Attendees heard presentations from three inspiring and informative speakers: The Value of a Mentor by Gina Otts, Verizon; Change Your Mind, Change Your Life by Jonathan Jones; and The Art of the Interview, Connie Smith, BNSF. At lunch former and current interns ranging from high school student to college student to professional participated in the Panel discussion “The Value of a Summer Internship.” Several panelists became interns through the National Academy Foundation (NAF) program. Following the panel, professionals provided 1-on-1 mentoring, resume review, and mock interview practice to the students. Connie Smith of BNSF awarded scholarships to one male student and one female student. Scholarship judges from SWE, NSBE, and SHPE all helped evaluate the applications and pick the winners. The conference was capped off with a UTD campus tour for the students. Thanks to all the students, educators, and professional volunteers who turned out for this event.
WE18, the world’s largest conference for women engineers, was held in Minneapolis, MN from October 18-20 and was a huge success with over 14,000 attendees! Dynamic speakers and panels, a colossal job fair, the SWE Boutique, limitless networking opportunities, and the outreach event Invent it! Build it! on Saturday made it so there was never a dull moment. Dallas SWE was represented by about 15 members. We were even able to reconnect with several past members who have moved to others areas of the country.
We had several local members who presented:
Uche Maple, Rockwell Collins – Soar to your Maximum Potential
Nandika D’Souza, Ph.D, University of North Texas – How to get Research Funded
Kate Van Dellen, New Trees Education – Mom-trepreneur: Entrepreneurial Parents Panel
Stephanie Watts Butler, TI – Stand Out! How to Pitch Yourself and Own the Career Fair
Awards
Letia Blanco was recognized for her technical, leadership, and community service accomplishments with the SWE Distinguished New Engineer Award. Letia was the founding chair of the SWE Design Your World – STEM Conference for Girls and it has has been presented 12 times to date, impacting more than 1,800 girls.
Anushka Saran, an 11th grader at Plano Senior High School, received a prestigious SWENext Global Innovator Award. One of only 5 SWENext members to receive this award, she was recognized for her outstanding contributions to promoting girls in STEM and her strong academic and extracurricular record.
Samantha (Sammy) Zellner, a graduate student at UNT earning a Masters in Material Science and Engineering, won first place in the graduate poster competition for Design of a Corrosion Measurement System of SiC at High Temperatures.
The Dallas Section itself won the SWE Mission Award Gold – Professional for the second year in a row and SWE Mission Best Practices – Outreach. The Gold award is the highest overall award level for the new SWE Mission Award structure and recognizes our section’s commitment to SWE‘s Core Values and Strategic Goals based on results from our activities across 10 categories. The Best Practices – Outreach is a category-specific award recognizing our section’s dedication to community involvement, especially with the Design Your World events.
