44 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine
Louisiana Girl Scouts get
ISE insights at Annual event
Students learn engineering concepts, get advice om professional mentors
By Frank Reddy
A recent event aiming to encourage and inspire more
girls to pursue industrial engineering as a career was
a success according to several of the girls who aend-
ed as well as one of the organizers.
Held at IISE’s 2023 Annual Conference & Expo
in New Orleans, “Introduce a Girl to Industrial and
Systems Engineering,” was a partnership between the Institute
and Girl Scouts of Louisiana Pines of the Gulf and Louisiana
East.
e May 20 event sought to guide girls through applying ISE
concepts by using a practical exercise while working with men-
tors. It also aorded the scouts the opportunity to ask questions
of about a dozen industrial engineers who signed up to aend.
Abrie Richardson, 10, found it informative, adding that it was
“great talking to people ... with cooler jobs than our parents.”
A
To teach the girls an engineering mindset, they were divided into groups and given a project in which they took apart and reassembled ballpoint pens. They then compared notes and
collaborated to find a better process.
Photos by IISE sta
“(It was) great
talking to people
... with cooler jobs
than our parents.”
— Abrie Richardson, 10
July 2023 | ISE Magazine 45
Meanwhile, her friend, Zoie Rob-
erts, 14, said the most interesting thing
about the event was learning “how
much money ISEs make.”
Event organizer Diana Berry, the
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Com-
miee chair for IISE which sponsored
the event, said hearing candid ques-
tions from the Girl Scouts was one of
the highlights for her.
“I think it went great, beer even than expected,” Berry said,
adding that nearly 40 Girl Scouts showed up. “(e Girl Scouts)
asked good questions. e women on the panel were very open
and gave good answers.” Berry is the international trade & logis-
tics supervisor for Harsco Rail.
e volunteer mentors oered their own personal stories about
their career paths and how their own interests led them to indus-
trial engineering.
“What I really liked to do was play with lile McDonald’s toys.
Everything was on wheels and I’d line everything up and try to
get through trac,” said Kim Listermann senior data science man-
ager for FedEx Ground. “What I really liked was the solving of the
ow problem and that’s industrial engineering. It’s making things
move more eciently through a system.”
“I’m an artist, I like to paint,” said Ruchika Joshi, manufacturing
planning manager at Texas Instruments. “As an artist, designing
aircra and designing automobiles was my passion so that’s why I
pursued mechanical engineering.”
“I just knew that I liked math,” said Maria Carolina Diaz, busi-
ness process optimization manager for Spirit Airlines. “My father
was an industrial engineer and I asked him ‘What do I do with
this?’ and he suggested I be an industrial engineer. ... I started go-
ing to industrial engineering school and I just loved it. I was like, ‘I
think I found my place in life,’ and 16 years later I’m still doing the
same thing and I’m loving it every day.”
ey also told the scouts how industrial engineering can appeal
to a variety of interests and apply to many dierent career elds.
“I’m still in the process of guring out what I want to be when
I grow up,” University of Pisburgh student Eliza Marcy said.
“What I really appreciate about industrial engineering so far is
that it’s given me the exibility creatively to pursue whatever in-
terests me. I think when people think of engineering, they have a
very specic image in their mind of what an engineer does. Being
an industrial engineer can mean anything – it can mean any indus-
try, any job. Because everything is a system, and everything can be
done beer. So I would say my dream job is industrial engineer.”
“I don’t want to lean into the stereotype of Girl Scouts as be-
ing camp, cra and cookies. I truly believe it is far more than that,”
IISE Fellow Joan Wagner, systems engineer at Spirit AeroSys-
tems Inc., told the girls. “But we do a lot of cras in Girl Scouts
and manufacturing is doing a lot of cras every single day. I was
building duct work out of sheet metal, building air cleaners. I was
building prototypes all day and using big pieces of equipment. I
fell in love with that manufacturing process, and then being able
to organize and streamline that manufacturing process.” Wagner
serves as the Industry Advisory Board representative on the IISE
Board of Trustees.
When asked by a scout what is most important about industrial
engineering, IISE Past President and Fellow Jamie Rogers, profes-
sor of industrial, manufacturing and systems engineering at the
University of Texas at Arlington, summed it up.
“We make things to make lives beer. From the time you wake
up in the morning, there is practically nothing that you touch
that an engineer didn’t design and build,” she said. “Everything is
touched by engineering and we make people’s lives beer.”
Berry said there were also a wide variety of ages at the gather-
Zoie Roberts
Jamie Rogers, top photo at left, and Joan Wagner, above photo, were
among the professional ISEs who shared their career stories with the
scouts and explained how industrial engineering can improve lives.
The full group of volunteer mentors that took part in the Girl Scouts
event.
Photo courtesy of Diana Berry
46 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine
Louisiana Girl Scouts get ISE insights at Annual event
ing ranging from fourth graders to ninth graders. She said one of
the larger groups that traveled to the event spent two hours geing
there and ended up making a full day of it in New Orleans.
To teach the girls an engineering mindset, they were divided
into groups and tasked with completing a project in which they
took apart and reassembled ballpoint pens. Aer comparing notes,
they worked together to develop a beer process to assemble the
pens faster.
Each of the groups at a given table came up with their own fac-
tory names – “Pentastic,” in one example – and selected one mem-
ber to provide a summary of their solution before the full audience.
One of the girls in aendance, Jade Waterman, 14, said she
found it “honestly, kind of interesting. We got to know each other
and learned about industrial engineering.”
Fellow 14-year-old Gwyneth Waterman also enjoyed “learning
with my peers … and learning that we have to cooperate in order
to make functioning systems. at’s what engineers do on a day-
to-day basis.”
Amy Reynolds, also 14, said she would even possibly consider a
career in the eld aer having learned about industrial engineer-
ing at the event.
“I found it all very interesting,” Reynolds said.
And with such sentiments from those in aendance and stoking
interest in industrial engineering being the event’s main purpose,
Berry said the gathering was “a great success.”
Following the event, IISE President-elect and Fellow Victoria
Jordan, Emory Healthcare, who served as a volunteer, provided
each of the scouts with certicates of aendance signed by Berry
and IISE CEO Don Greene.
e Girl Scout leader who took part included Jessica Hall,
director of program; Paige Miller, program specialist; and
Kevin Shipp, Girl Experience manager.
e full roster of volunteers who oered their time at the event
included Diaz, Joshi, Jordan, Caroline Krejci, Listermann, Marcy,
Cilla Pemberton, Rogers, Rohan Shirwaiker, Joan Tafoya and
Wagner.
Frank Reddy is IISE’s Digital Marketing & Communications Coordi-
nator. Contact him at eddy@iise.org.
The Girl Scouts STEM event drew a large crowd for its first in-person gathering at the Annual Conference & Expo May 20 in New Orleans.
Photo courtesy of Diana Berry
Diana Berry, chair of IISE’s DEI committee, was coordinator of the event.
“Learning that we have to cooperate in
order to make functioning systems. at’s
what engineers do on a day-to-day basis.”
— Gwyneth Waterman, 14
“We got to know each other and learned
about industrial engineering.”
— Jade Waterman, 14
Members of the Girl Scouts of Louisiana Pines of the Gulf and
Louisiana East. Pictured are, from left, Jade Waterman, 14; Amy
Reynolds, 14; Gwyneth Waterman, 14; and Gabrielle Rodriguez, 12.
