Event Recap: April Professional Development Meeting

April 21, Dallas SWE invited ASME and collegiate SWE sections to join us on the SMU campus to enjoy guest speaker Jennifer Bell’s career story and advice for aspiring leaders.  Jennifer is a mechanical engineer who has worked mainly in the field of reliability and quality engineering for the oil and gas industry, both on-shore and off-shore.  She left industry in 2012 to pursue her MBA and is now on the precipice of the next step of her career: reentering the workforce!

Great group for our April Professional Development Event at SMU!
Great group for our April Professional Development Event at SMU!

Jennifer had a lot of great advice for attendees and recommendations for leadership books to read, including The Athena Doctrine, She Wins You Win, and Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman.  As a SWE Leadership Coach and leader in ASME, Jennifer talked about how valuable her involvement professional societies is to her career, especially during her time out of the workforce.  She delineated the differences between a Mentor and a Sponsor and why you need both for a successful career. We also spent some time talking about SWE’s new Diversity & Inclusion Knowledge Cards which contain some compelling statistics and studies on women and other minorities in the workplace.

Great group at SMU!  Guest Speaker Jennifer Bell is lower left.
Great group at SMU! Guest Speaker Jennifer Bell is lower left.
In keeping with our new tradition, here is a photo of first time attendee Emily with Dallas SWE President Barbara Read!
In keeping with our new tradition, here is a photo of first time attendee Emily with Dallas SWE President Barbara Read!

We are so grateful to Jennifer for sharing her experiences and insights on these topics and look forward to what she has in store for the Region C Leadership Summit in the works for summer 2015!

Stay tuned for a recap of Jennifer’s involvement in our Saturday Leadership Workshop on April 25!