Michele Heyward: A hurricane and engineering camp made her an engineer

Michele Heyward is a civil engineer who built the U.S. power grid. Now she's a tech startup founder building the future of work at PositiveHire. 

Michele grew up in rural South Carolina in a three-bedroom house full of kids. She had four siblings. She describes herself as the weird kid, really good at math.

Encouraged to pursue science and engineering, she went to engineering camp 30 years ago at 13 years old.

“But what really got me sold on engineering was when I was 12, a Category Five hurricane hit South Carolina and my mom's younger sister and her family live near Charleston where the hurricane hit...They had a newer brick home that was destroyed during the hurricane while they were in it. I couldn't understand: how could a home that new be destroyed by something called a hurricane? And that's how I literally got interested in civil engineering and decided to major in it.”

She learned about people who had designed an indestructible egg-shaped home on the coast, and she thought,

“How do you build a home or structure like that? It really started me into the path of civil engineering.” 

After working in the corporate world for many years, Michele got tired of being “the only.”

“Something that is really common, unfortunately, is the ‘only’ experience for a lot of Black, Latinx, and indigenous women in STEM. What I mean is you're the only one, you're the only Black woman. You're the only Latina engineer on your team, group, department, company. For years out in construction, I was the only Black woman engineer. I was only Black woman, period…so many other women quit.”

Michele stayed at her her previous environmental engineering firm for 12 years.

“I told myself somebody else is going to come who doesn't have the wherewithal to do what you've done this amount of time by yourself being the only.”

Then she received a message from God that said, “you're not supposed to be here.”

“I cried. I'd been through so much being the only, but it was time for me to go and build out something else…now it's time to go execute. It was time for me to go put in the work.”

Michele founded a company, PositiveHire, that connects Black, Latinx, and Indigenous women who are experienced scientists, engineers, and technology professionals to management roles.

“As a Black woman engineer I've seen companies complain they can't find diverse talent, when their real issue is retaining Black, Latinx, and Indigenous talent in STEM. The issue isn't a pipeline problem but the lack of responsibility that management teams have in creating workplaces which will retain and attract Black, Latinx, and Indigenous talent.”

Michele and I had a fruitful discussion about what it’s like working in spaces run by white men and how important it is to change the culture of a company before focusing on recruiting people of color. We also talked about how to write inclusive job descriptions and postings that bring in diverse candidates.

Please drop me a line at marie@fertilegroundcommunications.com to let us know what you thought about this episode.

I help professional services firms avoid BORING and boost employee engagement, productivity, and readership. I translate technical, complex, and lackluster language into accessible, dynamic, story-driven text. Get known in your industry through outstanding thought leadership content. Walk your talk through outstanding, effective communications with your employees and clients. 

Fertile Ground Communications LLC is a certified women-owned business enterprise, disadvantaged business enterprise, and emerging small business.

Transcript

What really sold engineering for Michele Hayward was when she was 12 and a category five hurricane hit South Carolina. Her aunt's brick house was destroyed. Michele couldn't understand: how could a home that new be destroyed by a hurricane? That's what got her interested in civil engineering.

Welcome to the Finding Fertile Ground podcast, where I discover stories of people finding their fertile ground through sheer grit and resilience. I'm your host Marie Gettel-Gilmartin. And this podcast is brought to you by Fertile Ground Communications. I help professional services firms avoid boring and boost employee engagement, productivity, and readership.

I transform technical, complex, or lackluster language into accessible, dynamic, story-driven text. I alternate this Finding Fertile Ground podcast with my other podcast Companies that Care, which is about business leaders making a difference in the world. Check out www.fertile grouncommunications.com for more details.

This week on the Finding Fertile Ground podcast, I interview Michele Hayward, who worked in the engineering industry before striking out to start her own company. After working in the corporate world for many years, Michele got tired of being the only. Not only was she the only Black woman engineer, but she was often the only Black person.

Now she runs a company called Positive Hire, which connects Black, Latinx, and Indigenous women who are experienced scientists, engineers, and technology professionals to management roles.Let's meet Michele.

Marie: Hey Michele. Welcome to the Finding Fertile Ground podcast.

[00:01:38] Michele: Thank you, Marie. It is great to be here. 

[00:01:40] Marie: We have both been immersing ourselves in Liz Simpson's Big Money Movement program, and I'm really glad to hear that you've been around for a while. So obviously it's worked well for you. 

[00:01:50] Michele: It has the clarity and I am very much a process-driven person being an engineer. So it has really helped me. Some people in tech are certain way, certain types of personalities. Liz can deal with me so I'm still here. Not everybody can deal with my personality type. 

