March is Women’s History Month, a time to acknowledge and celebrate the accomplishments of women leading innovation and breaking barriers in STEM and federal contracting. The Ellumen team is comprised of inspiring women from diverse backgrounds who drive our core values of ingenuity, curiosity and connection, bringing cutting-edge innovation and courageous leadership to every project. This month, we published an interview with Mary Vogel, our first woman president and a decade+ business development leader whose goals of fostering connection and delivering lasting impact have been instrumental in molding Ellumen’s core mission.
Throughout the month, we asked some of our team members to share their stories and reflect on their best career advice and accomplishments. Read their answers below and learn more about our team.
Tram Ly, HR Manager
What does Women’s History Month mean to you?
Women’s History Month is a time that allows us to honor and remember women who campaigned tirelessly to push for equal rights and opportunities. Their perseverance opened up opportunities for all women to have a voice, achieve our goals and become thought leaders.
What do you love most about what you do?
There are a few reasons why I enjoy what I do. HR is always fluid. We’re constantly working on new strategies to help employees with their development, learning new HR technologies and tools or partnering with top-level managers to find ways of improving processes to help the organization reach their goals and objectives. I also enjoy helping others and, in HR, there are so many opportunities for helping employees be their best.
What do you wish you could tell your younger self?
- Let go a whole lot sooner of what’s not working for you.
- Don’t spend so much energy trying to prove your worth to the people determined to not agree with you.
- Look carefully at who isn’t represented at the decision-making table, then work like hell to get them a seat.
What is one of your greatest career achievements?
Prior to Ellumen, I was the Vermont Speaker of the House when the pandemic hit. In 18 years in the legislature, I’m most proud of how the team I led worked across party lines and branches of government to remain responsive and non-partisan in this crisis. We established a secure, transparent, constitutional remote system of hearings and voting to keep Vermonters safe, protect people’s basic needs and set the state up for strong recovery, and the many bills to respond to the crisis or allocated federal funds passed with unanimous support.
Mitzi Johnson, Client Solutions Strategist
Maggie Wenger, Senior Infrastructure Program Manager
What is the best career advice you’ve ever received?
After graduating with my Master’s in Engineering, I often incorporated what I learned in school directly to what was occurring on project work. The best career advice I received from a mentor was; “I understand where you are coming from, but some things aren’t always solved with textbook solutions.” That advice helped me to start evaluating things from a different perspective and assess challenges with a blend of textbook AND creative solutioning.
What advice would you give to women in your field?
Raise your hand to learn new things whenever you can to expand your experience and perspective. Don’t underestimate yourself, your value and what you bring to the table.
What does Women’s History Month mean to you?
Women’s History Month means a lot to me because it’s a time to celebrate and reflect on progress made for women’s rights. We celebrate how far we’ve come and also call for an end to gender inequality.
What do you love most about what you do?
I love working with smart people and being creative! The best part of my job is that there are opportunities all the time to learn and engage with new skills. I started out as an entry level analyst and now I’m the marketing manager. In a sense I’ve grown up in this company and I like taking a moment to pause and look back on my own evolution and the evolution of the marketing department at Ellumen. It’s exciting and I’m proud of the growth.
What do you wish you could tell your younger self?
There’s a Michelle Obama quote that I think is a really important message for women to hear, especially young women just entering the workforce. And I wish someone had told me this as frankly as Mrs. Obama says it: “The question I ask myself— ‘am I good enough?—that haunts us, because the messages that are sent from the time we are little is: Maybe you are not. Don’t reach too high. Don’t talk too loud. My advice to young women is that you have to start by getting those demons out of your head. I have been at probably every powerful table that you can think of, I have worked at nonprofits, I have been at foundations, I have worked in corporations, served on corporate boards, I have been at G-summits, I have sat in at the U.N. Here’s the secret: they’re not that smart. There are a lot of things that folks are doing to keep their seats because they don’t want to give up power. And what better way to do that than to make you feel you don’t belong . . . you have to prepare yourself, because when you get those arrows thrown at you, all you can fall back on is your experience and your ability.” I love that quote. I still think about it all the time!
Mary Carroll, Marketing Manager
Liz Armstrong, Program Manager
What do you love most about what you do?
I have been at Air Mobility Command since 1998 and I love the mission we support. Much of my job involves supporting the electronic health record used during the patient movement continuum. AMC has the largest en route care system in the world moving patients to higher levels of care during wartime and peacetime. Knowing our efforts help these patients have access to treatment records that were previously often shredded and not included in their permanent records is very gratifying.
What is the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Network, network, network! I’ve learned so many things from the people I’ve met through networking. No one can be successful alone; surround yourself with compassionate, knowledgeable and dynamic people. Take care of the people that work for you and find a company with the same ethics.
What advice would you give to women in your field?
The IT world has always been predominately a male-dominated field, especially back in the 90s! Continuous learning is a must. It doesn’t have to be in an accredited environment: read articles, attend local user groups, attend local networking lunches. There are so many exciting and fun opportunities to expand your knowledge.