's talk
about your culture first. What is your cultural message? What
does it say when you say we want women but
you don't have clothing or any gear for women? Well,
we don't have that many, so you buy none. So
we have to figure out where to get our own
heart has, our own boots, our own shirts, our own hands,
(12:00):
and so we're spending more time doing all of these
things you're supposed to take care of because it's only
one person. That's our size, our height, whatever, And so
you're like, well, that's just why do it? It's only
one Because I matter? I am a person, right, and
so you have to show that even if it's one person,
(12:22):
just know you have it available in there, don't push
it to the back, dust it off every quarter maybe,
and you can utilize it for your interns because you're
probably not targeting women to come through to be internships.
So we really talk about how do you show up
to the women in your organization, to the women of
color in your organization. So look at your data, like
(12:43):
who's getting promotions, Let's review their performance reviews, our performance reviews.
When you look at it statistically speaking, not any client information,
but statistically speaking, when we look and analyze the perform
rich reviews of black women, there are usually rate have
(13:05):
lord ratings, and the feedback is not anything actionable. The
feedback is also around behavior, and it could be tone
of voice, how your facial expression. It could be how
you write messages or emails. It is really about personality
(13:27):
and people's perceptions of personality opposed to the quality of
your work. Oh that's interesting, and so it's like, so,
how now are you going to measure me if I'm smiling? Oh, well,
you were smiling too much? Yeah, and so when you
when you're a doramat, well, now you're too aggressive. Yeah,
(13:47):
so you told me to stand up for myself and
to speak up, but I spoke up too, And so
we ask to pull some of these things because now
I want you to see what's going on across and
do something. Compare an analysis with some of that information.
It's like, well, we thinking you're taking in a different way.
I said, well, if I'm taking it this way, how
(14:09):
do you think your employee is And they're here five
days a week, eight hours or more a day. Yeah,
and so if you're if you're willing to write this
to them, what are you saying to that employee? What
types of work are you giving that employee? And so
when you utilize performance reviews to determine project assignments and promotions,
(14:36):
now you're going to see a huge gap of who
gets promoted. And you're going to see a lore instances
of diversity and your candidate pools for your talent, for
your high performing talent, and your leaders and your organization.
And I was like, so we look at root cause analysis.
(14:56):
They're like, hey, we want to diversify, Like, well, what
is it? And oftentimes people want us to start with recruitment,
and it's like recruitment is nice, but all you're going
to do is churn everybody out. Yeah, yeah, to start
with recruitment. Why because that's where they put money in.
Nobody wants to talk culture. Culture takes time to change.
It literally takes a commitment and it takes them changing
(15:21):
three things, their practices, their policies, and procedures because they're
not in alignment. And what I mean by that is
they will tell me how they do promotions and I'll
say great that they'll give me an hr handbook of
this is how we do promotions. I will go talk
(15:42):
to five managers. All five will have a different way
that they go through and decide who gets a promotion.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
So how can like women of CULDAR and STEM advocate
for themselves in the workplace?
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Son A couple of things I recommend in this moment.
You may or may no longer have an ERG. If
you have an ERG and that ERG is well put together, organized,
and you have a sponsor, an executive sponsor, they can
help you navigate and advocate for you in the workspace.
(16:14):
And what I mean by ergs some organizations literally use
their ergs to help fill pipeline to their leadership development programs.
They're like, hey, send us three to five candidates that
a manager has not recognized or recommended to a program.
They're going to the different ergs and asking them to
(16:37):
recommend their members and they have a process and they're
able now to diversify their talent pool because they're using
different measures and metrics other than just a manager, right,
who may be made bias. Right. Yeah. The other is sponsors,
whether it's a sponsor through or ERG, but literally getting
(16:58):
a sponsor in that organaceization for them. And we talked
last week. We had our annual Women of Color sem
Virtual Summit and we had a conversation about sponsors. I like,
mentors are nice and cute. A sponsor will change the
direction of your career. That sponsor may not have a
deep relationship with you necessarily, but I reck they build
(17:20):
one with their sponsor. And that's a sponsor is someone
who sees your ability, your potential, not necessarily has proof
that you're able to do it, but they see the
potential that you have. They're able to remove barriers so
that you can get on better projects, you can get
better assignments. They can move you from a problematic manager
(17:43):
and it does not hurt that person personally, their credibility,
and it oftentimes puts them on a track upward in
the organization. And so what we often see is women
of color don't get tracked for leadership development training. So
you training on software, they won't get included in the training.