[00:02:10] Marie: I've worked with engineers all my career…I think they're fascinating. I think that the really interesting thing about engineers is that you're obviously so creative because you have to think so differently and inventively to be an engineer, but that doesn't always come across in people's personalities. But I know what's behind that.

[00:02:28] Michele: It is solving problems. And that's the most interesting part about engineering. If you are already looking for instructions, it's not the best field to be in, even though we have standards and we have certain boundaries that we have to meet to, depending on what we may be designing or building engineering, it still within that. You're able to still be creative and really think about what's the best solution given the parameters you have.

I wasn't even on the design side, I was on the construction side and I would be looking at the 2d drawing or 3d models, saying, hey you structural engineers. Yeah. This doesn't work. This is what we think would work better in the field, and good engineers, listen and have a conversation because they have stamped that drawing. The bad engineers that I've had to work with.

Like, you can't change that. We'll red line your drawings and send it back to you to update it. But we are here literally in real life and you were doing something conceptualized and you really have to understand how to work with people in that aspect. So I always tell design engineers, you want to do design work? They say, yes, spend the first year or two of your career on the construction side, go do design work. I said, because you will become a much better engineer. And understanding how to really take this concept and build it and what could be happening in the field or in the construction site and how to better ask questions.

They always looked at me like, I'm crazy. You are a much better design engineer because you'll know how to talk to people. You'll know how to ask certain questions and you'll know who's really to cut corners and who's really trying to figure out the safest way to get something built according to what you originally have planned and, and design.

And it's very difficult to do that, especially if you don't have very good emotional intelligence and communication skills. Is it better to go out to the job site and spend time there before you become a design engineer? Those are the best design engineers I've worked with. Yeah. 

[00:04:32] Marie: And some engineers are not very good at seeing another person's perspective. Some of them are great at that. Because I'm a communications person, I was the one who was trying to help them explain themselves. I would be trying to edit their work or I would be trying to help them with proposals or various things. And sometimes, you know, they were stubborn about the way they wanted to phrase something was like, yeah, you don't need to use all those words. Other people are not going to follow you if you use all those words. 

[00:05:02] Michele: Are you editing my blogs? I use 12 words instead of five. 

[00:05:08] Marie: But it's not just engineers. Really, the STEM field in particular. I'm working on this startup right now. It's an app called our.love and it's for couples to improve their relationship. So I am taking these blogs that were written by scientists. Some of them are therapists, they've got more of a science background and they are just like engineers, right. There's just way too many words, way too technical. It's like, this is an app. We need to make it a much lower grade level. We need to make it accessible and fast for people to get the information. So that's where I come in. 

[00:05:41] Michele: I love it. I love it. I mean, I need to hire you. 

[00:05:45] Marie: Yeah. So, let's start with our interview questions. I can't wait to dive in. So let's start back at the beginning. I like to always ask people about their childhood. Could you share with our listeners about your childhood, where you grew up and what was your childhood and family like? 

Michele: Wow. I grew up in rural South Carolina house full of kids and I mean that literally. Three sisters and one brother. So my parents have five kids, so a family of seven and a three bedroom house.

That's so much not fun, but it brings about the ability to share and understand and respect spaces. But on top of that, my mother was an educator. She taught in public school here, but then she started her own daycare. So she ran that for over 30 years. So when I say a house full of kids, my mother would have another 25 or so in her business.

[00:06:35] Michele: And it was great for us growing up because we were also just always surrounded by other children, but we were also in a neighborhood full of kids growing up. We didn't have street lights, we didn't have sidewalks, but it was still houses. And most people own the houses they lived in, which was really great. I loved having that backyard. And now that I look back at it, I have an older nephew, he's 29, and he has two younger brothers that were born when he was 13 and 14. And he was just in a different place. He never wanted to be an only child.

He asked his parents for a sister; he ended up with two little brothers, so that's a whole other story, but he always would be amazed at how we grew up together. He was a teenager when I was born, he was my older sister's son. And he was just amazed about how we shared books and we played music together and we fought and he wanted that experience.

It's really interesting when he got older, he was like, no, I want a sister. I don't want a brother here with two brothers, but understanding what having siblings meant to him made me really be happy to a certain. 'cause some of my friends are really great only children, but he really wanted a sibling because of how he saw our relationships.

[00:07:48] Marie: Oh, that makes you appreciate more what you have 

[00:07:50] Michele: It does, especially now that I'm older. 

[00:07:52] Marie: So when you were a kid, were you drawn to science and technology?

[00:07:56] Michele: I was really good at math. I was the weird kid. My mom and my siblings will tell the story. I learned my alphabets going A through Z. And then I started learning them Z through A; I was bored. I didn't have anything to do. And so I would find ways to challenge myself. And I was really good at math.

