Catherine Roome

I lead the organization. That means every day I have to do two things: have the courage to make decisions, and also be very open.  I develop strategies to inspire employees to innovate and be creative. I also work hard to help the teams around me be stronger individuals and continue to grow their confidence and skills.

As an engineer, my career has changed from ‘managing myself’, to ‘managing others’, and now to ‘managing an enterprise”. When I was a junior engineer, I used my technical knowledge to deliver projects. For example, working in northern Pakistan, I had a key role in connecting climate instruments in the field to a communications network. These instruments were used for predicting water inflow into hydroelectric dams.

Early on in my career I was just beginning to use people skills, as every project means you work with others to understand how to solve a problem. As I began working as a project engineer, my people skills became even more important. As a project engineer, I became a “manager of others”. This meant I was responsible for a larger portfolio of technical projects. It also mean that now I had to figure out who on my team would work on them. It also mean having to decide how to best support team members with the encouragement, resources and planning that would make everyone successful.

As a project engineer, I also had to learn how to look farther out in terms of timeline, and to consider how my whole team’s actions impacted others. Eventually I became a leader of an enterprise. This meant I was responsible for multiple teams, some of whom were technical, but also finance teams, communications teams, and planning teams. I also had many different, sometimes competing areas of accountability - including operating different energy generating stations, and being responsible for hundreds of people. That meant I still had to understand the technical issues, but now almost all my skills were focused on developing amazing, talented people and giving them the support and space they needed to be successful.

With a wider influence though, what I had to do was become an even better communicator. I learned how important it was that I show others what was important, not just say it. In other words, my decisions needed to signal the values that were important, as I could no longer see every individual’s work. The farther away a leader is from the work, the more open and transparent they must be – to show their humanity and listen even more intently to what is required.

I feel lucky to have a STEM degree. It has taught me how to solve a problem, how to break it down into its parts, and to focus on what is most important. I have also learned that everything is a system – a project is part of a technical system in order for the whole thing to work. A team in an organization is part of a system of organizing work. Now I use my engineering creativity to design new ways of inspiring people.