3D InCites Podcast
3D InCites Podcast
What Happens When Support, Grit, And Communication Shape Women’s STEM Journeys
Want a candid look at how women build durable careers in one of the world’s toughest industries? We sit down with three semiconductor leaders - Nitza Basoco, Anne Meixner and Julia Freer - who share how early encouragement, gritty problem solving, and clear communication turned curiosity into impact. From summer jobs at national labs and early days at IBM to leading operations, test, and sustainability initiatives, their stories show why diverse voices aren’t just nice to have—they’re a competitive advantage.
We dig into the real moments: being the only woman in a test engineering group, pushing for inclusive language that actually changes culture, and navigating career pivots to balance family, flexibility, and ambition. You’ll hear how mentorship and sponsorship differ—and why you need both—plus specific tactics to make them work inside fast-moving chip companies. One unforgettable segment starts with a five-minute crash-and-burn presentation and becomes a two-year, teamwide communication overhaul that turns shy engineers into confident presenters ready for conferences and boardrooms.
Across materials science, advanced packaging, test and inspection, and sustainability, the thread is clear: communication is a core engineering skill. Writing reflective status reports, designing slides for decisions, and telling a tight technical story can accelerate yield improvements, align manufacturing and supply chain, and win executive support. We also tackle today’s DEI headwinds with a practical lens—keep the pipeline alive, promote from within, and build programs that outlast policy shifts. The conversation closes with why their new book matters: ordinary, relatable role models who show many valid paths into STEM and semiconductors.
Learn more about the book, Empowering Women in STEM.
Teradyne test solutions for semiconductors lets customers consistently meet their quality standards.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
This episode of the 3D InCites podcast is sponsored by Teradyne. As AI and cloud computing drive semiconductor complexity, Teradyne's test solutions for semiconductors and electronics lets customers consistently meet their quality standards. Its advanced collaborative and mobile robots support manufacturing and warehouse operations for companies of all sizes. With cutting-edge solutions for today's complex devices, Teradyne is powering the pursuit of innovation. Stay connected at Teradyne.com.
Speaker:Hi there. I'm Francoise von Trapp, and this is the 3D Insights Podcast.
Speaker 1:Hi everyone. This week we've got a special episode that brings awareness to a topic that is near and dear to my heart, and that is how to encourage young women to pursue careers in STEM, which is rather ironic for me, actually, as I never set out to be a scientist or a technologist, and I still am not one, but here I am, a woman in the semiconductor industry. So I think the only thing more inspirational than reading success stories is hearing about them firsthand. So today I'm talking with three women who intentionally set out on a STEM career path. They recently contributed chapters to a new book called Empowering Women in STEM: Pioneering Paths to Shape the Future. The book serves to remind us that the future of STEM thrives on diversity, innovation, and unique perspectives that women bring to the table. Contributors to the book hailed from a myriad of STEM professions, from military and culinary to research, medicine, and technology. Now, as it happens, all of three of my guests today pursued careers in the semiconductor industry, and I'm looking forward to hearing their stories. So welcome to the podcast. Anne Meixner , Julia Freer, and Nisa Basoco. Thanks. Glad to be here. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having us. I'm super excited for this conversation, but before we get started, I always ask people to introduce themselves. Could you each just have a little bit about yourself and your current roles? Ann, why don't you go first? Sure.
Speaker 2:My name is Ann Meixner and I've worked in the semiconductor industry for over 40 years. I have two uh current paid gigs. I am a freelance contributor to uh semiconductor engineering and online publication. And I am the heterogeneous integration roadmap fellow, which is I get to support an all-volunteer effort to uh create a technology roadmap for advanced packaging solutions and in various applications. So that's exciting.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's excellent. And Nitsa, how about you?
Speaker 4:Um I've been in the semiconductor industry for about a quarter of a century. I'm I'm dating myself. I started my career at Teradine as a factory applications engineer. And 20 some odd years later, I'm back at Teradine. I started um two years ago as their technology and market strategist and have recently transitioned into their mobility business unit manager. So a little more business-oriented type role.
Speaker 3:Okay, and Julia. Hello, I am the founder of Material Value Consulting, where I work with manufacturing companies in several different sectors, including semiconductors, to really help them better tell their stories around both product excellence and sustainability. And speaking of that, I've been writing a sustainability one-on-one column for 3D Insights since 2021. And I'm also the author of several books. And before that, you were in industry, correct? Yes, I did start my career as a process development engineer in semiconductor packaging. And this audience actually knows what that is back in the 90s.