(18:07):
And I lost a really great engineer, a young black man,
years ago because his director of engineering would not put
him in a training and he was the only one
in his group of design engineers that was working on
a transmission distribution project with me. They bought the training
into our organization, into his home office, and he was
(18:28):
the only one that seam not invited. He went an
asked and he told him he didn't need it. I
could tell them he did need it because I was
spending time training him. So they I was spending the
client's time training somebody, and you were spending thousands of
dollars and could have had him trained in the office.
So those are some of the things organizations can do,
(18:49):
Michelle had to tell you.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
So I have done four recordings for the women in
construction week and there is one common thing, well many
common things, but one that everybody is bringing up is
that having that sponsor what is the difference between mentorship
and sponsor and let's focus more on sponsorship. So without
me even prompting a question about it, you organically brought
(19:14):
it up. So it's it's definitely something again that common theme.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
That we're going to be hearing.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
So was talking about like emerging trends, right, So, are
there any emerging trends in hiring or workplace culture that
are exciting you at the moment right now?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
What is I would say in this industry? Yes, in
other industries as old, it's been done before, it has
been proven, and that's having more leadership development programs. Okay,
this industry is really hard and difficult when it comes
to technology, especially on the construction side, but utalizing technology
(19:59):
to be are understand where their talent is and what
skills their talent has. So that's been really exciting. Also
seeing how we're using AR and VR, that really excites
me from the field perspective, even though I was civil,
I wasn't on the design side, but being able to
see when the walls go up, where the cable the
(20:21):
electrical race trade is to the piping, what's budding into
each other? Is it like that's a four foot clearance.
Who's four feet Michelle? Can you walk on there? Like
I'm five foot one, I walk right, And we know
to go back to the design engineers, like, hey, we
set this up and I'm used to the days where
you can only look at it on a computer. But
(20:43):
now before the engineer sends it to the field, you
need to walk through what y'all designed, and you need
to figure out between mechanical, piping, electrical, and structural where
all of this stuff needs to be moved to. And
usually structural wins like I'm not moving that structural being
a column. Electrical and mechanical. Usually you have to have
to give give some some leeway. So yeah, like, yeah,
(21:07):
I'm part of the of what we're seeing in this
space right now. As far construction drones and stuff, they're okay.
They save a lot of money in that we don't
have to send helicopters or people trying to walk. I
come out of transmission distribution. We I spent hours just driving.
I wasn't working. I was just driving. And sometimes you
(21:30):
have to drive and other times it was like a
drone would have been nice to have to fly and
check on a crew like I. They're not doing that
right now, let me go draw these three hours. But sure, sure,
So I'm not as excited about drones as I am
some of the ar VR, but the drones, the drones
have been very, very helpful in scouting and picking up data,
(21:52):
taking shots of different parts and phases of projects, especially
to show progress or we have shoes. They're able to
pick that up a whole lot quicker sometimes in humans.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
That's exciting now exciting times. I want to hear more
about positive hire. So what has been the most forwarding
part of positive hire?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
The rewarding part is when I talk to whether it's
the women of color, and they like, I found a
place a company that sees me, appreciates my knowledge, skills
and abilities, and I'm at the level in the organization
that should be and that I want to be. Not
(22:39):
everybody wants to lead people. They truly want a technical
role and not lead people. And that's and I always
advocate for that, like go the route you want to go.
But when I see these emails after we've had a
had a career strategy conversation and like four months later,
like hey, that organization that wouldn't give me a promotion,
I left them and I'm over at this organization and
(23:02):
now I'm a director where I was an engineer for
for twelve years, right, And so those emails really excite me.
And then also when I talked to leaders in engineering
design firms that go, you're we made the changes, you said,
we changed our marketing, We changed where we go to
(23:25):
talk to college students. And not even like universities, they
don't just talk to the ASCAS m ME ILE student chapters.
They go to the SUEZE and the nasby the Nation
Society of Black Engineer Society is Society, Hispanic Professional Engineer
Society and Women Engineers chapters. Like we've we've diversified our
(23:48):
internship pool. Like really, so you went to the same university.