Personal Reflections from Attendees
“It was great to be back at the annual conference as a Dallas SWE member to recruit on behalf of my company (TI). I enjoyed getting to interact with many students, professionals, and professors at the career fair and hospitality suite.” –Amber
“I had the pleasure of assembling a dream team panel this year at We18 of entrepreneurial moms (see picture). We talked about how we started our companies and the different demands on work-life balance as an entrepreneur. I was recently re-elected to the senate, so I participated in the senate meeting on Saturday. One of the discussion points that came up was when we think long-term and someday we reach gender parity, what will SWE’s purpose be? (If people have ideas, please send them my way)” –Kate Van Dellen
“This was my ninth Society Conference: every location and attendee contingent has its own unique atmosphere and Minneapolis was no exception! I especially enjoyedcelebrating with our Dallas SWE Member award winner, meeting with SWE leadership, and going to informative sessions. My favorite session each year is the State of Women in Engineering panel, summarizing SWE’s latest research and literature review of statistics and struggles of women in STEM. I highly recommend conference attendance for a new perspective on SWE: you haven’t experienced all SWE has to offer until you attend a Society Conference!” – Shelley Stracener
“This was my first conference, so it was a new but completely awesome and positive experience. There were so many opportunities to meet people and make friends, search for new career opportunities, learn, and be inspired. I wish I could have cloned myself so I could have done everything! I’m so glad I attended and definitely plan on being at We19 in Anaheim next year.” -Caroline Abadie
“The Society’s WE conferences are events I look forward to every year and WE18 was no different! I got to attend some wonderful session ranging from technical talks to professional development to SWE business. It’s always fun going with my fellow Dallas SWEsters, but also catching up with friends from college or those I’ve met at conference over the years. We also celebrated Dallas SWE winning the Professional section Best Practice for Outreach Award and the Professional section Gold Award and one of our members, Letia Blanco, November Member of the Month, winning the Distinguished New Engineers award! I hope everyone makes an effort to join us at WE19 in Anaheim, CA!” -Zaineb Ahmad
“The conference was a ton of fun and full of so many opportunities! This was my 4th Society level conference to attend, and it continues to be more fulfilling and enriching every year. I’m am beyond amazed that I was able to win the graduate poster competition. Even more so, I am proud to represent UNT, Dallas, and Ft. Worth SWE at the conference. ” – Sammy Zellner
“This was my first conference and I was overwhelmed with how amazing the whole experience was! I’ve only been a part of SWE for about a year and a half, and I realized what a significant part it is now playing in my life. I only wish I would have found it sooner! At the conference, I was able to create new relationships with local members I had not met before, spend time with SWEsters, see a few SWE friends that have moved away from DFW and connect with multiple new people I hope to keep in touch with in the future. It was wonderful being surrounded by driven, intelligent female engineers and learning from them. Everyone was excited to be there! And you can’t beat all the free swag at the career fair! (Make sure you have extra room or an extra small bag so you can get everything on the plane 😉 Anaheim, CA, here WE19 come!” -Amanda Alsbrook
Sammy accepting her First Place win at the Graduate Poster Competition!
SWE Officers, Zaineb and Amanda
Dallas SWE Members at the Awards Banquet
Opening Keynote
Dallas SWE Members gather for a group photo
Dallas SWE Member Letia Blanco wins Distinguished New Engineer Award
Congratulations, Letia!
Congratulations, Sammy, on winning First Place at the Graduate Poster Competition!
On Saturday, October 20th, Dallas SWE members gathered for a social brunch at Whiskey Cake in Plano. We mingled over delicious food and drinks while getting to know more about our talented and diverse members. We conversed about hiking and notable treks taken in the great outdoors, a mutual appreciation for yoga as an exercise physically and mentally, travel and recent voyages overseas for both work and leisure, and even doing a little jiu jitsu as great self-defense! As always, this brunch provided great conversation, lots of laughs, and excellent networking amongst our engineers!
Be on the lookout for more great socials and our upcoming annual Holiday Party in December!
With our Member of the Month program, Dallas SWE seeks to recognize some of our non-officer members whose technical contributions, leadership accomplishments, or SWE volunteer service are particularly noteworthy. If you would like to nominate a Dallas SWE member for his/her contributions, please email us.
Our November Member of the Month is Letia Blanco!
Letia Blanco recently accepted a job at Rockwell Collins and will be joining their team on November 26th.
A SWE member since 2008, Letia is most renowned in Dallas SWE as the founding chair of the SWE Design Your World – STEM Conference for Girls. Partnering with Raytheon Women’s Network, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Women in Technology International, she recruited more than 110 female engineer volunteers from the area to create 10 tracks of original hands-on STEM activities for elementary school girls. She also recruited Anousheh Ansari, the first female commercial astronaut, as a keynote speaker. The conference drew 200 fourth- and fifth-grade girls. Special emphasis was placed on reaching girls from low-income communities, and 60 percent of conference attendees were provided scholarships and transportation. The Design Your World STEM Conference for Girls has been presented 12 times to date, impacting more than 1,800 girls. Letia’s pioneering influence on this event was a great injection of energy into our Dallas SWE section and our local communities.
