Dallas SWE has 2 exciting events coming up this month to jump into the new fiscal year. We look forward to seeing everyone there!
Dallas SWE FY20 Officer Meet and Greet Brunch
Save the date for the Dallas SWE FY20 Officer meet and greet brunch on Sunday, August 25 at 12 PM, location TBD! Food and drinks will be available for individual purchase. Registration link and additional details can be found here.
August Professional Development: Networking Night at PepsiCo & Frito Lay
Join Dallas SWE for our first professional development event of the year with PepsiCo and Frito Lay on August 27 at 6 PM at the PepsiCo and Frito Lay Headquarters. Registration link and additional details can be found here.
First and foremost, on behalf of the Dallas SWE Executive Council, welcome to FY20! The end of this fiscal year will mark the 70th anniversary of the Society of Women Engineers, which began in 1950. I am proud to be part of this organization of intelligent, beautiful, and supportive women; I am equally humbled and honored to serve as your Dallas SWE President for my second term.
At the beginning of the fiscal year, the FY19 Executive Council transitioned roles and responsibilities to our current FY20 Council. As we’ve traditionally done, both groups came together to discuss best practices and lessons learned, while brainstorming ideas for a successful FY20. With the FY20 Executive Council settling into their respective roles and providing enthusiastic direction, I am looking forward to another year of amazing professional development, social activities, and outreach activities to come! We’ll keep you posted on all our upcoming events through our mailing list (sign up on dallaswe.org, if you haven’t already) and through social media; connect with us via Facebook,Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram.
Pictured, front left to right: Rana Karimi (VP of Membership), Barbara Read (Collin College SWE Counselor), Katie Mills (Treasurer), Zaineb Ahmad (President), Shelley Stracener (Investment Committee), Amanda Alsbrook (Executive VP). Not Pictured: Thi Dao (VP of Outreach), Sammy Zellner (Secretary)
FY20 has already started strong with our participation at Moon Day at the Frontiers of Flight Museum on July 20 (recap coming soon), celebrating its 50th anniversary this year! In August, we have a social and professional development meeting planned. The FY20 officers would love to meet-and-greet with our members at brunch on Sunday, August 25 (click here for more details). On August 27, join us at PepsiCo for a joint meeting to kick off our professional development series for this year.
As excited as I am for this year, I do want to take a moment to recognize every FY19 officer, committee chair, and committee member for her hard work and dedication to our Dallas SWE section. Thank you for all that you have done! Your efforts have not gone unnoticed and Dallas SWE is a strong, vibrant, and successful section because of you.
For our members, your involvement has also not gone unnoticed. We wouldn’t be such a great section without each and everyone of you. At the end of FY19, we sent around a membership survey and we are happy to report that most of you see value in your SWE membership and enjoy the Dallas SWE membership experience. We reaffirmed that our membership is highly diverse, with members from different walks of life, ethnic and educational backgrounds, LGBTQ, and working across multiple disciplines and industries in the area. Many of you expressed your happiness in our activities, including professional development, outreach, and social events. Varying location of meetings and events has come up over many years by a few members. Our officers try to take into account various locations when planning meetings and make decisions based on the location of our membership (see heat map below) and past event history, which we have tracked for several years now. That being said, if you are located in an area that does not get frequent events and have ideas on locations, please do reach out to us and let us know. It’ll help us organize events and show your interest in hosting events in your area! To make it even easier to participate, we aim to have a conference call number available at least one Professional Development meeting this year. We still encourage everyone who can attend to do so in person, but this may help those who would not otherwise have the opportunity to attend. Let us know what you think!
As a reminder, please renew your memberships for FY20, if you haven’t done so already. SWE membership is an affordable $100. As members, you’ll get free access to Dallas SWE events, amazing webinars, and the career center, as well as discounts to local and regional conferences, and so much more. Plus, you’ll be part of the largest network of women engineers (+40,000 members strong). Click here for a step by step guide on how to renew.
Lastly, do you have 30 minutes to help out Dallas SWE? Are you looking for ways to socialize, hone your leadership skills, get involved in SWE, or just do something new? With any time commitment, we have a committee for you! We could use your help with planning and coordinating events, outreach activities, fundraising, awards, etc…. and yes, all in as little as 30 minutes a month! Being a volunteer driven organization, every little bit helps. Click here for descriptions of committees and fill out the FY20 Committee Interest Survey. A Dallas SWE Officer will be in touch with you soon.
We look forward to another wonderful year for Dallas SWE and seeing you at a future event!
On May 19th, SWE Outreach joined the Dallas Wings women’s
basketball team and several STEM partners in their first ever STEM Expo. We partnered with organizations including
NSBE, SHP, Girls in STEM, and Frito Lay at the College Park Center. We brought both the Knock down the Castle
Wall and Foil Boat Challenges. The
smiling faces of the young girls and boys (and parents) that tried our
experiments make it so worthwhile. We’d
like to extend a warm thank you to the 11 volunteers who donated their time Sunday
to encourage the young girls and boys to dream, explore, and create. We’re also grateful for the first time
volunteers and new SWE members who came out to encourage future engineers!
The Dallas SWE Book Club will be meeting at the Egg and I to discuss this month’s book! All are welcome regardless of if you’ve read the selection. Please join for great networking, brunch and discussion.The egg and I restaurant,3328 E Hebron Pkwy #100,Carrollton TX.
We are pleased to announce that our FY20 Dallas SWE Leadership
Team has been elected from our election running May 1-30. Thanks to everyone
who made their voices heard!
Your FY20 Dallas SWE Leadership Team:
President – Zaineb
Ahmad
Executive Vice
President – Amanda Alsbrook
Vice President of
Membership – Rana Karimi
Vice President of
Outreach – Thi Dao
Treasurer – Katie
Mills
Secretary – Sammy
Zellner
Investment Committee
Member – Shelley Stracener
Your
new officers and Investment Committee members will start their terms on July 1,
2019, and will have a leadership transition meeting. They’ll be doing some
preliminary planning for events throughout the next fiscal year. Take a couple
of minutes to fill out an important
survey concerning what you’d like to see from Dallas SWE! Don’t forget to renew
your membership for FY19 at www.swe.org.
Thank you!
Dallas SWE FY19 Nominating Committee
Katia Gomez, Amanda
Posadas, Kim Concillado, Malia Kawamura
May’s professional development meeting was held May 16, 2019 at the Coffe House Cafe. After networking and getting to know each other, Nandika D’Souza began her presentation. Professor D’Souza’s presentation titled “Unleashing your emotional intelligence, grit for an excellence mindset EIGEM values” gave us an overview with twist on several books on the topic of emotional intelligence. Professor D’Souza discussed how the term “emotional intelligence” has developed through variations of books and papers. Throughout the presentation attendees engaged in a variation of emotional intelligence assessments based on several of these books. As the presentation wrapped up, a room wide conversation developed around each other’s results with the overall goal to improve not only ourselves but each other.