You just spent three different trips, which was minimal amount
of money to diversify your talent pool. You you bought pizza,
you paid for parking, you pay for fuel. How much
was your marketing? But there is like damn near zero
(24:10):
in comparison, right, And so what I what I explained
to them, especially for the construction side, is you have
to show up to the students. They don't know these
small companies, midside companies names they don't know exactly what
you do as an electrical engineer. But if you bring
them some pizza or some food, yeah right, and collect
(24:35):
resumes are tell them where to go to apply to
be sure that you know, put in this code so
we know where you saw us, as opposed to showing
up at a career fair where you're competing with ninety
nine or more other companies at this because they're they're like, yeah,
floor has such a long line and Turner has such
they know who they are, their brands are huge. You
(24:57):
don't have the same. You have to strategize, and so
literally just talking to them differently, and then them said
coming to me and say, hey, well, how do we
get mid career women? And so we have an honest conversation.
What I mean by that when we look at just
the engineering data for women, thirty percent about thirty percent
(25:18):
of women engineers lead between zero and ten years into
their careers. Thirty percent. That's high, right, that's a lot. Yeah,
nearly forty percent of women engineers lead between ten and
twenty years. Wow. And so I go, let's talk about
(25:38):
the women You've had engineers in your organization that have left.
It's like, no, no, we want to talk about the women.
We want to I know, but we need to talk
about what why did the women that were here left?
Because they're leaving the industry, you may not be able
to find very many, if any, because you're not set
(26:00):
up to retain them, much less attract them. And so
we have conversations about what level that they may no
longer be in the industry because everybody's looking for this
mid career women. Seventy percent of us are gone. I
can year two thousand. I left the industry after seventeen years. Yeah,
there were one of them.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Yeah, absolutely, So then what one piece of advice would
you give for navigating their careers?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
So for the women leave sooner or later, like the
first time you were turned over for a promotion, for
specific feedback, if they give you the thief to keep
working hard, like start looking for a new job, it's like, which,
I said, how so you weren't working hard for the
previous promotion? It was like, well, yeah I was. I said,
(26:50):
So how are they going to measure that you were
continuing to work hard if that's all you had to
do for the first one? I said, go ahead, I said,
And I literally cannot tell you. How many women have
come to me and said when they resigned, they said, oh,
we'll give you more money to stay, but they still
wouldn't give them a promotion. They're like, I said, they
(27:14):
told you, right, They've been telling you for years. I said,
sooner than later, you need to leave. And then the
other thing I tell them, when you look at a
job description, you only need to know how to do
thirty to forty percent of the job description. They're shocked.
It's like, why, I said, number one, if it's eighty
t one hundred percent, you're gonna be bored. You already
know how to do that job.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
True, Yeah, that ain't can apply to anybody.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Yeah, exactly, I said thirty to forty percent. I said,
everyone gives your room to grow. I said, but in actuality,
most of those jobs are made up because of the
person you're replacing. Was a woman. She'd probably been there
for so long. She was doing five jobs in one
and being under it. That is not one one role.
(28:03):
And I remember being a recruiter reaching out to me
when I just left the industry and emailed over the
job description. I said, this is three jobs in one.
I said, and you're only paying for one. I said,
let me get this job. This position has been opened
more longer than a year. And they said, yeah, how'd
you know, I said, because it's nobody but that's crazy
enough to take this except maybe a retired person. I said,
try a retired person, but anybody that knows this industry.
(28:26):
It was like a project engineer, project manager, and a
construction manager role and they wanted to pay one hundred
and ten thousand dollars. This is how bad it was.
I said, So when you read job descriptions, read them
and like, that's not what this level person does, is it? Senior?
Doesn't match the salary, And I said, so we talk
(28:50):
about deconstructing job descriptions as well and really being able
to match. That goes up to quantify and qualify with
or not they want to apply, or if this is
a place they even want to work. Because the company
that had those three jobs rolled into company I never
(29:10):
want to work for ever.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Now, that is a great piece of advice. You know,
if it's women, if it's anybody, diversity and as well
as you know, anybody can apply those same rules. Michelle,
it's been absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
How can people find you the quickest easiest way is
to find me over on LinkedIn. Everybody, really, yes, just
send me a connection request. You got to press the
little three dots on my profile. Send connection requests. Let
me know that you found me on the Builder Upper show,
so I'll be able to say, hey, I know what
you've got, so I'll be able to tell Jennifer like
(29:50):
your podcast working. I got a connection request over on LinkedIn.