Speaker 1:And, by the way, Nita quarter of a century sounds a lot longer than 25 years, but Anne's got you beat at 40 years. That's more than a quarter of a century. When you're relatively a baby, this industry.
Speaker 2:I am in the 70s, I am a baby. So that's a lot. I I count my summer jobs. You count your summer jobs. Okay. Well, because actually some of them were related to the semiconductor industries.
Speaker 1:Does that have anything to do with the fact that your parents were also in the industry? You talked about how you followed in your parents' engineering footsteps in your chapter of the book.
Speaker 2:My father was uh worked as an engineer at the Naval Research Lab. I grew up inside Washington, D.C. And so when I was graduating from high school, he said, here, fill out this application. So I had right out of high school, you know, a summer job that was then called the National Bureau of Standards. And then I went back a couple of years later and worked in one of the semiconductor divisions helping some scient scientists um build an elopsometer that they were creating for to create standards and do um experimental research there. So I had a little taste for even a summer job, right? And ellipsometers apparently is still used today in the semiconductor industry.
Speaker 1:Well, there you go. Yeah. And so then was it a natural progression for you to study engineering and go on to work at IBM?
Speaker 2:It was a natural choice because of having a father who was an engineer and having a mother who said, you know, don't get a degree in math, get a degree in engineering, you'll get paid more. Because I think that was her experience to get a degree in math and not engineering, but because she didn't have that opportunity there. That just seemed to be the natural choice. And because I took a break from going to school, I took a job at IBM and that hooked me into the semiconductor industry because I became fascinated by defects.
unknown:Okay.
Speaker 1:So that's a shared commonality of the three of you that you all had support and encouragement from your families to pursue degrees in STEM. Um, do you think you would have if you hadn't had that support?
Speaker 3:It's hard to know. I mean, it's almost like saying, if we'd been born into a different family, what path would we have taken? How could we know this? Right. I guess, I mean, having parents who are scientists, I remember early on, I don't know what, like in elementary school, we're asked to think of possible careers. And the two I thought of were musician and chemist. It just that's what occurred to me when I was nine years old or what have you. Because, like, okay, those are things that people do in my family. Right.
Speaker 1:And you've done both of those things, sort of. Sort of. Sort of, not chemist, but I mean you've been a musician. You are a musician. Yes. And you actually left the industry for a little while to focus on your music and then came back. And so, how about you? You know, how did you end up pursuing that STEM path?
Speaker 4:Funny, um, you say whether or not I'd actually pursue STEM. I think, regardless of where I was at, I always loved math. It's almost like math and numbers were always following me. And they were in my brain, and I had to think about them, and they they wanted to, they they wanted attention. Um, but it was also a combination of my parents plus uh my uh teachers when I was growing up. Recently I've been thinking about you know, my second grade teacher, my fourth grade teacher, and everybody else along the way, and they were very helpful in trying to see, oh, okay, she knows all this stuff. What else could we teach her in mathematics? And I was just naturally inclined to it. Uh, but my parents, especially my dad, like he would, you know, we my mom and my dad actually would go to the grocery store and they were like, okay, tally everything up. If you're within a quarter with tax, then uh you would get a candy. And so I was all over it, you know. My brothers and sisters were always trying. So you also had to be first. You couldn't just be, you know, you couldn't just be right, you had to be first. So it was that little bit of competition there at the grocery store for that little, you know, caramels, because I love caramels. We also would do flashcards, right? Um, subtraction, multiplication, uh, and whatnot. And so there was a lot of little games that my parents played with us uh throughout. And they were my favorites, maybe not my sisters and my brothers, but they were mine. Uh so you know, math was always there. I remember one day, you know, my dad was coming home from work and he was late. And though I loved math, I also loved reading. So I was on the in the living room sofa reading a book. I was like, where is he? And he was a little late there and he came in, uh, but he was carrying all these like you know, rolled up pieces of paper. And I'm like, well, what's that? Uh so curiosity, of course, got the better of me. I put my book down and he's like, Oh, well, I'm late because we're trying to figure out this problem at work, and this machine's not working quite right. And I was like, Well, what seems to be the problem? So got to the kitchen table, rolled out the schematics, and he started just answering my questions left and right. And as a young kid, I'm thinking, oh, I'm helping my dad, this is awesome. And I and I, you know, and he was great. Just, you know, he answered all my questions and my different curiosities. We went in roundabout circles everywhere. And the next day, he actually came home early and he was like, Yes, we fixed the problem. Uh ever since then, I've been hooked, right? I needed to solve problems and figure out how to solve problems. And I found that the best way to do it was through mathematics first and then through engineering. So that's how I ended up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Nietzsche, I think the bit in your chapter where you talk about basically discovering the concept of infinity at the age of six, that is rather unusual. And I know I have a son who's a math genius, so I can imagine I don't know that he exactly did that, but me know maybe he might, he might have already discovered it by that age. So I think there's a combination of just natural inclination and interest and being exposed to things.