I did pretty good at science. Then, this was, late eighties, early nineties, it was like, if your kid is score really well in these areas, you should put them in, STEM and science and engineering. And so that's where I was steered since I was probably 10 or 12, I did my first engineering program.

I was probably just 13 years old. So 30 years last year was when I started my first engineering camp. So it started really, really early. 

What really got me sold on engineering as a kid when I was 12, a category five hurricane hit the state of South Carolina and my mom's younger sister and her family live near Charleston where the hurricane came on.

They had a newer brick home that was destroyed during the hurricane while they were in it. I couldn't understand how could a home that new be destroyed by something called a hurricane. And that's how I literally got interested in civil engineering and decided to major in it.

So I always tell people, a hurricane made me a civil engineer at 12 years of age. It really piqued my interest. Like I remember looking at a 60 Minutes story about these people that had designed a egg shaped home on the coast on a beach. So the winds would literally go around it and not try to rip it to the corners and everything.

And I was like, why would you build something like that? How do you even build a home like that? Or structure like that. And so it was things like that. It really started me into the path of civil engineering and I ended up in construction before I left corporate. 

[00:09:52] Marie: Wow. That is such a cool story. I love it --a hurricane.

And the other thing that really strikes me about your story is back when I was at CH2M HILL, we worked really closely with programs like Girls, Inc. that tried to get girls into those types of engineering camps. So you're one of those success stories. I love it.

[00:10:08] Michele: Yeah, I guess. So how I realized it was 30 years. I spoke at one of the first engineering and science camps I did. I was a speaker last summer. 

Marie: Oh, how wonderful. That's like full circle. 

[00:10:26] Michele: Exactly. I was like, I've come full circle. Oh my God. Yeah. 

[00:10:29] Marie: You must have been such an inspiration to those girls, man. That is so cool. 

[00:10:33] Michele: I don't know if I was an inspiration as I was like, let's just talk about who has the best engineering program.

[00:10:40] Marie: but just your existence must be an inspiration. You started out in engineering camp, right. And now you're a successful engineer, that's very inspiring. And I know that, with trying to reach girls with STEM, that middle school and high school are the real key periods where you want to be giving them those opportunities. 

[00:10:57] Michele: It is. And the interesting thing is I read the statistics, of course, and I have three nieces, one’s middle school, one's high school. One is very artistic. Really creative with paint, colors, and different things. The other one is very analytical and how we really found out one year their Christmas gifts got switched.

The one who's really artistic ended up with a set of Legos. And she was like, what do I do with these? And the one that is analytical, ended up with a jewelry making kit. 

Marie: Oh my gosh, that's hilarious. 

Michele: They hated it. Like we were at my mom’s and they were saying, What is this? How do you use this?

And so the one that ended up with Legos, I helped her, her mom helped her. And then she had to help her cousin with the jewelry making kit. And later on, they were whispering, like, the gifts got switched. And so we knew right then, and this had to been five years ago, so they weren't 10 yet.

That's how we knew that it really does start early. One was very analytical and the artistic one, she makes all sorts of stuff from lip gloss to slime, and she'll go to school and sell it. Like she's on her fourth business and she's 14. So focusing early on girls is really, really important.

I was in a place where those data and statistics weren't available, but what was available, really a lot of educators who would not let me fall off, including my mother specifically, but also just knowing the other teachers in my small rural town that really were encouraging and supportive of me doing well.

[00:12:41] Marie: Wow. You're really lucky because a lot of girls don't have that same experience. I'm sure now it's better than when we were younger . So what was your grit and resilience story in your life and your career? 

[00:12:51] Michele: Something that is really common unfortunately, is the only experience for a lot of Black, LatinX and Indigenous women in STEM. And what I mean is you're the only one, you're the only Black woman.

You're the only Latina engineer on your team group, department, company. Right? And so for years out in construction, I was the only Black woman engineer. I was only Black woman period. To stick it out, as long as I did, so many other women from that organization I stayed with for 12 years quit.

They went to other companies that had larger populations, but I stayed. One main reason, at least this is what I told myself, was somebody else is going to come who doesn't have the wherewithal to do what you've done this amount of time by yourself being the only, and then when I was sent a message from God and he was like, you know what, you're not supposed to be here.

I cried. I've been through so much being the only, but it was time for me to go and build out something else. The lesson he wanted me to learn was over. Now it's time to go execute. Right? It was time for me to go put in the work. And so. I would say that to me was the grit. It's been a lot of people. I don't understand how you've made it. And then there are other women who are still going through the only process and understand to certain degrees how much they make it, but also how much trauma you can go through. And so while we talk about grit, there's also a lot of trauma tied oftentimes to that T in grit is that trauma part.

