From Rescuing Lives to Shaping Careers: Megan's Story of Perseverance- Megan Lewis Taylor

In August 2010, I was stationed at the United States Coast Guard Small Boat Station in Michigan. A distress call came in for me to respond to an unknown number of swimmers in distress in Middle Bay, Michigan. The seas were violent and unpredictable, with four-foot waves and winds gusting at 20 knots. Despite the dangerous circumstances, I was able to locate three people. By throwing them a lifeline, pulling them in, and helping them on board, we were able to save all three. Less than 12 hours later that day, we received a nighttime report of multiple persons in the water in Grand Marais, Michigan. Despite the darkness, rough seas, and hazardous shoals, I skillfully executed my duties to assist the coxswain in searching for the two persons. Little did I know that these pivotal experiences would lead me to choose to devote my life to public service. I eventually went on to join the police force, where I would be a first responder to multiple crises, including the Boston Marathon bombing and Hurricane Sandy.

Being a woman working in male-dominated organizations like the U.S. Coast Guard and as a police officer was fraught with difficulty. But fast-forwarding to where I am now, I can confidently say that I’ve faced some of the hardest challenges being a woman engineer in a profession that has historically favored male success. I’ve been grateful to enjoy many highs, but there have been severe low moments where I have wanted to resign and move on. Thankfully, we are making progress, and many forthright initiatives are aimed at supporting women’s corporate advancement. Still, we have a long road ahead of us, as only one out of four C-suite leaders is a woman (Krivkovich et al., 2022). Women engineers in particular fight an extraordinarily uphill battle, as women collectively make up only 13% of the total engineering workforce (Silbey, 2016).

The hurdles that women face in the workplace are well-known and documented in resources like the Harvard Business Review. Male or female, we can all relate on some level to the common situations we must navigate daily in a corporate setting. With that in mind, it’s important to have an appreciation of what it would be like to layer even more difficulty onto these situations. One important thing I have learned throughout my life is that the real definition of success is not letting yourself be defined by the challenges that you face. I have learned the hard way that you must take a personal stake in your professional development journey; you are your own best advocate and the architect of your path forward. Through all of the most challenging experiences in my professional life, these are the most important lessons I have learned:

1) Create a strategy for professional success to propel you forward in your career journey.

Once an end goal has been identified, a roadmap can be created that you can use to guide your career decisions. After all, no journey can begin without an endpoint in mind. I greatly enjoy the technical side of the projects I work on, but I also thrive as a leader who drives the program toward milestones and delivery. Leveraging my background in the military and the police force allows me to inspire trust and confidence in the personal brand that I bring to work each day.

Both my technical interests and natural leadership ability put me on the path to executive leadership in engineering. The first step towards achieving this goal was to find a mentorship network where I could lay out and refine my development plan. In my company, I identified leaders I looked up to and reached out directly to them. I contacted these individuals by email, where I laid out my goals and how their mentorship would help me get where I want to go, with my resume attached. It’s vitally important to have a clearly stated goal so that you can both be clear about what you want and are asking of them. By reaching out to a mentor with a clearly stated goal, you identify yourself as a high-potential employee. You exhibit the traits of drive, self-direction, strategic thinking, and initiative—all of which are in high demand. The mentor-mentee relationship evolves, and both parties will grow

throughout the mentorship journey, providing invaluable insight into how the business operates from both standpoints. As you also understand the goals and actions of the mentor, you will be able to align your own motivations within the business to help build out the framework for your chosen career. Once you have established your mentorship relationship, you have gained a valuable asset that will help you expand your network and make strategic career moves. Your mentor will help you develop and hone critical leadership skills, and your authentic leadership style will reveal itself. As an employee, it’s one thing to be great at your job and execute tasks, but by learning the different products and the global business goals, you begin to distinguish yourself as a leader within the company. That foundational knowledge of a business is essential to evolving your decision-making abilities in the position you hold. You will be able to move towards solution-based problem solving by suggesting product alignment between sites and using different sites’ capabilities to move roadblocks in your job. This all begins at the point of origin: developing an articulated goal as to where you wish to go.

2) Seek opportunities outside of your job to gain visibility within the global business.

