“It is my belief that gender diversity, one of Corning Values - The individual, is a must in order to be the best in whatever we do, the global market we serve, for our employees and the global societies we operate in."

Engineering is a profession where you solve difficult and challenging product, process and systems problems in collaborative team environments. No individual can solve these problems alone. And to exclude talented female engineers, more than 50% of the available global human capital, is a blunder. Hence, the need to include women talents with strong collaborative and technical capabilities to help in advancing technologies.

In Asia, I challenged my leadership team with a long-term female diversity goal of 30%. My philosophy is that if other organization can hire and retain talented women, why can’t my organization work hard to get more than our own share of the available talent pool. That requires being competitive in hiring highly qualified entry level female engineers that can grow through the rank.

We are currently at 27% women in engineering and leadership positions in MT&E Asia. That means, we are investing and filling the women pipeline and develop them to leadership/managerial position as we do for men.

To achieve our goal, there are three perspectives we keep investing in-

-     Development: Allowing women to grow with practical assignments that involves designing, developing, building, installing and commission of process, products or systems. Also, it is the duty of a leader or manager to connect his or her female engineers into the knowledge network, to coach or assign coaches to women for exposure to resources and knowledge.

To whom much is given, much is expected, I also encourage women leaders to be role model through coaching and mentoring for females behind them. As an African American, I take this as a responsibility for senior female and minority to render helping hands in coaching and mentoring up and coming female and minority employees behind us.

Last but not the least, continuous learning is critical for innovation and technological advancements, we make sure the resource including class room trainings, seminar for innovation advancement, leadership or career development are available to not only male.

-     Challenging Assignment: It is important to expose women to the same challenging opportunity in order to for them to gain experiences and grow. I believe in giving them challenging technology and project assignment with stretch goals in order to showcase their talents, build up characters and confidence.

-     Supports: We have to recognize the sacrifices and tradeoff women make in balancing life and career when they are confronted with family life changing events such as marriage, childbirth, etc. Hence, I belief any organizations that promote gender diversity have to give women helping hands in order not to always trade off their career when they are face with these choices.  In MT&E we try our best to provide flexibility and supports for our female employees, especially for our high performing and emerging talent employees.  We work with HR and management to provide customized flexibility and support.

All these initiatives and efforts are not favoritism or undue advantages for women. They are basically leveling the playing field and clear obstacles that usually prevent women from achieving their potentials within their God given talents in male dominated society and profession.

It is my belief that gender diversity, one of Corning Values - The individual, is a must in order to be the best in whatever we do, the global market we serve, for our employees and the global societies we operate in.