And that R hopefully it's that recovery part of you going through what you did in that period. So for me, it would be that 12 years of being the only, and I came from the technical sales side, and I worked on a team. There were two other Black women. There was a Thai woman, there was two white men.

Then it was two Black guys on the sales team. And these were engineers. And so coming from that type of team in technical sales where I was the only Black woman was really different. And I've never worked in a team anywhere nearly that diverse as I did in my early and mid twenties.

Marie: I was working in the office when I was at CH2M HILL but it seems like I'm guessing…Tell me if I'm wrong here, were there fewer construction engineers than there were design engineers who were Black. Or there just weren't any Black people anywhere? 

[00:15:20] Michele: There are very few in the organization. The turnover was really high because the culture wasn't very good. And just things that if I had a young Black engineer that worked for me, And he's structural engineering. 

They had him join a transmission line project and he was learning all of this transmission line stuff. I would get on the phone like once a week or so with him and coach him just for an hour to teach them what was going on, on the work that he was doing in the type of work, because he'd never done a transmission line job before.

And he'd been with the company probably five years or so. And the culture wasn't good. He was the only structural engineer working on a transmission line job. They were bringing in training about transmission lines into the office. He went and asked his boss, could he take the training? His boss said no.

And he changed his LinkedIn profile to add the transmission line work that he was doing. I said, Hey, go change this and add this. He got a job offer because he was a structural engineer working on a transmission line job.

And when he went to resign, his boss came to him, he said, oh, don't counter me. Cause when I told you I wanted to take this transmission line training and it was nobody else on the team in the department working, you told me I didn't need it, that I couldn't take the training.

So you don't need to come over here and try to offer me anything. And he left. He was the prime person that needed the training. So you were setting him up for failure. That's literally what his boss was doing. You see that over and over and over again. The work wasn't high profile work that they had him doing, but he was learning. And he was like, Michele, trust me. I'm not dumb. I said, I know you're not dumb. But I'm with this opportunity to learn and grow. And he did, and he got the hell out the company.

So you can throw shit on people, but don't be surprised when they have a nice green lawn. 

[00:17:09] Marie: Yes. Oh my gosh. Did they have employee resource groups or stuff like that at URS? No, 

[00:17:17] Michele: No, they didn't. They had none of that. They had a young HR guy who was trying to help, but the organization wasn't looking to make those changes and you can only do so much if management isn't willing to work with you.

Marie: Absolutely. I mean, that was one good thing about CH2M HILL, we had a really strong Black employee resource group and we had one for Latinx and women and various other categories too. So that was one good thing they were doing. But in the engineering field, there are not that many people of color.

Now you wrote in the podcast interview form about companies complaining they can't find diverse talents. And I heard that as well, which is, just ridiculous. So let's talk about that. What is your perspective on that? These companies say we're trying to improve our diversity, but you know, there just aren't that many engineers who are Black and Latino and, you know, other people of color.

[00:18:05] Michele: It is culture. Number one, your culture. You want people to fit your culture as opposed to be a culture add. And what I mean by that education is one thing, right? But now you want them to talk a certain way and act a certain way in order to fit into your culture. And that's not how this work had. I come into URS. Since you said the name, even though it's not around anymore, right? Yeah, exactly. I would not have been able to bring in solutions had I not had the experiences I had creating who Michele Hayward is. And so going back to that culture of how you approach people, how you talk to people has not changed.

Number two, they always want to start recruiting at entry level, and oftentimes they don't investigate what's going on in their own organizations where they need to make changes, meaning. Okay. I see you have three Black engineers right now at a junior level. However I did a search on LinkedIn. I found 18 other Black former employees. Why did they leave? Oh, yes. Or how far did they go? Cause that's all junior level people. Oh, well we can't disclose it. You need to not blame how many people there are out there. If you're not going to fix what you have going on internal to your organization, as one thing is for sure. If and when we find a place we like to work, we will bring others with us. I didn't even refer the white people I knew to the company. And they were like, what do you mean? I said, because your culture sucks. I like my friends now, if I might find a few enemies, hell yeah, I tell them to come over here and work on my way out. I talked to so many women in this space and I was like, Hey, I saw you were at such and such for eight years.

Why did you leave? I was like, oh, my boss left. I've talked to Black women. Like I didn't take her promotion because I would have to go work for another manager. And none of the other managers were as good and equitable and treated me as well as this manager.

And when that manager retires, quit, whatever, they leave the organization too, because they have sometimes a better subculture working under that manager, even though the culture overall of that organization isn't that great. And one of the reasons I stayed as long as I did with URS, I ended up getting a sponsor and I liked working for that sponsor and wherever he went, I went until he left the organization. 

