Happy new year!  I hope 2019 is treating everyone well.

I work for Beckman Coulter as a software engineering manager and a software verification technical lead.  I love my job because I get to work with amazing people all over the world, and they pay me to go visit them!  In the last few years I have racked up the airline miles going to Japan, India and China to meet team members and have face to face planning workshops.

At home I enjoy doing a little bit of everything.  I enjoy cooking and baking, playing my cello and taking drop-in classes at the EP community center.  I got married in 2018 and my husband and I are gradually working on fixing up the house (inside AND out).  My two kids (8 and 5 years old) also keep me busy with their activities.  And I have a cat.  He's pretty happy if I just sit on the couch from time to time and do nothing.

For SWE, I help feed the volunteers at the annual Girl Scout Patch Day event.  If you have never volunteered - sign up in 2019, you will get great food while volunteering for a great cause!  The Spring Seminar is on my calendar every year I'm not traveling and I try to go to as many happy hours or other social events as I can.  Say 'hello' if we happen to be at the same event!

All my journeys start with a departure selfie - I don't know where we were headed in this one, but we sure were excited to get on the road!

SWE MN recently read The Lab Girl by Hope Jahren. 

​Read the book or thinking about it? Read Jill Morris' review to find out more!

Hope Jahren’s memoir of her scientific journey begins in Minnesota where “the spring thaw happens all at once” (13) and you can “hear the plants growing” (14) overnight. Do you hear it? Spring is here… finally. “But the growing season is short, so there’s no time to be wasted” (13). Hope Jahren’s career to become a geobiologist takes her through battles with mental health, sexism, and through the quest to learn as much as possible about the trees and soil around us. Like a Minnesota spring season, there is no time to be wasted in her scientific journey. Much of this novel is relatable, from her descriptions of Minnesota winters to her confrontations of sexism in the work place. More importantly, her clear precise descriptions of her mental health battles teach us more about the importance of mental health awareness and support.
Jahren provides poetic descriptions of all things green to make you want to go out and plant a tree. Jahren more importantly, captures the trials and tribulations of a female scientist in a male dominated industry. Like many of us her “desire to become a scientist was founded upon a deep instinct and nothing more; [she] never heard a single story about a living female scientist, never met one or even saw one on television” (18). Through her experience she notes “sexism has been something very simple: the cumulative weight of constantly being told that you can’t possibly be what you are” (183).
You should read this book for so many reasons, to celebrate Earth Day, to bask in the poetic seasons of Minnesota winter and spring, rejoice in the fact that spring is finally here, reminisce on the joys of learning and curiosity, absorb knowledge about the composition of soil, recall the battles you might of faced in a male-dominated profession, to be grateful for our progress, to understand more about mental health. Just read this book, and then go plant some trees. Remember “one-third of the Earth’s land used to be covered in forest. Every ten years, we cut down about 1 percent of this total forest, never to be regrown” (4).

SWE-MN is having another great year, and outreach is a big part of the success. Our volunteers teach kids about STEM and are role models for future engineers and scientists.
In true Minnesota fashion, we celebrated the end of the summer and kicked the outreach year off with STEM Day at the State Fair. SWE-MN won the Outreach Metric Tool Award for this first event of the year, and you can read the spotlight for this event in the society level Outreach Newsletter on All Together.
Fall brought us the first of our three signature outreach events, Girl Scouts Patch Day, and it was a milestone 15th time SWE-MN hosted this event.
In winter, we celebrated Engineers Week with 3 outreach events: Spark Slime Speed (the second of our signature outreach events), Women in STEM Open House at Hudson Middle School, and Tech Fest at the Works Museum.
Thank you to every volunteer who has been a part of our outreach efforts this year!
If you would like to get involved with SWE-MN Outreach, it is never too late. We have our third and final signature outreach event for the year in April, called Wow! That’s Engineering. Watch the weekly email for details on how volunteer. If you want to receive information regularly about all our Outreach events, you may e-mail outreachswemn@gmail.com at any time to be added to the SWE-MN Outreach e-mail distribution list.