I love that.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
And we're also going to put a survey in the comments,
so make sure you go out and fill out that survey.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
That's very much helpful to us. So Michelle again, absolute pleasure.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
We're excited for women in Construction Week and we're just
lucky enough to have you.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
On our show.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
So I wish you the best and just look forward
to following you in the future.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
If you're a construction contractor and would like to appear
as a guest on our podcast, write us an email.
It's Lou at lumberfi dot com.
Hey everyone, i'mlu Perez, your host of The Builder Upper Show,
a podcast where we talk about everything in construction and trades.
We have a special co host today, Jennifer Hires, who
will be interviewing women in Construction for Women in Construction Week.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hey Jen, how are you doing? Hi, lud, Thanks for
having me.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Who is your special guest today?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
All right, welcome to the show. Today we have an
incredible guest I owned welcome Michelle Hayward, an engineer, entrepreneur,
and absolute powerhouse in bridging the gap between tech leadership
and diversity. So as the founder and CEO of Positive Hire,
Michelle is on a mission to create more inclusive workplaces
(00:49):
for women of color and stem and with her background
in civil engineering and her passion for equitable career opportunities,
she really brings that wealth of knowledge and insight into
today's conversation. So just get ready for an engaging discussion
on leadership, career growth, and the future of diverse workplaces. Michelle,
(01:11):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Thank you for having me. Jennifer.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Yeah, absolutely, let's just jump right into it. I want
to first off and like background and journey, so can
you share with our listeners your journey from being a
civil engineer to founding Positive Hire.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
See where do we start? So I will start with
selecting civil engineering in undergrad When you come into at
least Clemson University, which is a public, great engineering program
here in the state of South Carolina. You're a freshman engineer,
don't You can't declare a specific type of engineering, but
(01:51):
they have you go visit different engineering buildings as part
of at Least Back then in the nineteen hundreds, you
would do a on of a campus tour in the
evening and go visit the different engineering buildings that you
were interesting and majoring in. And I visited the civil
engineering building and they did it a hurricane demonstration. And
(02:12):
this was literally six years after Hurricane Hugo, which is
a Category five hurricane, had hit the state of South Carolina.
And that demonstration of a plexiglass house and pepto bismal
with a huge floor fan convinced me I should become
a civil engineer so I could help people design and
(02:33):
build structures that didn't fall apart or get damaged during
a hurricane. That's not what I did, but at the
time that was what interests me and why I declared
a major in civil engineering, finished Clemson undergrad as the
class of two thousand and On our hats, we spelled out,
if we build it, they will come. That's not how
(02:55):
it work. We built it when they pay us, now come.
But look, if you know the movie Feel the Dreams,
that's you know, that's what they If you build it,
they will come from there. I eventually ended up in construction.
I did a few stops, you know, I worked in
technology transfer, went to grad school, did an apprenticeship and
(03:17):
technology transfer. It was interesting, but it wasn't what I
do and now be on the tech side. It's funny
because I did that in two thousand and two, two
thousand and three. Then I did technical sales working for
Eaton in their electrical division. So I was still selling
into construction. And at the time, you know, somebody called like,
(03:38):
we're building such and such and we need this piece
of equipment. I'm like, oh, what are you building? Like, oh,
you need this for your panel. You're going to hardwire it.
And it's like, oh, yeah, we do. And they're like,
what do you like, I'm a sales engineer, and so
we would you know, as a whole group of us
like fourteen engineers fresh out of college. And so this
young person like, they don't know anything about what I do.
(04:00):
And we were like, oh, it's a hard why are
you got a two forty vote? And so we've been
talking talking to but they also make an assumption to
probably because I was a woman. So I hated that job.
Can I just say how much I hated that job?
And so I remember being at the nech Sided Black
(04:20):
Engineers National Convention in two thousand and six running into
one of my classmates from undergrad and she goes, hey,
you should come check out out the booth for the
company I work for. Well, it happened to be a
construction company. I ended up working for that company for
over twelve years. I started out in their their what
(04:41):
they call their power I'll say, a business unit. And
from there I went start out in fossil fuel retrofit
for a fossil fuel power plant to improve clean air
admissions in western Pennsylvania. We were right outside of Pittsburgh.
And then I switched over into transmission distribution. So transmission
(05:02):
lines out in the middle of farms, cattle ranches, out
in places nobody will go unless you own the land.