I didn't like the person that came in to replace him. I knew it was time to move on anyway, but it's really important for organizations to take ownership of their culture.

That's primary, secondary to that. What happens is they often regulate us to housekeeping duties, figure we're not smart enough. They don't give us access to high priority projects or sponsors. We might get a mentor, but you probably will not get a sponsor. And you sure as hell won't get a partner within our organization.

And so that mentor helps guide you and give you advice on how to go so far. And then what happens is they realize you're really ambitious, you're smart as hell, and you can do their job better than them. And now they don't want to mentor you because you're a threat to their opportunities in that organization.

And so it's so many different layers in this, and that's why I built out Positive Hire utilizing technology and people services and coaching to really solve some of these issues, but it is very layered onion. Doesn't have enough layer. So what's really going on, maybe a great Redwood when it gets closer to what's really going on in the organization.

[00:21:54] Marie: The last year before I started my own company, I worked for a small local company here in Portland. And it was like 350 employees, but the entire executive management team was white men. There was one Japanese American man on there and one white woman, and they talked all about DEI. Oh yeah, we have a DEI program. But it was all about maintaining their control. So I felt like nobody was sponsoring women or people of color.

No one was helping them get a leg up or helping them advance into these higher level positions. And none of them are giving up their own spots on that team. 

Michele: Oh, I hear you so much. 

Marie: The other thing was that I was asked to sit in on interviews for the new HR manager. So they interviewed two different women. One was white and the other one was half Japanese and half native American. I thought they were both excellent candidates. And I gave them my list of what I thought about each one of them. I was brought in probably because I was one of the senior women in the company.

So I was the token interviewer. So I told them what my thoughts were and gave them an Excel spreadsheet with the pros of each one of them and the CEO and my boss, their words were well, neither of the wowed us like, oh my God, they were both fantastic candidates. That's why they didn't go for either one of them. It was a mess, 

[00:23:16] Michele: or they weren't going to help them maintain the status quo and help them maintain the status. 

[00:23:24] Marie: Totally. And the Japanese American woman was really strong at DEI, she was asking some really hard hitting questions in the interview.

Michele: So you, you nailed it. If she’d been hired, she would've continued to ask those hard questions and they didn't want to deal with it. 

Marie: Yeah. She probably wouldn't have lasted long, 

[00:23:52] Michele: long enough for her not to have to pay back the relocation if she would have quit.

[00:23:55] Marie: Yes. So let's talk about how you found your fertile ground. You got a message from God that you needed to move on, which must've been terrifying to get that message.

[00:24:04] Michele: It was more or less why, you know, how much work I've done to walk from those, like, I've been, chiseling at this stone with my fingertips. But at the same time I knew I was always going to leave corporate. Like I was so planning, I just behave differently. Like even a couple of friends of mine in college approached me, like, so what kind of business are you going to start? Like, I never told anybody I was going to start a business, but I can just tell. And I even had my first boss, when I was at URS, he was like, I could see you working for yourself because the way I imagine work, remember I come out of a small business.

So to me, I showed up as an employee working as though I own the company because that's what I saw in my mother. I didn't know you did way less as an employee. Right. And so I just had a different level of work ethic because I was modeling after a business owner, as a small business owner who did a lot of stuff, got a lot of done and generated a six figure business in a town of 4,000, like, hell, I didn't know any different. I found out later.

So I got the download that I need to leave. I had already started doing online marketing stuff within my last two years in corporate. And I had tried to sell the idea to concept and start a business around women starting their own consulting firms to get contracts in construction. And the feedback from the women was, I'm not doing technical work. I'm getting pushed out. I got married. I could do nothing right with this company. So I left and went to another place. I had a baby, I'm a maternity leave. The HR calls me and the lady off going through all of this BS. And I was like, I thought I was doing bad in my career. I guess I'm doing okay. And so somebody says, well, Michele, you should do career coaching, like career coaching. I really don't want to do it. I do it now. But at the time this was like 2016, 2017. And I'm like, no, that's not it.

That's not the solution. And so after I was no longer with the company, you have all of this time to think and something said, what if you created a glass door where in women would know, especially Black Latinx Indigenous women, which of these employers, they can advance their careers. That was May of 2017 that I had this idea.

I read an article in this magazine. And there's like for 30 days, write down a business idea. They too, was this idea. Wow, Positive Hire. I didn't get past day five because I kept coming back to date two. And I never finished that 30 day challenge because the idea that I was so passionate about that I had to do with the day to idea day one is like easy stuff. It was something more civil engineering based or construction based. And this one was more of a problem that I encountered and I knew other women like me were encountering 

I've been taking that concept into a service and now to our third minimum viable product, because we've iterated and changed it from what it looked like on the B2C side for women. But now with a solution on the business side, on the B2B side, to really help them, if they want to, number one, determine why Black, Latinx, Indigenous employees are leaving. Number two, how do they solve this problem or resolve whatever issues or reasons they're leaving inside the organization and track it.