Speaker 4:I was, we were going to my grandmother's house and I was just staring out the window, had forgotten my book, which met made me put it down. So then I'm just looking at the path and just imagining one number being laid down after another after another, just like bricks on the road. Then I realized I was like, hmm, I can't think of the biggest number. Like, what's the biggest number I have? It's this number. No, it's this number, no, it's this number. I can always add one to something. And I asked my parents, they're like, yeah, there's a thing, there's a concept called infinity. I was like, what? Uh and as a little kid, you don't, you know, there's a lot of terminology you don't know, a lot of concepts you don't know. But it was uh something that stayed in my head for a very long time of like, hmm, what else don't I know? And should I be thinking and daydreaming more than maybe reading so much? But uh you do a little bit of both these days.
Speaker 1:I think both are very, very important. Um, I think reading is so important for developing empathy. Um but like fiction especially. But it's funny because you all had interests in science and you all had encouragement from your parents to pursue those interests as women, as girls, which doesn't happen everywhere. I went and gave a talk at the Society of Women Engineers in Salzburg, I don't know, six or seven years ago. And one of the efforts there was to encourage parents to encourage their daughters and to get their daughters to study STEM really required parental support. So it may feel to the three of you that yeah, it was just natural, but you're very fortunate because not everybody would think that. I didn't study STEM, had no interest in studying STEM. But at the time of when I was thinking about college, there weren't a lot of girls going into engineering and math. And if they did, especially math, they were coming out and teaching. That's changed so much now. Um, how have you experienced being a woman in the industry? What has it been like for each of you?
Speaker 3:So it's interesting. In my first job out of grad school, there were actually a lot of women at the company. Um, the VP of the RD department was a woman. Um, it was also very young, like all the VPs, except for one of them, were under 35. So it was this sense of we were the young people out there to conquer something. Anyway, but there were other women around. And another thing that when I was writing my chapter and I thought back and I looked back at some of my notes from grad school, my research group at UC Berkeley was about 50-50, male-female. And that was in the material science.
Speaker 1:Material science. See, I think that's more typical of material science and chemistry because a lot of women then go on to pharmaceuticals and other forms of chemistry, they don't necessarily go to the semiconductor industry.
Speaker 3:Well, but so my research advisor was not, we weren't doing research that was going to lead that direction. So my research was on lead-free solder alloys, which that kind of naturally led me into being part of the semiconductor industry. Another group, you know, within that my advisor's group was working on aluminum alloys. So that could lead to aerospace, but one of the people who was working on aluminum ended up at applied materials. So we did end up going there. I just found that was just research that I found interesting. And so, you know, that just kind of led there. But I know, Ann, earlier you were talking about a summer job after high school. My dad, when I was in high school, worked at Linkabit, which was the founders of Linkabit eventually went to found Qualcomm. So at the time, they're working on modems. I had a summer job in like process control, working with the production planners, the production control folks. And some of it was just these little logistics about what has to go where. And also when I became an engineer, then I understood, oh, when the engineers realized, oh, they want this one little different resistor. And this was actually a lot of it was before Surface Mount, even right? These are these drop-in components, these big chips that were like this big with all the little pins on them. They change one little thing. And do they know the paperwork that they are causing? Now, obviously, they have a really good reason to change that resistor value. But then when I was an engineer, I, you know, you understand. Well, figure it out and don't change it five times because you're gonna make it a pain in the ass for the people in production control. So it was actually really cool to have the experience doing that. And you had something you wanted to say.