One of the benefits of working within a larger corporation is the opportunities that are presented outside of a job function. In 2019, I was introduced to Engineers Without Borders USA (EWB-USA) through the announcement of the Raytheon Technologies partnership while volunteering for our Hartford KNOX project. At the time, I was transitioning from just being a mechanical engineering intern to a full-time mechanical engineer. I had already started volunteering on our Guatemala international project as the borehole lead during my internship and a few months after the announcement I was on a plane from Connecticut to Guatemala to meet seven other RTX employees from across the businesses to conduct an assessment trip. Being surrounded by the very people I was impacting and seeing the issues they struggle with firsthand was the moment that the light turned on in my life, illuminating the truth that engineering was the right profession for me. There are about 200 people in the community of Canton Oram, San Cristobal, Guatemala, and their water quality does not meet the World Health Organization standards. Only 78% of the community reported sufficient water during the rainy season. During the dry season, the situation worsens, as only 31% of the population reported having sufficient water, a conservative estimate collected from surveys during our assessment trip. As an individual at a company with about 182,000 employees, I am empowered to make a lasting impact on hundreds of lives. Contributing as the borehole lead on this project seemed like a small ask for me in comparison to the magnitude of positive effect my actions would have on the lives of these people. Volunteering with EWB opened my eyes to working outside of the box while also transforming my leadership abilities in my job today. I was quickly identified as a leader within the partnership and was brought onto the leadership team as the engagement chair at the start of the partnership. While serving as the engagement chair, I was able to refine my strategy for communicating with high-level executives, practice public speaking skills by spreading the word about our mission, and hone my project management skills. Now, three years later, as the President of the Raytheon Technologies corporate chapter, I am a wholly transformed engineer and volunteer. My work exudes confidence and a visible passion, which allows me to authentically connect with those listening and create a story that draws them onto this mission of creating a better world together.

3) Find innovative solutions to the roadblocks you are experiencing by using the tools the business has been set up.

As a woman engineer, there will likely continue to be challenges ahead. But the most important thing you can do is take these challenges and transform them into leadership opportunities. Many employees in your organization are probably already great at calling out problems, but presenting solutions to those problems is what transforms your manager’s assessment of your abilities. I have created a personal strategy to navigate these issues, leveraging everything I have learned from my past and present careers to succeed in a corporate environment:

• Define the audience and stakeholders.
• Why should the audience care about this problem?
• Create a plan!
• Don’t fall into cognitive fixedness.
• Utilize the corporation’s continuous improvement system and tools to drive change and solutions.
• Present the idea.
• Formal or informal depending on the issue.

Within the Raytheon Technologies businesses, our continuous improvement system is defined as Customer-Oriented Results and Excellence (CORE ). I immersed myself in this system to lead events that drive process improvement. This system allows me to feel a personal stake in business outcomes and play a key role in improving the way we work. The results will deliver benefits that cascade through the business, creating a ladder of success for yourself.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyway”. Working as a female engineer will certainly be an uphill battle for many in the profession. However, by utilizing the tools of success we have learned along the way and we can drive meaningful change in our environments. Volunteering with Engineers Without Borders USA has fast-tracked my skills as an engineer and as a leader within my corporation. Those we help today may one day change the world themselves. Familiarizing ourselves with the mission of EWB not only transforms our perspective on humanism but also imbues us with an awareness of our place in corporate social responsibility.

No one truly knows what the future has in store. However, one thing I know for sure is that I will continue to change the world one day at a time with the help of Raytheon Technologies, which has empowered me with leadership to drive this initiative. When you start achieving success in your career, take a moment to stop and appreciate what you have learned and consider how you can help teach it to others. By leading and teaching, we will all become stronger together and naturally overcome any challenges that we are faced with—one day at a time.

Citations:

Krivkovich, A., Liu, W. W., Nguyen, H., Rambachan, I., Robinson, N., Williams, M., & Yee, L. (2022, October 18). Women in the Workplace 2022. McKinsey & Company. Retrieved March 12, 2023, from https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/women-in-the-workplace.

Silbey, S. S. (2016, August 23). Why do so many women who study engineering leave the field? Why Do So Many Women Who Study Engineering Leave the Field? Retrieved March 12, 2023, from https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engineering-leave-the-field.