And so that's what we're building out on the B2B side. On the B2C side is still creating tech that helps women predict which employers want to be the best for them to advance their careers, to find that right culture. Where they feel as though they belong, they feel valued and are able to grow and advance in their careers.

[00:27:51] Marie: That's great. Just for our listeners. I want to explain what B2B and B2C means. B2B is business to business and B to C is business to consumer. So in the beginning you were helping women, or people of color find, STEM jobs. Is that what you were doing initially?

Michele: Yes. Diversity recruitment is where we started to really understand employers, because remember I was an engineer building stuff. I didn't know how this HR recruiting thing worked. And it really gives me an idea of what's going on. Six or seven months after I had idea, I joined an incubator.

And one of the mentors in that incubator, he broke down how recruiting, the process works and then diversity recruitment is a whole other thing. And this really getting tactical about it is how you and I met in the Big Money Movement. I was getting all of these things, but still I'm an engineer. Even though I came from inside sales, technical sales, this was completely different grassroots, no framework. And I needed to build and create all of that out as a founder. It's been a journey. It’s never about the end goal. It's all about the journey. I will absolutely agree when people say that now. 

[00:29:00] Marie: Well, I'm sure that you're much better prepared to help companies attract diverse talent after having worked directly with people who are trying to find jobs. You're basically giving them a double whammy, you know how it works, right. You know what people are experiencing. 

Michele: I do; it was really interesting. I did an executive round table, last fall and I had a CTO and another client who does the same thing.

They go out and they share their job postings to all of these sites that will have women or people of color, combination thereof for these roles, I said that's great. But you've written it like a man. And it's like, wait, what? You're assuming that what will attract a man to a job, right, will attract a woman. And it blew his mind like, oh shit, I, yeah.

I said, you tried something. It's a test. I said, some of your job description is fine. Other things you will need to change because it happened to be a nonprofit. I say, you need to tell a narrative in three sentences, or if you can do it in two or one, that's even better, but at least three sentences about why does organization matters and why they need to be an employee working in it for this organization. I said, so write something that is really powerful, really story driven about what your organization does. I said, somebody in your communications probably can pull that off the website, but it needs to be something very impactful.

 It was Seattle. I remember talking to a nonprofit who like, Hey, we have Microsoft. And all of these other companies we're competing with. I like, you're a nonprofit that feeds the hungry. I said, I don't understand your problem. They said, what do you mean? I said, you aren't telling the right story.

They can go work for Microsoft. Everybody knows Microsoft, but do you know the kid Kesha who's seven years old, who's hungry. And how being a software developer here helps feed her and other kids like her. Microsoft going to be a multi-billion dollar company forever and ever, but for me to actually code, to help somebody directly, that's a completely different narrative. I say you're more likely to get people willing to work for you if you lead with the impact that your organization has on society and in their mind, like you're selling the wrong thing and like, don't get me wrong. 

Men aren't cold-hearted, they don't care. But girls and boys are groomed very differently. Boys are groomed to be more authoritative. They are to take care of the family. So you're going to go out and try to make as much money as possible. Women may be taught to be more nurturing, but still, you're going to go out and still be competitive.

And so it can look very different in how you write up your job descriptions to really attract talent that are in this niche. And so every time you go to a different job board or a different event, your booth may be set up different. The copy you use, because you're in communication, you had to do the marketing side.

You're trying to tell a different story. Some of the requirements for the job, okay. JavaScript is JavaScript having a professional engineer's license, having a professional engineer's license. Having a degree in mechanical engineering is having a degree in mechanical engineering, but the lead in to get them to either read the requirements is what you really need to focus on.

So it completely blows their mind. When I tell them you're leading in the wrong way. You got to get them in those first few sentences. And the job in the company and then decide. 

[00:32:27] Marie: you're speaking my story because I totally believe that. And the last job that I was in, I was actually working with our recruiter on trying to rewrite our job descriptions and our ads, because they were written by boring men, not just men, but boring men.

Right. And so I was trying to get the staffing managers to describe what does a day in the life of this. You know, just think about what does this person do day in and day out. And what kind of a personality are you looking for as well? Because a lot of times when they're hiring new employees, they're looking for, certain qualifications and it's not just about qualifications.