And did that and then eventually I left and started
Positive Hire in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Wow, that's incredible And we're going to get more into
Positive Higher as this podcast goes on.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
But let's talk again.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
I want to kind of focus on really like what
inspired you to really focus on pretty more inclusive workplaces
for women of color and stem because you had mentioned,
you know, when you were at that job that because
you were a woman, you know, did they really trust
of what you were saying? So was that part of it?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Positive Hire came about from my experience in the workplace,
and most of my career experience had been at that
point in construction. And when I say construction, I worked
for one of the largest engineering construction companies in the
world or aec Artica engineer construction in the world. For
(06:11):
twelve years, I was still the only black woman on
the job site. And so I traveled and so we
went from twenty five thousand, we got acquired, we went
to fifty thousand, we got acquired again to about eighty
to ninety thousand, So in twelve years, I was only
black woman. And I will explain it this way. I
traveled the US. If there are thirty days in a month.
(06:33):
I was only home five so I was on a
taxable per diem most of that career. Half of my
career had a company vehicle, always had a corporate card,
so my expenses were paid for the most part. But
in that time I was working on capital projects, so
(06:57):
half a billion dollars to one point five billion dollar
from the client side, there were no black women engineers.
Those are the utility companies that I interfaced with. There were,
we hired civil engineering contractors, we hired electrical contractors. Still
(07:17):
no black women that I engaged with, usually very few women.
Towards the end of my time in the industry, I
worked with one woman engineer directly that was on the
job site. She was senior to me. Another woman she
worked in materials. We worked together on two projects. Then
(07:38):
I had a document controls person that I worked with
when I was in Pittsburgh, so I could name roles,
but literally any women engineers one but no women of
color at all on the job site. They might have
been in the office and one of the clients. Their
environmental engineers were women, but not like electrical design engineers
(08:03):
that I had to interface that I interfaced with, which
was a good bit of them. Did I encounter any
women except for one. Again, they were environmental engineers when
I was a project in Pittsburgh, so it was very
few women, but I was always the one black woman.
And then we did have women of color engineers in
(08:26):
our home office and I reported in New Jersey, but
they either quit or were laid off, the vast majority
of them. So I started to remember two thousand and six.
If you've been a while around for a while, you know,
we had that housing crash the economy really had. And
so through that having conversations around twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen,
(08:52):
twenty sixteen, I wasn't happy where I was in my career,
so reaching out to college mentors, other black women and
Latinas in my network, and I was doing career wise
better than ninety five percent of them, and I was like, oka,
something's wrong. I knew the executives in the company, and
(09:16):
I was on the job site. I knew how I
was perceived. I had a spots in an organization, and
they were getting pushed out of technical work. They were
getting tracked out of the things they wanted to do
that they were really good at. They were not getting
very good performance reviews, getting laid off on maternity leave.
(09:39):
They were going through so many different issues in the
workplace that I was like, it's not even good where
I am, but there sounds way worse than me, and
what was it? And so in twenty sixteen, I decided
to host a virtual summit right on the Tale of
(10:01):
right as they were announcing the release of the movie
Hidden Figures. So it was like, this is perfect. And
I look at the movie Hidden Figures, and it's the
nineteen fifties, sixties, and I'm like, these are the same
things we're encountering today, except heaven walk a mile to
the bathroom. And so in the movie, they couldn't use
(10:24):
the women. Black women couldn't use the bathroom, and the
building was whites only, so they literally had to go
to a different part of the facility, walk out of
the building they worked in, and go to a different
building and used the bathroom. And so it was really
really interest Yeah, and it could be like that on
job fights, just so you know, because it is very,
very difficult to get a women's portagoon on construction site.
(10:45):
Some of you are probably listening to me and going,
oh my god, is it because like well it was
only one woman. Why does she need her own portagon?
Oh no, yeah, it's so that's why I started positive higher.
So let's talk talk about you know that experience.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
So how can companies move beyond like surface level diversity
efforts to truly like creating this inclusive environment.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
It starts with your culture, right, and some people like,
how do we know what our culture is? How do
we figure it out? Right? Now? There's such a big
push around data oftentimes, what I start to tell leaders,
especially in engineering design firms and those that have engineering construction,
(11:37):
we don't get a lot of women. Like, let's talk
about your culture first. What is your cultural message? What
does it say when you say we want women but
you don't have clothing or any gear for women? Well,
we don't have that many, so you buy none. So
we have to figure out where to get our own
heart has, our own boots, our own shirts, our own hands,
(12:00):
and so we're spending more time doing all of these
things you're supposed to take care of because it's only
one person. That's our size, our height, whatever, And so
you're like, well, that's just why do it? It's only
one Because I matter? I am a person, right, and
so you have to show that even if it's one person,
(12:22):
just know you have it available in there, don't push
it to the back, dust it off every quarter maybe,
and you can utilize it for your interns because you're
probably not targeting women to come through to be internships.