Check out the post in SWE society level Outreach Newsletter

​The Society of Women Engineers’ (SWE) Annual Conference is the world’s largest conference and career fair for women in engineering and technology. Held in Austin, Texas this year with the theme “Always Connecting, Always Engineering,” WE17 provided attendees with inspiration, connection, professional development, and career building.
The conference kicked off on Thursday, October 26 with an Opening Keynote from Lorraine Bolsinger, Vice President, GE Corporate Leadership Acceleration Program. She encouraged everyone with her with her talk, “Be Big. Be Bold. Be an Engineer,” which empowered listeners to take on new challenges and risks to grow and gain confidence, benefiting both the individual and their team.Even if you were unable to attend this event, you can still hear from Lorraine through a Podcast from SWE’s Podcast, Diverse. On Thursday afternoon, more than 50 people joined the our SWE-MN Professional Section Networking Happy Hour and lived the “Always Connecting” conference theme.
There was a plethora of sessions offered over the three days of conference across a dozen tracks, including Career Management & Life Transitions, Inclusion & Cultural Awareness, and Strategic Leadership. The State of Women in Engineering was one session offered. This special event was the second comprehensive presentation on current research and trends on the state of women in engineering. You can watch the replay on SWE’s YouTube page, and you'll hear from the SWE Literature Review authors as they frame the discussion and point to the current research landscape regarding he basic data on women in engineering, gender bias, workplace culture, and more.
Saturday, October 28 was the final day of the conference, and it wrapped up with Celebrate SWE! Individuals and groups that further the mission of SWE were recognized. Our SWE-MN Professional Section was honored with 2 Mission Awards at this event. We received a Gold Level Professional Award and a Best Practice Award for Mentoring. Mary Petryszyn, Sector Vice President and GM, Northrop Grumman Corporation was the WE17 Closing Keynote Speaker at Celebrate SWE! She inspired the group with her talk and live music on the three L’s – life, love and leadership – and how they are all part of the equation for success in both our personal and professional lives. You can hear more from Mary in this video. The conference officially wrapped up with The Mrs, an All-Female Rock Band playing at the Celebrate SWE! Concert. The Mrs band not only writes and performs music, they also pursue their mission to change the way other women see themselves, inspiring each woman to know that she is enough. FY18 SWE President Jonna Gerken interviewed Andra Liemandt, The Mrs founder and drummer, and you can hear that conversation in SWE’s Diverse Podcast.
 For those who attended WE17, we’d love to hear from you. What was your favorite experience at WE17?
As we look forward to next year’s Annual Conference, our section does not have to travel far. WE18 is in Minneapolis on October 18-20, 2018, so mark your calendars. We hope to see many SWE-MN members at WE18!
-Kim Miller (president@swe-mn.org) SWE-MN FY18 Section President

​Hello everyone and welcome to a new SWE fiscal year! 

A bit of background about me. I currently work as an analytics consultant for deposit products at Wells Fargo. I am also working on a master's in Industrial Engineering part-time. When I'm not spending time at work, school, or SWE, you can usually find me either at a Gopher sporting event, book club, exploring a new brewery, or plotting my next travel opportunity. Rather than my predictable LinkedIn picture, featured here is a photo from my trip to Brno, Czech Republic this past May.

One of my favorite things about SWE-MN is the opportunity to meet other members (or potential members) that share a passion for STEM education and advocacy. 

I look forward to talking with all of you at future events. You can usually find me at the networking happy hours, downtown breakfast/lunch, or at any of the various flagship events throughout the year. Feel free to reach out with any questions or to connect on anything at vp@swe-mn.org.

One of the best ways to help the SWE-MN section is through a leadership position on the executive council (EC).  We rely on our members  to make our section great.  We have multiple committees and ways to get involved and contribute.  One big way to lead our section is through an elected officer position.  We recently held our SWE-MN Elections and are happy to announce our new leaders.  We look forward to helping them succeed in the new Fiscal Year. 

President:  Kim Miller 
Vice President: Erin Syverson 
Secretary:  Jeanne Lombardi 
Treasurer:  Aditi Rajagopal
Section Reps:  Allison Pedersen 

The committee is excited to start the year strong!
"As the incoming elected leadership team, we look forward to working with all of you to create another great year for SWE-MN! We hope that this coming year will not only continue the SWE-MN record of providing consistent, strong events and programs, but also to welcome our growing number of members. Regardless of your SWE-MN tenure, or participation interests, we will have a great SWE-MN program for you to get involved with.
We look forward to seeing you at an event soon!"

Did you know that Minneapolis is hosting we18? As the local professional section, we have plenty of opportunities to be very involved to share the brilliant engineering going on in our fair cities. One way we can step up and help is to become a volunteer for sessions at conference, and one way to figure out what kind of volunteering you’d like to do for we18 is to sign up to volunteer at we17 so we can start to see how these conference logistics work.
http://we17.swe.org/attendees/volunteer/
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