I mean, really what can be actually even more powerful than qualifications is, especially in consulting. The people skills are really critical and you're not putting anything in there about that. Right? The other thing that I was really interested in pursuing when I was at that company and then I got laid off, so I wasn't able to pursue it was that it seems like companies need to be doing blind hiring and hiding the names of people and, making their resumes and their cover letters more nondescript. So they are not discriminating against anyone, either women or people of color. 

[00:33:37] Michele: I think they need to do AB testing. And what I mean is they haven't changed a culture. All you're doing is changing your recruitment process. So you're going to hire the, in air quotes, the most qualified person.

Right. But what happens on the other side of that is the culture sucks for that person. So now, well, we hired and we did this. Why did they quit? Like you didn't fix what was wrong in your organization from the beginning. And so I always tell people, recruitment is the last. Yeah. Like what I say, I want to start with recruitment, but the fact is you need to work on yourself as first.

So to me, all of the management needs to understand what racism is and how it's perpetuated. So on an individual level, they need to go through some anti-racism training for six months, a year to really understand what's that look like. And most of them were confused. Like we have a DEI person. You're the one that builds the culture in this organization.

It starts from the top. If this person is coming into the organization or they come out at different role, sometimes even out of engineering to run DEI, they can't change anything because you won't agree to change the status quo. And you don't understand how the status quo is racist and sexist. It is against, differently abled people in so many different levels, it is against moms, right.

But it's for dads, or sometimes it's just against parents and caretakers period until they go through some individual trainings, then coming back, okay, oh my God, I didn't realize any of this. Like our policies and procedures all need to change. So now you going through a culture transformation, and you're changing your policies and procedures and you put it through a DEI lens to see who are the marginalized people that are being impacted and just taking statistical data.

You have all of these dots on a graph, right. And you have the straight line and everything that hooks are straight lines. I guess we have most of the dots along the straight line. Like, yeah. But if I told you the dots that are furthest away are your problems are people that are most likely to leave your organization and they're indicating things are not right.

And so now you got to investigate every single dot and you know, the feedback is, well, the majority is okay, but the majority is not people of color. The majority is not women of color. The majority is not women. Right? And so you can't make that change by just saying the majority, because the marginalized is to minority.

It's the underestimated that you say you want to change for, that you aren't changing for. And so now we go back into that cultural transformation, all the management, especially mid management has to be trained. And so I know organizations right now, they're having their Black employees go through executive and leadership development training.

But you know what some organizations are doing differently this time. They're making the managers go through training on how to support Black employees. And three years ago. That would be like, we wouldn't do that. I know how to support managers. Can't recognize your own biases in yourselves, in your policies, your procedures.

And that's why I say blind is one thing, but you have to understand between blind is the be test. The AP test is your traditional way. What happened? What was different? , well, I didn't realize. It was a woman. I would never do that to a woman. You did it five times and did not like woman when you could see her, but it's surprising that your top three candidates were all women when you're blind.

They have to see the difference to understand they have biases because if you do it blind, they haven't changed anything. And so after you go through the culture transformation, then that changes your retention policies and like how you're able to retain talent. And then you can go through your recruitment.

So I always say, it's always done backwards. They want to look at recruitment and exit interviews. We need to find where they're leaving. It's so many setups. And so right now we're seeing a lot of Black people get promoted. It's called a glass cliff. It's a very unstable, we have a high turnover. Some companies have grown tremendously; others like Peloton, they have an immediate spike at beginning of the pandemic. Now they laid off 2,800 people. what you will see now, if they keep any Black employees, they may promote them, but it's a very difficult time in that organization.

And so that is generally where you see the most women and Black employees get opportunity is when the company is in the most trouble, well, guess what? They then get removed. and like, somebody else comes in, like you did a good job, but go back to your old job or they get set up for failure.

Exactly. They get limited resources to try to recover that organization or that team and that group or that project. And like we knew you were going to fail. It was like, You asked me to build a building and you gave me a toothpick and a plastic spoon. And they told me it was a nighttime construction job.

And so you see these things over and over again. And it's really important for organizations to start at the top at self-introspection and, and their own training before they bring in a DEI person before they really make any changes, because the changes have to start with self. 

[00:39:04] Marie: I totally agree. At CH2M HILL, they brought in a woman to be the CEO, which was really exciting to have a CEO of a major engineering firm. But of course we were in trouble. So fortunately she was able to set the company up to be sold, so she was able to be successful in it. Boy, did she get a lot of flack?

She got so much flack and it was hard to see that. You've got so much wisdom to share Michele. I really appreciate everything that you've contributed to this discussion. So I just have a few more questions. Think back to yourself at age 21. What would you say to her now, knowing what you know now?