Speaker 2:The question of being a minority in your field is is something where over the decades I learned I pay a little attention to it because if I paid attention to every little thing, I wouldn't get my my job done. I'm noted to be big on gender inclusive or neutral language because, and the the way I see it is um language reflects the culture. If you want to change the culture, change your language. Definitely no man hours or anything. And I had to like raise my hand multiple times at Intel. It's like, why are you even printing this? Like, this is the 90s. But I also, my dad, my dad's from Brooklyn, and so he used guys a lot. But in the 80s, he sent all his children this New York Times op-ed piece that said women aren't guys. And so my father, who had three daughters, then a son, recognized, hey, I'm not doing this right, I'm gonna let my children know. And I was like, I had to make an effort to use folks. And I pointed out to people that I've learned to just reflect back the word folks and just to point it out. So I so that's one thing there. There have definitely been times when I've been assumed to be incompetent because I asked a question. And when you read Deborah Tannin's books, there's a social linguistic cultures of women ask questions to like to go off of it, but men asking questions means you don't know something and men don't want to know that, which is why there's the generalization that men don't can't ask for directions when they're lost. The other thing I decided early on is that you know, I like dresses and so I'm gonna wear them. And when I read Nitz's chapter, she said, yeah, when I decided to embrace who I was, I'm like, no more t-shirts and jeans, I'm wearing slacks and a blouse. I went, yes, I get that, right? That you you are a minority. Be who you are in terms of to be authentic, but you're also an engineer. And so be the engineer that you are. So I to me it's this balance you can't ignore that you're a minority and what happens at times. Uh, and that's also purposely when I wrote my chapter. There's only something at the beginning and at the end where I even mention that, right? I mentioned my mom, I grew up with a mom, didn't hear a mom say women can't do math, right? But at the very end, I say something about it, but I just wanted to talk about the engineering it was doing. So that's that was a conscious choice when I wrote my chapter.
Speaker 4:It's interesting being the only woman in the room. And it's happened more times than I'd like in my career. Started in, you know, at MIT, you know, being in the in the classes in electrical engineering, there's one woman out of I don't know how many men. And I was like, hmm, okay, this is interesting. And that continued all through the undergrad and grad. Actually, at Teradyne, there was another female in my group, so you know, there was five of us, and there was two, it's a good amount, 40%. Uh so I didn't think anything of it. But when I went to Broadcom, I was the first uh female first test development engineer. And it took maybe, I think, six months before the second one came into uh the test development team. And it was interesting because there was like 23 people, one female. Uh, and seven years later, when I left, there was only eight women test development engineers, but over 200 test development engineers total. So it was a small percentage. And um it didn't change when I went to Max Linear. I I did the best that I could to bring in women into my group uh and make them feel that they were comfortable there, right? So a couple of the the ladies who were at um Broadcom, they joined me at Max Linear. We we brought in product leaders and testify majors who were also female uh to help to encourage. The crazy part was when I went to synaptics and there was a VP of operations there, I increased the percentage of the company with you know women, not just by myself, but I brought in 20 people within a year. And there was a lot of females that came in, and not just the people who had used to work for me, as they did come over, uh, but new women. And they and everybody was like, how need that? How? I am the VP of operations, I have a senior director of product engineering who's a female, I have a technical director of test development who's female, and that just signals to other women that this is a safe space, that they can grow, that the company is willing to invest in women. Where sometimes, you know, other companies have bad raps for it for not doing this, but it's just kind of almost visibility. And the men on my team were like, but how did you find them? Some of them came to me, right? Because they're they noticed this and it was abnormal. But the fact that it's abnormal is a red flag. We have to help the industry so that it's no longer like a beacon, hey, come to this company because there's a female BP of operations. How do we you know ensure that we have more people, more women in leadership? And this is why I get myself involved with the Global Semiconductor Alliance Women's Leadership Initiative. I volunteer uh any chance I can for the university program to do panels, to do speaking. Uh, I'm a mentor in the women's hardware mentorship program, and I'm actually a part of their pilot program for their executive accelerator program. But each one of them is is geared towards helping to ensure that women are always open and welcome in regardless of what level they are in semiconductor companies. So it's it's super important to me.
Speaker 1:It's interesting that you mentioned um when you talked about tests. I've always noticed at every any conference that I've gone to, depending on the topic, tests always had the fewest women. There might be two other women at the 3D test conference that I would go to. And MEMS had a lot more. I don't know why, but like MEMS conferences always had way more women than tests, and then everything else fell somewhere in between. Um, it's a do you think it's harder for a woman to follow a traditional engineering and management path? And how did you navigate that corporate ladder?