So we really talk about how do you show up
to the women in your organization, to the women of
color in your organization. So look at your data, like
(12:43):
who's getting promotions, Let's review their performance reviews, our performance reviews.
When you look at it statistically speaking, not any client information,
but statistically speaking, when we look and analyze the perform
rich reviews of black women, there are usually rate have
(13:05):
lord ratings, and the feedback is not anything actionable. The
feedback is also around behavior, and it could be tone
of voice, how your facial expression. It could be how
you write messages or emails. It is really about personality
(13:27):
and people's perceptions of personality opposed to the quality of
your work. Oh that's interesting, and so it's like, so,
how now are you going to measure me if I'm smiling? Oh, well,
you were smiling too much? Yeah, and so when you
when you're a doramat, well, now you're too aggressive. Yeah,
(13:47):
so you told me to stand up for myself and
to speak up, but I spoke up too, And so
we ask to pull some of these things because now
I want you to see what's going on across and
do something. Compare an analysis with some of that information.
It's like, well, we thinking you're taking in a different way.
I said, well, if I'm taking it this way, how
(14:09):
do you think your employee is And they're here five
days a week, eight hours or more a day. Yeah,
and so if you're if you're willing to write this
to them, what are you saying to that employee? What
types of work are you giving that employee? And so
when you utilize performance reviews to determine project assignments and promotions,
(14:36):
now you're going to see a huge gap of who
gets promoted. And you're going to see a lore instances
of diversity and your candidate pools for your talent, for
your high performing talent, and your leaders and your organization.
And I was like, so we look at root cause analysis.
(14:56):
They're like, hey, we want to diversify, Like, well, what
is it? And oftentimes people want us to start with recruitment,
and it's like recruitment is nice, but all you're going
to do is churn everybody out. Yeah, yeah, to start
with recruitment. Why because that's where they put money in.
Nobody wants to talk culture. Culture takes time to change.
It literally takes a commitment and it takes them changing
(15:21):
three things, their practices, their policies, and procedures because they're
not in alignment. And what I mean by that is
they will tell me how they do promotions and I'll
say great that they'll give me an hr handbook of
this is how we do promotions. I will go talk
(15:42):
to five managers. All five will have a different way
that they go through and decide who gets a promotion.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
So how can like women of CULDAR and STEM advocate
for themselves in the workplace?
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Son A couple of things I recommend in this moment.
You may or may no longer have an ERG. If
you have an ERG and that ERG is well put together, organized,
and you have a sponsor, an executive sponsor, they can
help you navigate and advocate for you in the workspace.
(16:14):
And what I mean by ergs some organizations literally use
their ergs to help fill pipeline to their leadership development programs.
They're like, hey, send us three to five candidates that
a manager has not recognized or recommended to a program.
They're going to the different ergs and asking them to
(16:37):
recommend their members and they have a process and they're
able now to diversify their talent pool because they're using
different measures and metrics other than just a manager, right,
who may be made bias. Right. Yeah. The other is sponsors,
whether it's a sponsor through or ERG, but literally getting
(16:58):
a sponsor in that organaceization for them. And we talked
last week. We had our annual Women of Color sem
Virtual Summit and we had a conversation about sponsors. I like,
mentors are nice and cute. A sponsor will change the
direction of your career. That sponsor may not have a
deep relationship with you necessarily, but I reck they build
(17:20):
one with their sponsor. And that's a sponsor is someone
who sees your ability, your potential, not necessarily has proof
that you're able to do it, but they see the
potential that you have. They're able to remove barriers so
that you can get on better projects, you can get
better assignments. They can move you from a problematic manager
(17:43):
and it does not hurt that person personally, their credibility,
and it oftentimes puts them on a track upward in
the organization. And so what we often see is women
of color don't get tracked for leadership development training. So
you training on software, they won't get included in the training.
