IMECE Affords Opportunities to Honor Women Engineers, Provide Training for ASME Volunteer Leaders

Each year, the International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) offers multiple opportunities for volunteer leaders to network and engage in training, which will help them as they pursue leadership opportunities within ASME.

On Saturday, Nov. 9, at IMECE 2019 in Salt Lake City, ASME’s Volunteer Orientation and Leadership Training (VOLT) Academy held an interactive training workshop entitled, “Your Next Volunteer Position: Navigating Your ASME Volunteer Pathway.” Allison Case, VOLT Academy Executive Committee member, served as the facilitator for the session, which featured ASME Board of Governors member Dr. Mary Lynn Realff and former Board of Governors member Karen Ohland as presenters. More than 40 people attended the training, which is one of the in-person personal development opportunities that the VOLT Academy offers Society volunteers throughout the ASME fiscal year.

With over 100,000 members, volunteers are essential for ASME’s success, and the training articulated the benefits that can be gained from serving as an ASME leadership volunteer. The competencies required to fill ASME leadership roles as well as the resources and best practices to gain the required skills and experience for one’s next volunteer position were also discussed.

On Tuesday, Nov. 12, ASME hosted a special Women in Engineering Reception to honor ASME’s women engineers and provide IMECE’s female attendees with the chance to network with their male and female peers. More than 100 ASME leaders and members attended the event, which demonstrated ASME’s ongoing commitment to promoting and advancing diversity and inclusion within ASME and the engineering field.

This year’s reception featured a panel of diverse female engineers who discussed the best career advice they received as a young engineer. The panelists were: Monica Moman-Saunders, who is on the Old Guard Committee and is a retired Louisville Gas and Electric executive; Karen Ohland, a former Board of Governors member who currently serves on the ASME Committee on Finance and Investment and works for the Princeton University Art Museum; Dr. Leslie Phinney, who is the lead for diversity and inclusion for women in engineering for ASME’s Heat Transfer Division and works at Sandia National Labs; and Dr. Parisa Saboori, the current ECLIPSE Intern for the Bioengineering Division and a professor at Manhattan College. Dr. Ashley Huderson, ASME’s senior manager for Engineering Education and Outreach, moderated the panel session, which was followed by a lively post-panel discussion with attendees.

To view a short inspirational video about women engineers that was shown at the event, please click here.

For additional information about the VOLT Academy or the IMECE Women in Engineering Reception, please contact Clare Bruff, senior manager for Volunteer Leadership Development and Diversity, at bruffc@asme.org, or visit the VOLT Academy web page on ASME.org.

— Melissa Carl and Clare Bruff