Speaker 4:I think it is in the sense that we don't look, talk, sound like the people who are in management today. And it's slowly changing, right? So and I think that'll be helpful in the future. Me, myself, I was extremely lucky. I had a great uh great mentor in Mike Lechance. We worked together at Brock Palm, and he was our vice president of operation. Uh, he retired for two years, and then he went to a small company called McSenior, and he called and said, Hey Nita, I think it's time you have your own team. And I was like, okay, yeah, you're right. I have been looking for this, and I'd like to have that opportunity. And so he extended out to me, came looking for me, brought me in, but he didn't stop there. He helped me in understanding what it does this, you know, what does the politics look like? How do you expose yourself to different things, to finance, to um production, to supply chain, to executive staff. And he was very instrumental uh in actually mentoring me through that all. And so I feel extremely lucky that I had that. He's helped me since then. I I can call him at any point in time and talk to him. This is where I think mentorship and sponsorship become really important. And if you don't have one in the company that you're at, there's external people that you could reach out to in order to get a mentor or sponsor. But internally, you really need a sponsor to get you into other leadership positions in the organization. They're gonna talk about you and you need somebody who's gonna be able to talk about you in closed door situations and put your name in the in the hat.
Speaker 1:And you know, I think that goes for if you're a woman or a man, a newcomer to the industry, because first of all, your mentor was or is male, right? Um, but there's newcomers, students coming into this industry, not just women, and you might end up with young men who have women's mentors.
Speaker 2:I avoided management. I I went up the technical ladder at Intel, but that also means you as you climb up, you are leading teams on that. And you know, there were men around me. Those are the people that I mentored or gave advice to. There are ways to inspire women just by being visible and being successful. And so I had when like people who knew my name. Like I didn't know Pam Fulton, but when I met her, she obviously she knew my name because we had worked for the same department on different campuses, right? And so to me, mentoring men is just as, you know, is part of it, right? They're part of the population. And things that I learned, I mostly learned from other men, right? I'm passing that down, right?
Speaker 1:So we could also say that it's less about your gender and more about your capabilities and that you learned from other engineers and pass that down to other engineers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's kind of how I try to view it. Uh, engineering is uh craft. Craft is passed along by stories. And so I think that's also why in my chapter, I had written stories from my own blog site about, well, here's some things I did as an engineer, so I was able to live on it. But I think that's how you explain and inspire. It's like, well, this is what engineering is about, not just, oh, you get to do these cool things. Well, this is actually how we solved a problem, or hear what was cool about this technology. And to me, it's just proven we are storytelling animals. This is how you you learn. A narrative is really important. You could spout off facts or whatever, oh, I did this, but it was, you know, to me, it's the process, it's the solving the problem that is fun, right? And now I'm supporting people trying to solve technology problems, or I'm learning about technology problems and explaining them to other people, right? Explaining to my peers, well, this is what's going on about X-ray inspections through the silicon BS, right?
Speaker 1:Julia, do you think your decision to choose an entrepreneurial path had anything to do with being a woman in the industry?
Speaker 3:I would say yes. The official story I used to tell in terms of how I transitioned from being an engineer to writing, because Francoise, you know that you and I met 20 years ago at Advanced Packaging Magazine, was I was always the engineer who would write. And that is true, right? I was the one writing the articles for the trade magazines when I was an engineer. I was the one writing the quarterly reports for the government contracts. When I look back to college and my engineering clinic project for Douglas aircraft, I was doing more of the representative at Douglas and writing the final report versus doing the coding because I am not a fan of doing that. Anyway, but the part that I didn't tell until probably a podcast interview that I did in maybe 2018 was that a big part of my decision had to do with being home with young children. So my children were two and four. I was doing work on contract as an engineer. I needed to be on site more hours than I could. The younger one wouldn't nap at preschool. That's a whole longer story, but they said you have to pick them up at noon. I said, Well, I can't really do this job if I can't be on site more hours. So I said, I need something more flexible. I reached out to Jeff Demon because he and I worked at NCHIP together when I was an engineer. And he was then with Solid State Technology magazine. He said, Oh, actually, our sister publication, advanced packaging, could use somebody. So that was a job I could do flexible hours. And it played both into my strengths and to my desire for flexibility. And so it just made sense to do that. And that's kind of what I fell into doing. And sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I'd been able to stay in engineering. Who knows?
Speaker 1:I think that that is the experience that a lot of women have in this industry, especially when they start to have families. And I think that's unfortunately why a lot over COVID dropped out, um, because it was just too hard to do both. Even working from home was hard with children at home. Once you're there, they think that you're there for them all the time, right? In the last few years, there was a huge effort for diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives, bringing more women into the industry. Do you think the current U.S. administration's attack on DEI efforts will discourage young women to pursue careers in STEM?