In addition to her Design Your World event planning experience, Letia has been a dedicated volunteer at other community events. She has served Dallas SWE an initiative lead, as vice president of outreach and as executive vice president. Letia Blanco is a charismatic guest speaker, panelist, and mentor to Dallas SWE and local Collegiate SWE sections, as well as local aerospace and robotics organizations. Those who attend her talks find her vitality and enthusiasm quite contagious: she really knows how to engage an audience and inspire them to take action in their own lives!
Most recently, Letia was awarded the SWE Distinguished New Engineer Award at the WE18 Society Conference in Minneapolis, MN. Several Dallas SWE Members celebrated with her as she was recognized for her technical, leadership, and community service accomplishments.
Letia is also a passionate advocate for women in engineering and SWE at her employer, Raytheon. In 2014, Ms. Blanco received the Raytheon President’s iVolunteer coin for exceptional community involvement and the 2017 Raytheon STAR Award for Advocacy for Women in STEM. A few of our recent Dallas SWE leadership team members first came to SWE based on her recommendation, and we are grateful for her influence and drive to share SWE’s mission with her coworkers.
Letia Blanco is a systems design engineer and an integrated product team lead in the Space and Airborne Systems business segment of Raytheon Company in McKinney, Texas. She is responsible for executing all aspects of the advanced targeting forward-looking infrared upgrade program, including cost, schedule, and technical performance. She was formerly the lead engineer for the multi-spectral targeting system (MTS) C-130 program suite, tasked with creating and maintaining the technology road map, leading requirements development, integrating new technologies, production execution, and sustaining technical support.
Blanco joined Raytheon in 2008 and has worked as a mechanical engineer, integration verification and validation engineer, software systems engineer and a systems design engineer for a variety of ground based and airborne electro-optical infrared systems. A level 6 certified program manager, Blanco has completed BD600 series capture manager training and proposal writing certifications. A three time conference chair, she is the primary inventor for patent 11-2640-US-NP and the author of three peer-reviewed journal publications and eight technical symposia presentations.
Letia Blanco is a graduate of the Raytheon Leadership Development Program and a recipient of the 2014 Women to Watch: Up and Coming Award for Raytheon North Texas. Blanco was the Raytheon corporate-level winner of the 2015 YESNET Technology Network Innovation Challenge and the recipient of the 2012 NCS Excellence in Engineering and Technology Team Award.
Letia received her Bachelor’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Texas at Arlington. She was named a Top 1% University Scholar by the College of Engineering and voted “Most Valuable Student” by her graduating class. She led her senior design team to develop a SMART bandage which won the ASM International Engineering Design Competition.
Dallas SWE is in search of a new VP of Outreach! This is an excellent opportunity to join the executive committee and gain leadership experience. In this high impact, rewarding role, you will be responsible for:
creating, organizing, and managing exciting outreach events,
coordinating and managing the scholarship and certificates program,
providing oversight and guidance to the committee chairs,
performing other outreach related duties
Come be a part of the best STEM outreach program around. This role requires existing Dallas SWE membership and experience in outreach and/or organization/event planning. Please contact dallas.swe@gmail.com if you’re interested!
Halliburton Women Sharing Excellence (WSE) and Dallas Society of Women Engineers (SWE) invite you to join them for a networking dinner, presentation, and tour! The Halliburton Carrollton Technology and Manufacturing Center is home to state-of-the art testing and design facilities, as well as a manufacturing center and material science laboratory. Get an inside look at this cutting edge site.
Closed Toe Shoes must be worn.
Please arrive 15 minutes early to allow for Security Check in.
Date: November 13th
Time: 6-8pm
Location: Halliburton
2601 E Belt Line Rd
Carrollton, TX 75006
Note: registrants must report to Halliburton security from Columbian Club Drive, as entrance from Beltline road may be closed after 5 pm.
