Speeches

Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) Luncheon

Michele Toth, Vice President, Human Resources and Administration and Competitive Excellence, Northrop Grumman Information Technology, Denver, Jan. 12, 2007

Let me begin by paying tribute to a couple of things. First, your profession as engineers – I’m not an engineer but I love you. I’ve worked with you my entire career and I feel in many ways, I owe my career to all of you. Your organization, SHPE, has the vision to enhance and achieve the potential of all Hispanics in engineering, math, and science. I believe that the work of diversity groups like yours benefits everyone in our lives. To explain how diversity plays a role, we need to put it in the right context.  And I’d like to do that in the context of challenges and opportunities. Really, they’re the opposite sides of the same coin.

(Video segment.)

The future is you and the world we live in is a very high-tech one. As Robert Gates, the new Secretary of Defense, recently said, America’s economic future, its security, and our place in the world we live in is based on scientific research and technological innovation. And there lies the challenge that I referenced at the beginning.  We are not keeping up. Specifically, the challenge is that we are falling behind in the technology race.

Let me share with you some recent facts. Over the past 13 years, we have lost as a nation over 600,000 aerospace and scientific positions. And there is a coming wave of retirements. We’re graduating fewer engineers than other countries. Specifically, last year, the United States graduated 70,000 engineers while India and China graduated 200,000 and 500,000 respectively. And the problem is even more systemic. The average child in school is veering away from math and science, and those that are interested are finding that there are not enough math and science teachers to teach them. By 2010, it is projected that we will need 240,000 more math and science teachers just to teach kids in middle and high schools. 

I don’t know about you, but when I was gathering some of these statistics, it left me with a bit of a sad feeling. I mean, it sounds a little gloomy. But because I’m an optimist, I wake up each day with my glass not full, but running over. I’m going to remain optimistic, because optimism reveals opportunities. And organizations like yours are at the heart of them. As a nation, we cannot afford to overlook one pool of untapped talent.  We cannot afford to bypass one neglected intellectual resource. We cannot afford to let one corner of our human capital go undeveloped. And we cannot afford to let one child go uninspired.

For the past two years, Northrop Grumman has hired thousands of college students and over 40 percent of them have been women and people of color. We’re very active in all the local and national diversity conferences and we are extremely active in middle schools and high schools trying to get children interested in the math and sciences. What industries and corporations like Northrop Grumman do best is create opportunities, but what we ask of organizations like SHPE is to reach out to future engineers and scientists and mentor them – get them excited about science and math – to take advantage of the opportunities that companies like mine offer.

At the end of the day, provided all things are fair, it is the individual that makes the difference. You make the difference in your careers, you make the difference in the lives of your family members, and you make the difference in society. 

I’d like to share with you some lessons that I’ve learned throughout my career – lessons that I try to convey to those I mentor.  I believe I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve been working with a defense contractor my entire career. I joined Westinghouse as a summer intern – I think some of you are interns with different companies today – and  then Northrop Grumman bought us in 1995, which was an incredible thing for Westinghouse at the time.

I’ve had a very blessed career, I think, for a number of reasons. I was very fortunate to find some individuals that were willing to take me under their wings and mentor me. They’ve provided me with sound advice, honest advice, feedback – sometimes feedback I wish I wasn’t hearing at the time.  But today I’m glad I heard it and I’m glad I did something healthy with it.

Also, I was provided with a lot of opportunities – opportunities that I never thought would be afforded to me. They made me a little uncomfortable when they were presented to me, but I decided that I was not going to close any door on any opportunity because it would be a new learning experience for me. There are far more doors that are out there to open than there are people to open them. 

Also, I’ve learned more recently – and I think this is most appropriate for the audience here today – that technology is the driver and if we are going to be successful, we have to be willing to accept and adapt to change. And I hope all of you engineers out there don’t mind me saying this, but as I mentioned, I value you; I actually tell many folks on my team that we would not have jobs if it wasn’t for engineers out there creating these new technological designs and products. But the reality of it is, I have actually seen engineers who get so stuck in what they’re working on – they’re complacent, they’re not resilient to change, and their careers suffer for it. So I would just challenge all of you as engineers to embrace change, lead change, and make it happen. Be comfortable with it. 

Also what I’ve realized is that is that you have to get out of your comfort zone.  When you’re experiencing change, if something comes your way and it puts a knot in your stomach and it doesn’t feel good, go with your gut.  But if it doesn’t feel good because you’ve never done it before, go for it. Most likely your greatest learning and the greatest things in life will come when you do something different that you haven’t done in the past.

Time and time again, I have seen that those individuals who really do succeed are those who welcome change, embrace change, and lead change. I’m a passionate believer in diversity. I was raised in a family where, fortunately, I had parents, especially my dad, who told me, Michele, don’t hang around people who are just like you. Get out of your comfort zone, surround yourself with people who are different from you – people from different walks of life, different learnings, different backgrounds.  That is probably the greatest gift my dad could have ever given me, because I believe some of the greatest lessons and life enrichments came from individuals who weren’t just like me and it would be pretty darn boring to surround myself with just a bunch of Micheles.

Let me close by saying that corporate America must partner with organizations such as yours, organizations made up of people best positioned to mentor, lead and inspire.  People like Jaime Escalante, a Los Angeles math teacher, who believed what H.G. Wells said, that human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe; Or Frank Diaz, Ellen Ochoa and Sid Gutierrez, space shuttle astronauts.  They would all agree with our CEO, Ron Sugar, who has said that if you inspire our kids and you give them a mission, they will amaze us; Or Luis Alvarez, a Nobel Prize winner for physics, who proved to our kids that science and engineering know nothing of color, gender or economic class. 

I want to thank all of you for what you’re doing. I want to thank you for what you’re going to continue to do to help companies like Northrop Grumman and our nation.  The future is you, it’s me, it’s all of us. If we work together and get that next generation interested in all these opportunities and doors that are open out there, everyone will benefit: my company, our industry, the Hispanic community, and our nation. 

Thank you.

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