Speaker 3:I hope not. It's interesting. I recently heard from a young woman. She graduated college in 2022, is currently a grad student, and she wants to continue work in science and actually to work in public policy. So I thought, well, that's that's really interesting. And it's an it's a strange environment right now to be doing that. But over the long haul, she's got decades ahead of her. I don't know. I think it it maybe depends more on the support that women get both at home and when they're, you know, in school. I mean, for example, Harvey Mudd College, where I went, it's now 50-50 male and female students. That was not the case when I was there. So that makes a very different environment. Then they graduate and go off to work, and then and then sometimes they find a cruel shock in the workplace. So that's another issue. But what do you all the rest of you think?
Speaker 2:I think the current administration's perspective is misguided and it's um makes no sense for decades. All the research has shown that if there are more women executives, people of color executives, or in leadership positions, a company's profitability goes up significantly. And and that's been true for decades, right? It's not just recently there. So uh if a company is looking at its numbers, then uh they should look at that. I would echo what Julia said, right? And we're examples of it. We had parents who were supportive. Also, we were in probably in school systems. I was in a school system that Montgomery County, Maryland, outside Washington DC, is one of the highly educated environments. So you're surrounded by people whose parents are also interested in in education. And so I think that's having parents, having an environment. I never had a teacher told me I can't study this, but I never uh experienced that in a learning environment.
Speaker 4:It's a really difficult question. Um and I'd like to think that all of the work that you know we've been putting into girls in STEM, women in STEM, uh will be able to, you know, to do to go through this particular roadblock at the moment. Um But it's it's interesting because there's a lot of different things that have happened. Uh recently at the GSA Wish, heard Sylvia Ancevedo talk about her time at the Girl Scouts, right? She was CEO of the US Girl Scout, and she put in the cybersecurity badge and lots of technical badges in there. So you think of all the girls in across the US who are doing Girl Scouts, who are being part of that, who are doing badges, very STEM-oriented. And then all of a sudden there was a big increase of women in cybersecurity, and they traced it back to the badges that the Girl Scouts were doing. Interesting. That's wild.
Speaker 1:This isn't that crazy. That is really great. I like to think, and when you talk about um the studies and the proof, the companies are listening to that and paying attention to that. I don't think the administration is. I don't think they have shown um a history of following the actual research. It's kind of the same thing with sustainability, as long as the companies themselves pursue that path and don't pave. I've heard people are just changing their DEI programs to calling them something else, you know.
Speaker 2:And I I think there's a the names have changed in that, but I will say that uh some companies are more successful than others and how they achieve numbers. What I saw at Intel, and a lot of us felt that they were hiring women outside in at those higher levels, they weren't promoting within. And so they were achieving their numbers, but not promoting within. I give them a ding on that one.
Speaker 1:After listening to the three of you talk and talk about who your mentors were and having worked with a lot of men in your lifetime, one of my concerns is that the new generation comes in, and then there's an us and them mentality that the women aren't embracing the fact that they're coming into traditionally a man's world and that most of the men are very happy to help them and that they're just looking at them as other engineers for the most part. When we started Semi-Sisters, it was the women who be formed semi-sisters weren't men haters. They were in this industry and had cultivated relationships with the men in this industry. And it wasn't, you know, to wear suits and look like the men, it was they just embraced that, you know, it was all part of being in the industry. And I just hope that going forward, we don't end up with sort of animosity between the men and the women in the industry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think, you know, we need to work together. But some of it is if people are making assumptions just based on their gender to find ways to dissuade those. And that kind of brings me back when I was first working for advanced packaging and I'd show up at these conferences, people would assume, oh, you must have a degree in English or journalism. And I'd say, there's nothing wrong with those. Those are perfectly fine, yeah, perfectly fine degrees to get. But no, that wasn't me. Because, and then they'd start acting sometimes like I didn't even know what a printed circuit board was. And then I'd tell them I have a PhD in material science. I did my research on lecturer solar allies, blah, blah, blah. And then their tone changes, right? And said, you know, I was a process development engineer, and all of a sudden they realized, oh, I can talk to her like a peer who just maybe happens not to be familiar with my specific situation that I'm dealing with at my company. Yay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I I will say that I have a similar experience. And I, as I started reporting or researching, I would just say, just let me tell you my background so you know where I'm coming from. And I think the other engineers and executives really appreciate being able to go deeper.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've heard them thank me, I think they like talking that deep. That's so funny because I have the flip experience because I don't have a degree in engineering and I'm always very careful to tell people that. But what I discovered that was important about my role is that everybody was super hype, super hyper-focused on what they did. And if I'd asked a question like, well, how do you test that? Or what happens if the material doesn't work in a certain way? And I realized that I was talking to people from across the supply chain, across the manufacturing process, and I was learning a little bit about a lot and putting it all together. So my job was to connect the dot as a journalist so that people who weren't reading everything and learning everything could see what was going on in other aspects of the industry. And for me, it wasn't about being a woman in this industry, it was about not being an engineer in this industry that made it difficult or made people think, oh, well, you don't really know what you're talking about. And I had a lot to prove. And now that I've proved it, I'm done.