(18:07):
And I lost a really great engineer, a young black man,
years ago because his director of engineering would not put
him in a training and he was the only one
in his group of design engineers that was working on
a transmission distribution project with me. They bought the training
into our organization, into his home office, and he was
(18:28):
the only one that seam not invited. He went an
asked and he told him he didn't need it. I
could tell them he did need it because I was
spending time training him. So they I was spending the
client's time training somebody, and you were spending thousands of
dollars and could have had him trained in the office.
So those are some of the things organizations can do,
(18:49):
Michelle had to tell you.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
So I have done four recordings for the women in
construction week and there is one common thing, well many
common things, but one that everybody is bringing up is
that having that sponsor what is the difference between mentorship
and sponsor and let's focus more on sponsorship. So without
me even prompting a question about it, you organically brought
(19:14):
it up. So it's it's definitely something again that common theme.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
That we're going to be hearing.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
So was talking about like emerging trends, right, So, are
there any emerging trends in hiring or workplace culture that
are exciting you at the moment right now?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
What is I would say in this industry? Yes, in
other industries as old, it's been done before, it has
been proven, and that's having more leadership development programs. Okay,
this industry is really hard and difficult when it comes
to technology, especially on the construction side, but utalizing technology
(19:59):
to be are understand where their talent is and what
skills their talent has. So that's been really exciting. Also
seeing how we're using AR and VR, that really excites
me from the field perspective, even though I was civil,
I wasn't on the design side, but being able to
see when the walls go up, where the cable the
(20:21):
electrical race trade is to the piping, what's budding into
each other? Is it like that's a four foot clearance.
Who's four feet Michelle? Can you walk on there? Like
I'm five foot one, I walk right, And we know
to go back to the design engineers, like, hey, we
set this up and I'm used to the days where
you can only look at it on a computer. But
(20:43):
now before the engineer sends it to the field, you
need to walk through what y'all designed, and you need
to figure out between mechanical, piping, electrical, and structural where
all of this stuff needs to be moved to. And
usually structural wins like I'm not moving that structural being
a column. Electrical and mechanical. Usually you have to have
to give give some some leeway. So yeah, like, yeah,
(21:07):
I'm part of the of what we're seeing in this
space right now. As far construction drones and stuff, they're okay.
They save a lot of money in that we don't
have to send helicopters or people trying to walk. I
come out of transmission distribution. We I spent hours just driving.
I wasn't working. I was just driving. And sometimes you
(21:30):
have to drive and other times it was like a
drone would have been nice to have to fly and
check on a crew like I. They're not doing that
right now, let me go draw these three hours. But sure, sure,
So I'm not as excited about drones as I am
some of the ar VR, but the drones, the drones
have been very, very helpful in scouting and picking up data,
(21:52):
taking shots of different parts and phases of projects, especially
to show progress or we have shoes. They're able to
pick that up a whole lot quicker sometimes in humans.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
That's exciting now exciting times. I want to hear more
about positive hire. So what has been the most forwarding
part of positive hire?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
The rewarding part is when I talk to whether it's
the women of color, and they like, I found a
place a company that sees me, appreciates my knowledge, skills
and abilities, and I'm at the level in the organization
that should be and that I want to be. Not
(22:39):
everybody wants to lead people. They truly want a technical
role and not lead people. And that's and I always
advocate for that, like go the route you want to go.
But when I see these emails after we've had a
had a career strategy conversation and like four months later,
like hey, that organization that wouldn't give me a promotion,
I left them and I'm over at this organization and
(23:02):
now I'm a director where I was an engineer for
for twelve years, right, And so those emails really excite me.
And then also when I talked to leaders in engineering
design firms that go, you're we made the changes, you said,
we changed our marketing, We changed where we go to
(23:25):
talk to college students. And not even like universities, they
don't just talk to the ASCAS m ME ILE student chapters.
They go to the SUEZE and the nasby the Nation
Society of Black Engineer Society is Society, Hispanic Professional Engineer
Society and Women Engineers chapters. Like we've we've diversified our
(23:48):
internship pool. Like really, so you went to the same university.
You just spent three different trips, which was minimal amount
of money to diversify your talent pool. You you bought pizza,
you paid for parking, you pay for fuel. How much
was your marketing? But there is like damn near zero
(24:10):
in comparison, right, And so what I what I explained
to them, especially for the construction side, is you have
to show up to the students. They don't know these
small companies, midside companies names they don't know exactly what
you do as an electrical engineer. But if you bring
them some pizza or some food, yeah right, and collect
(24:35):
resumes are tell them where to go to apply to
be sure that you know, put in this code so
we know where you saw us, as opposed to showing
up at a career fair where you're competing with ninety
nine or more other companies at this because they're they're like, yeah,
floor has such a long line and Turner has such
they know who they are, their brands are huge. You
(24:57):
don't have the same. You have to strategize, and so
literally just talking to them differently, and then them said
coming to me and say, hey, well, how do we
get mid career women? And so we have an honest conversation.