[00:39:36] Michele: Oh my God. Pay more attention to your sales job. You're going to need it later. Save more money when you're in construction, you're going to need it later and don't buy that house. It's going to drop and you're going to end up sitting on it for five years. Oh no. 

[00:39:52] Marie: You still have the house?

Michele: I got rid of it. I sold it seven years ago. 

[00:39:55] Marie: Don't you wish you could go back and give her advice? 

[00:39:59] Michele: I did bet on my home purchase I have some friends, like I was just 10, $20,000 upside down or, or lost value. Some friends set up a hundred thousand plus in brand new subdivisions that never got finished being bought out. 

[00:40:15] Marie: That's horrible. 

[00:40:16] Michele: I was really fortunate, like, Ugh. I mean, I lost some money cause I did upgrades to the house. So I lost all of that money plus money on a mortgage that I never saw back, but you know, paying a mortgage on a house that you weren't living in? Cause I wasn't on construction. So I was on the road 25 out of 30 days. It wasn't near where my family was. So I would literally only go to the house twice a year. And one of those get a new roof put on. Right. And then to find out that a tree had fallen in the backyard. So I need to get somebody to come and cut up the tree up.

 It was always something try renting it. That didn't go as well. And so it was really so many different things that I was like, yeah, this is a lesson learned. That's what I would tell like, Hey, in a few years, like 2007, eight, you're going to want to buy a house. Don't do it. It's the best decision you'll ever make.

Just continue to rent. Save money. 

[00:41:10] Marie: The other question I have is, is there a story of grit and resilience or finding fertile ground in your life that has been an inspiration for you? 

[00:41:18] Michele: Oh wow.  I have a friend and he from, what everybody can tell, had a pretty easy standard life. So, went to college, started a business. Grew it, and, before he was 40, he was a multimillionaire. But what a lot of people don't know was that he actually caught a federal case for armed robbery.

Ended up doing prison. Time, got out of prison, went to college, got a computer engineering degree. Wow. ended up getting his first job at a bank 

[00:41:54] Marie: and they didn't mind that he'd been in prison. 

[00:41:56] Michele: He did a great interview with somebody that was in management there.

And the person they went to the same college. They had similar majors. And the person like, you know what, I need to interview anybody and they left. It's like, yeah, I got to jail. Like, oh shoot. They gonna run my background, literally called the hiring manager back. Like, Hey, thank you for the offer.

But this is what happened when I was a teenager, I caught a case. This is going to come up. He was like, you still have the job. You were a kid. Well, you're 30 something now. Right. He was probably about 30 at this point. And he ended up getting the job.

So people are always surprised that my friend has been to prison, that he has a record. And it's like, yes. And so what he learned in that process was he had a lot of anger issues and his parents tried everything. His mom sent him to live with his dad. They had done everything they could do and people just didn't understand. But what also really helped him. He's like recidivism is really about you being able to change who you're around. And when I got out, I was not around the same people and I knew I needed to do something different with my life.

And so he was like, that's how I ended up in college. He was like, I wouldn't a smarter student. It took me extra longer than anybody else. But he realized that he wanted to do something different in his life. And his parents had really tried everything. He was like, Michele, I had the best parents. I was just determined that I was going to do whatever I wanted to do. And he said I did. And I learned what my parents tried to keep me from. And people now can't believe the things he went through. And he learns for the most part after all of these years, how to control his anger and the things he has to do is a father, two kids. So it's really interesting to see him and really having gone through so much and now be on fertile ground. So that's one person who inspires me and he cracks me up too at the same time. 

[00:43:55] Marie: What a story? That's incredible. So my final question is just how can listeners reach you .

[00:44:00] Michele: You know what, our favorite playground: hit me up on LinkedIn, give me a connection request or a message and say, Hey, I heard your interview with Marie. I would love to connect with you. 

[00:44:14] Marie: Awesome. And you have a website, too. 

[00:44:17] Michele: We do. Positivehire.com, like hire people depending on where you are.

[00:44:32] Marie: Awesome. Thank you so much for your time. It's been great to get to know you and I look forward to now when I see you on Zoom, I'll say, oh, there's Michele. I know her now. 

[00:44:41] Michele: I love that. Definitely. Marie. Yeah.

[00:44:44] Marie: So great to chat with you. Thank you so much for your time . I'll be in touch. 

It was so much fun to talk to Michele about the industry where we both grew our careers. If only we ran the engineering industry, we'd have so many improvements to make.

You can see photos and learn more about Michele at www.fertilegroundcommunications.com. Look for the Finding Fertile Ground podcast tab. 

Listeners did this episode inspire you? I'd love to hear from you. If you have any questions or have an idea for a guest or topic, drop me a line at marie@fertilegroundcommunications.com.

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