Speaker 3:Yay, yay. And I think sometimes, Francoise, you would discount you would, I don't know, you would sometimes discount all your years of experience in the industry despite not having the engineering degrees or the you know real life experience as an engineer, where yeah, you do really learn a lot by talking to people, interviewing them, writing about the stuff. And you learn it, yeah, you said a little bit about a lot of things.
Speaker 1:I often feel the same way. We've talked about your chapters, but we haven't talked about the book itself. In all of your chapters, you all talk about the importance of communication um in engineering. Can you tell a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:I had a PhD advisor who trained us all how to give presentations. I mean, to the point where inadvertently also trained us how to give feedback on their presentations. I have training on it because I'm passionate about it and I know a lot about it. And when I prepare a presentation, I feel like I'm preparing for an Olympic event. Like I really put a lot of effort, not in just the practicing, but really thinking about what I want them to do after the presentation. I think also I'm an engineer who liked writing her status reports because my belief is engineers are paid for thinking and writing is a reflective process. I mean, you can get so caught up in doing I need to do, do, do, do, that you don't take time to reflect. And pausing and writing up just what you're doing creates such value. I would probably spend five percent of my time writing my status report. People are like, whoa, that's a lot. Like, nope, not if you think about in percentage of what I'm doing. That doesn't seem like a lot to me since I spend a hundred percent of my No, but when you'd say, but I do that, they would say you're spend four hours writing your status report. It's like, that's four hours out of 80, 100 hours of work, right? It's really not that, right? It's like that's a that's a small pause. So that's part of my belief and what those skills are so useful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I mentioned being like the engineer who would write, and that that is somewhat unusual. And having edited a lot of stuff that comes in from engineers and scientists, there's a lot of them that you realize, okay, they're really smart, but they don't do this. And some of them, I think, just believe that they're not good at writing, they can't communicate that way. Uh, you get them to try to do a presentation and they give you a slide with I don't know how many pieces of graphs and data, and nobody can even make sense of it. And so there's a great opportunity to put more training in and have that even early on. And if they didn't get that in college, you know, help people understand in their careers that if you can't explain what you're doing in ways that your colleagues or the executives or the person who has to sell the stuff can understand, it's gonna be a real block. And so we don't need to be the stereotype of the engineer who's alone in their lab or on their computer and can't communicate with anybody. And having more women in the field, I think, helps with that. The men can learn it too.
Speaker 4:That's interesting. Um, and I wish I would have had Ann's class before I left MIT because I had a big failure, right? So a few years after starting work, I was asked to give a presentation at the Teradine User Group conference. And I was like, okay, sure, how hard could it be? Man, was I wrong, right? Everyone's like, no, don't worry, it's 20 minutes, 10 slides, you'll be fine. I practice a couple of times. Uh, the day of the presentation, I went up there and I'm a Latina, I naturally speak fast. And that day, I had a 20-minute presentation went to N5. And I was so utterly embarrassed. I was like really embarrassed. I hid away for a little bit, but my boss came and found me. He said, Nitza, we will we will fix this. Don't worry, we will fix this. And so we we, you know, once I calmed down, we talked about different strategies of how best I could be a better presenter, a better speaker. And it was always talk in our group meetings. Um, be sure to talk at least once in any meeting I attended. But then most importantly, talk to random strangers. While ordering my morning coffee, uh, I would make sorts of all sorts of stories. And when I was in Boston, there was a Dunkin' Donuts on every corner. So that became my little ritual before going to work is go and tell the story. And that just made me feel more comfortable. Uh, the crazy thing, like 10 years later, I had an engineer who couldn't do uh a five-minute presentation, and so I was like, hmm, I need to do something about this. And then a year later, my team was presenting at a conference, and the two gentlemen, not male or famous gentlemen, turned their back to the audience and I was like, I really need to do something about this. And so I went and embarked on a two-year journey with my team to get them to a higher level of communication. And we started small, right? Five minutes, just who you are as an individual, and then talk about anything you'd like, and then you know, what you're doing, working on, and you know, we escalated the amount of time they did this. And it helped both uh, you know, the men and the women in my team just feel more confident in themselves, being able to communicate in meetings when it didn't matter of whether or not you're presenting something, just having a conversation, asking questions, and then presenting anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour to 90 minutes, and they all do well now. And so I really love that I failed because it put me on this path and on this journey to help others be better at communicating. Uh, but it really sucked that day, let me tell you. It was really pretty bad.