What I mean by that when we look at just
the engineering data for women, thirty percent about thirty percent
(25:18):
of women engineers lead between zero and ten years into
their careers. Thirty percent. That's high, right, that's a lot. Yeah,
nearly forty percent of women engineers lead between ten and
twenty years. Wow. And so I go, let's talk about
(25:38):
the women You've had engineers in your organization that have left.
It's like, no, no, we want to talk about the women.
We want to I know, but we need to talk
about what why did the women that were here left?
Because they're leaving the industry, you may not be able
to find very many, if any, because you're not set
(26:00):
up to retain them, much less attract them. And so
we have conversations about what level that they may no
longer be in the industry because everybody's looking for this
mid career women. Seventy percent of us are gone. I
can year two thousand. I left the industry after seventeen years. Yeah,
there were one of them.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Yeah, absolutely, So then what one piece of advice would
you give for navigating their careers?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
So for the women leave sooner or later, like the
first time you were turned over for a promotion, for
specific feedback, if they give you the thief to keep
working hard, like start looking for a new job, it's like, which,
I said, how so you weren't working hard for the
previous promotion? It was like, well, yeah I was. I said,
(26:50):
So how are they going to measure that you were
continuing to work hard if that's all you had to
do for the first one? I said, go ahead, I said,
And I literally cannot tell you. How many women have
come to me and said when they resigned, they said, oh,
we'll give you more money to stay, but they still
wouldn't give them a promotion. They're like, I said, they
(27:14):
told you, right, They've been telling you for years. I said,
sooner than later, you need to leave. And then the
other thing I tell them, when you look at a
job description, you only need to know how to do
thirty to forty percent of the job description. They're shocked.
It's like, why, I said, number one, if it's eighty
t one hundred percent, you're gonna be bored. You already
know how to do that job.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
True, Yeah, that ain't can apply to anybody.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Yeah, exactly, I said thirty to forty percent. I said,
everyone gives your room to grow. I said, but in actuality,
most of those jobs are made up because of the
person you're replacing. Was a woman. She'd probably been there
for so long. She was doing five jobs in one
and being under it. That is not one one role.
(28:03):
And I remember being a recruiter reaching out to me
when I just left the industry and emailed over the
job description. I said, this is three jobs in one.
I said, and you're only paying for one. I said,
let me get this job. This position has been opened
more longer than a year. And they said, yeah, how'd
you know, I said, because it's nobody but that's crazy
enough to take this except maybe a retired person. I said,
try a retired person, but anybody that knows this industry.
(28:26):
It was like a project engineer, project manager, and a
construction manager role and they wanted to pay one hundred
and ten thousand dollars. This is how bad it was.
I said, So when you read job descriptions, read them
and like, that's not what this level person does, is it? Senior?
Doesn't match the salary, And I said, so we talk
(28:50):
about deconstructing job descriptions as well and really being able
to match. That goes up to quantify and qualify with
or not they want to apply, or if this is
a place they even want to work. Because the company
that had those three jobs rolled into company I never
(29:10):
want to work for ever.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Now, that is a great piece of advice. You know,
if it's women, if it's anybody, diversity and as well
as you know, anybody can apply those same rules. Michelle,
it's been absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
How can people find you the quickest easiest way is
to find me over on LinkedIn. Everybody, really, yes, just
send me a connection request. You got to press the
little three dots on my profile. Send connection requests. Let
me know that you found me on the Builder Upper show,
so I'll be able to say, hey, I know what
you've got, so I'll be able to tell Jennifer like
(29:50):
your podcast working. I got a connection request over on LinkedIn.
I love that.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
And we're also going to put a survey in the comments,
so make sure you go out and fill out that survey.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
That's very much helpful to us. So Michelle again, absolute pleasure.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
We're excited for women in Construction Week and we're just
lucky enough to have you.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
On our show.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
So I wish you the best and just look forward
to following you in the future.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
If you're a construction contractor and would like to appear
as a guest on our podcast, write us an email.
It's Lou at lumberfi dot com.
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