FY18 Candidate Bios: Vice President of Outreach

The FY18 nominating committee is very excited to present the following candidate bios for the elected positions listed below:

• Vice President of Career Guidance/Outreach (elect 1):
• Dana Day
• Lynette Lopez
• Sarah McDowell

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dana Day

Dana is a long-time advocate for STEM outreach for girls. Having served as the FY12 SWE-PNW President, she is familiar with the potential strength and passion this section has to give back to our communities by sharing our love stories about engineering. As FY11 President-Elect, she sought out a task force to bring back PNW's partnership with the local girl scout groups. Dana looks forward to growing that partnership as the FY18 VP of Career Guidance.

Dana has been a SWE member since 2004, a SWE Distinguished New Engineer award recipient in 2015, and has held a several positions throughout SWE. Most notably, she was the FY15 Society Outreach Chair. Dana worked with the SWE Outreach director and her team to launch the Outreach Metric Tool and the popular SWENext program during her term. She also focused on building better connections and relationships with the sections and outreach advocates across the Society. For 5 years, she was on the core planning team for the Invent It. Build It. event that is held on the last day of the annual conference. She has continued to be a key figure in executing large-scale STEM Outreach events, including at the 2016 Joint Regions' ABJ Conference and the SWENext DesignLab event at WE Local San Jose.

Dana wants to continue to build on the SWE-PNW outreach foundation by building stronger partnerships with local STEM organizations, expanding our outreach portfolio, and enabling our members with the right training to become confident and effective outreach leaders.

_________________________________________________________________________

Lynette Lopez

Lynette Lopez is a manufacturing engineer at Boeing working on production of the 777 fuselage. She has Bachelors and Masters degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Northern Arizona University, and is currently working on an MBA from Pepperdine University. 

She began her SWE membership as the president of her university’s SWE chapter in 2005. For the past 3 years, she has led the Expanding Your Horizons events for SWE PNW, an event which focuses on introducing middle and high school girls to careers in STEM.

_________________________________________________________________________

Sarah McDowell

Sarah McDowell has been a member of SWE since 2013 as a mechanical engineering student at Washington University in St. Louis.  As a collegiate member, she planned and organized the Girl Scout Day event, which included various engineering-based activities for the girls ages 8-14.

She has always been passionate about encouraging young girls to learn more about STEM fields and gain the confidence and interest to pursue them throughout their education.  She also volunteered for Girls for Science, a Chicago-based organization that supplements the public schools' science curriculum by teaching middle school girls about various STEM subjects on intensive Saturday learning sessions.  Sarah has continued being an active SWE member since graduation and joined the PNW Chapter when she moved to Seattle in October 2016.

FY18 Candidate Bios: Vice President of Professional Development

The FY18 nominating committee is very excited to present the following candidate bios for the elected positions listed below:

• Vice President of Professional Development (elect 1): 
• Marina Dannecker
• Sonia Hingorany

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marina Dannecker

Marina became a SWE member while she was an engineering student at UCLA. As a sophomore, she joined several committees for UCLA's collegiate SWE section. During her junior year, she was on the executive board as Evening With Industry External Chair. As a senior, Marina served as President of the UCLA section. In this role she lead a board of 16 people to organize outreach, professional development, advocacy, and mentorship events.

After graduating college, Marina moved to Seattle and joined SWE-PNW. This past year she has been a member of the Professional Development Committee and helped to plan events like technical tours. She is excited to continue being involved in SWE-PNW by organizing more events that help empower women to succeed in STEM fields.

_________________________________________________________________________

Sonia Hingorany 

Sonia Hingorany currently serves on the SWE PNW Executive Committee as one of the Section Reps focused on Membership Engagement. This year, she has organized several social events including happy hours (and head shots!) and a tour of one of Amazon's Prime Now Fulfillment Centers. Sonia looks forward to continuing her involvement with SWE and leading the professional development mission this coming year.

Sonia moved to Seattle almost two years ago for her full-time job. She currently works at Amazon in the North America Transportation and Logistics organization. Sonia earned her MBA from Carnegie Mellon University where she focused on concentrations in Information Systems and Operations Management. Before earning her MBA at CMU, Sonia previously worked at Accenture for five years in a technology consulting capacity. She earned her BS in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Cognitive Science from UCLA where she initially got involved with SWE. Sonia held a position on the SWE board for three years. She played several key roles in SWE at UCLA as the Internal VP, responsible for handling funding for the organization, as well as the Evening With Industry chair. 

Sonia likes to play soccer and tennis and enjoy the outdoors including running, hiking, and skiing. She loves to travel; Sonia has been to more than 30 countries and visited 40 states in the US. 

FY17 Candidate Bios: Vice Presidents

The FY17 nominating committee is very excited to present the following candidate bios for the elected positions listed below:

• Vice President of Career Guidance/Outreach (elect 1):
• Rosie Pham
• Vice President of Professional Development (elect 1): 
• Betty Smith
• Katie Elliott

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

VP Outreach

Rosie Pham

No candidate statement or picture provided.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

VP Professional Development

Betty L. Smith

Betty Smith has been President, Chair, Director and Trustee of over 9 professional organizations so she brings commitment, trust, dedication, value, experience and a true ongoing passion for growing women in engineering. As an Engineering Manager, Mentor, Coach, and Advisor, various young engineers have advanced in their careers and have been promoted.

As Adviser and twice nominated Trainer Extraordinaire, Betty has led numerous classes and training exercises on Leadership, Management and engineering fields of interest, including, but not limited to aerodynamics, aviation and safety.

I am applying for the position of Vice President of Professional Development as I am certain I will make a lasting impact in the lives and professions of many women engineers.   Beginning my professional career as one of the very few degreed women engineering managers in aerospace, I possess the passion for other women in engineering to succeed, to explore their talents, to promote their skills, and to encourage them along their technical journey in embracing engineering as an endearing and lasting profession.

Thank you for this great opportunity to serve SWE and all its members.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Katie Elliott

Katie Elliott graduated from the University of Washington with a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering, specializing in signal processing. Her early career was spent working in wireless technologies like the Palm VII wireless PDA, RFID readers and cellular base stations.  Soon, she moved towards more general software engineering roles. She is currently a Lead Software Engineer at Stratos Product Development in Seattle, which specializes in creative cross-disciplinary solutions to client problems and has many projects in the medical device field with unique challenges. Outside of work she tries to be, well, outside, whether backcountry skiing, playing Ultimate Frisbee, kayaking, or cycling.

I believe passionately in working to encourage and retain women in engineering and take seriously the role of mentoring women in my group at work. Having found SWE relatively late in my career, I've been delighted to find an organization which feels the same way as I do about looking for ways to help women succeed in engineering.

During the past year, I volunteered in the Professional Development Committee where I helped find technical speakers, hosted the holiday party, and co-organized the new SWE book club. The Professional Development Committee plays an important role in providing a forum for women to broaden their technical and professional skills. It also offers encouragement, support, and friendship. As VP of Professional Development I will bring my experience within SWE and the leadership skills from my career to offer a great series of events to our section.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------