Speaker 1:I love that story. Can you each just summarize one reason why you think people should read this book, women or men?
Speaker 2:Because over 30 years ago, there was a book published called Journeys of Women in Science and Engineering, No Universal Contents. I know for three of the editors, they basically went around and asked all these women scientists and engineers these questions. And so they're kind of little biochapters. But a lot of these women are really famous. Vera Rubin, the astronomer, and but what I like about this book, these are more, we are more ordinary women. We're like, we're we're never gonna get the Nobel Prize or a prize on that, but we're doing work. And I think there's value in having role models who are like seem like more like regular people. Like they're not, you know, we're not like this big, you know, uh famous person in our field or anything like that. And so I think that's the value in the book is hearing people's career paths, women's career paths, who, you know, um are just regular engineers or scientists.
Speaker 1:People can identify with that more. Yeah, that they could actually do it.
Speaker 3:There are a lot of diverse perspectives within the broad women in STEM umbrella. And it's not there's just one path you need to follow. And so I would say, especially for well, for young women thinking about their careers, there's like, oh, here's some examples of women who have done this. Uh for maybe readers who are a little bit older or maybe thinking of a career change. Here's again, also examples. And even for, say, the young men to say, there's some really smart women out there, and they're gonna be your colleagues, and they their voices deserve to be heard.
Speaker 4:Actually, it's funny. Ann had sent me a message saying, Hey, I think you should be a part of this. And I was like, Why should I write my story? Why me? And you you have to go through a little bit of self-reflection, and then I start thinking about, well, I have a lot of godchildren, I have a lot of kids that I've spoiled, and I want to be an example for them. I want them to be able to say, my Nina, my tia, uh, she did something else, right? She's an engineer, she does all sorts of science-y stuff, but she also wrote a chapter in a book that I can point to, that I can hand off to somebody else. Uh, and I wanted to, you know, be that person that somebody's reading about. And then they're like, oh, you know, that Nietzsche, she did something cool. I want to do something like her. And so it was an interesting kind of journey to go on. And it was it all started with a simple invitation for man, and and then going through this whole journey. Uh, so it it's nice to hold that physical book in your hand and then hand it to someone else and say, This is my story. And then they start to read about it. They read start, maybe start with your story, but then they go to Julia's and then they go to Ann's and then to other women within the book, and then saying, just like Julia was mentioning, everybody does things a little differently. So I don't have to go in a straight line to get from point A to point B. I can go in as many directions as I like, and I can end up where I'd like to end up. So I think that's why I I like being part of this book.
Speaker 1:I like the fact that it covers all different opportunities in STEM because I think sometimes there's a disconnect between what you study in college and university or even high school and how you can put that to work as a job to earn a living, doing something that you're passionate about. Because when you do something that you're passionate about, it feels less like work, right? So I want to thank all of you for joining me today. I want to direct listeners to if you want to learn more about this book, you can go to strategic reliability solutions.com slash empowering women in STEM pioneering paths to shape the future. And we'll also be putting links in the show notes for where you can learn more, where you can buy the book, um, and to any of these websites that um people want to go. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Hey everyone. Only three more episodes to go for season five of the 3D Insights podcast. Next week, we bring you the last in a series of episodes from Nordson Test and Inspection recorded live at Producttronica. Our final two episodes will be in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Semicon Europa. The first features an interview with Semi-Europe's Leif Altimime, Luke Vandenhoop of IMEC, and Christian Koitsch of ESMC. And our farewell episode will feature conversations with our member companies and will discuss the future of advanced packaging in Europe. There's lots more to come, so tune in next time to the 3D Insights podcast. The 3D Insights podcast is a production of 3D Insights LLC.