All in the Family

Engineering has traditionally been viewed as a career for men; one often passed from father to son. Skills and advice have been shared over generations between young men and the successful men engineers who came before them. 

Today, however, mothers and daughters are being recognized for building legacies across an array of engineering fields. A new generation of women engineers is on the rise, thanks largely to the examples set by their mothers, who charted powerful paths in STEM through prowess, passion, and persistence. 

Here, we look at several mothers and daughters who are redefining what it means to make a mark in the world of engineering. 

When Latonya Coleman finished her undergraduate studies at the University of California, Davis, as the first engineer in her family, she had some chemical engineering experience under her belt, having interned with companies such as Dow Chemical and Chevron. However, when she interviewed with CH2M Hill immediately after college, something about the company stood out to her. 

“I was interviewed by all women when I came out of school, and that was very encouraging to me,” she recalls. “The overall demographics at CH2M Hill were not 50-50 in terms of women versus men, but when I interviewed with four women during the process, it really was a selling point for me. And today, there are even more women, which is amazing.” 

One of those women is now her daughter, Carlin Coleman. The company is now known as Jacobs, which acquired CH2M Hill in 2017. At that time, Latonya, who describes herself as a STEM kid, had moved into environmental engineering and project management, focusing on site management and remediation for a wide variety of soil and groundwater projects. After Carlin earned her degree in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, she sought an opportunity to put her environmental engineering degree to good use. 

Once Latonya heard about a potential opening at Jacobs, she encouraged Carlin to apply. Carlin joined the Sacramento-based organization’s waste solutions team in 2022. She completed fieldwork and developed solid waste management plans for the U.S. Navy and a small rural community in Alaska, among other projects. 

“We don’t work together; there are measures in place for that,” Carlin says of working at the same company as her mother. “But I have definitely looked to her for guidance when I have not known how to go about handling a project or need to learn something about the consulting world in general. She has always been an inspiration to me.” 

That inspiration dates back to the years when Latonya worked at Jacobs while raising Carlin and her siblings. Latonya notes that the women in the company were always given the chance to find work/life balance, allowing her to be there for her family while pursuing her professional goals. 

Carlin leaned toward science as a child and noticed everything Latonya accomplished. When it was her turn to begin forging her professional path, Carlin decided to follow her dedication to the environment and consider engineering. An Intro to Environmental Engineering course she took during her first year of college solidified her choice. 

“I always felt strongly about the environment,” Carlin says, “so I knew that I wanted to pay it forward and focus my career on that.” 

Latonya adds, “It’s nice to see that I was an example for her in the science field because a lot of times, people tend to run from it because it can be pretty intense. But it’s awesome that she has more or less followed in my footsteps. She took all of these pieces and made a career for herself. I’ve always admired her creativity. I’m very excited to see where it takes her.” 

While mother and daughter plan to remain at Jacobs for the foreseeable future, their paths are beginning to diverge. Latonya is excited to continue expanding her impressive project management portfolio in the site management and site remediation arena, while Carlin has started a graduate program at UC Davis to pursue an advanced degree in environmental policy and management, which is also in Jacobs’ repertoire. 

“It’s great because her interests are a little bit different than mine, even though we’re both environmental engineers,” Latonya says. “Science can take you in so many different directions, and I always encourage people not to be afraid of it.” 

Carlin agrees. “Have the confidence within yourself to give it a try,” she says. “It can be hard sometimes, but you are capable of doing whatever you set your mind to. I saw that in my mom. She forged her own path, and I carry that with me.” 

Charity Grano did not learn that her aunt was an engineer at The Boeing Company and Raytheon Technologies (now RTX Corporation) until she began applying to civil and structural engineering programs in college. In fact, she and her daughter, Ruth, came from a long line of women engineers, starting with Charity’s great-great aunt Winifred T. Roe, who graduated from Columbia University in 1922 with a degree in math. She became the first woman engineer for the phone company in California. 

“It wasn’t part of the conversation,” Charity explains, noting that her family’s engineering heritage came to light when her sister began conducting family research. And while her parents did not attend college, they encouraged their five children to find their own paths in technical arenas. Today, three are engineers, one is in computer science, and the other graduated with a science degree. She continues, “We’ve since found that we have engineers in the family. No men until my generation, but the previous generations had women engineers.” 

It makes sense that Charity, who grew up loving bridges and freeway interchanges, began work as a bridge engineer in Chicago with Parsons Brinckerhoff, an infrastructure engineering and design firm. Her impressive career then led her to Bechtel Corp., where she spent more than a decade working in quality control and capacity management on projects around the globe — from Nevada, Kentucky, and Virginia to Qatar and Australia. 

Charity’s portfolio includes the Doha International Airport and the Blue Grass Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant, among other projects. Today, she works in infrastructure management for a government contractor in Las Vegas. 

“It was amazing learning how people work in different countries and different cultures,” Charity says, noting that people rarely, if ever, focused on her as a woman engineer when she traveled the world and raised her family while working for Bechtel. “Everyone was more interested in the fact that I worked for Bechtel; I was a senior manager, and I was an American. It didn’t matter that I was a woman.” 

It is that kind of experience that Charity wants for Ruth, who recently began her first year as an engineering design major at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. When Ruth started applying to college, envisioning herself one day as a Disney Imagineer or a theme park designer, she worked closely with her mother to identify the best educational opportunities. 

Charity has a YouTube channel called Bridging the Gap: Student to Engineer to help parents and their children examine how schools help engineering students find professional success. She knew that engineering could be ideal for her daughter, who agrees. “I’ve always thought I would be an engineer,” Ruth says. “It seemed cool, what my mom was doing. And I like to create things with my hands, like sewing and crafting. That’s why I’m drawn to engineering.” 

“An engineering degree is a degree that opens doors,” Charity adds. “With an engineering degree, you can do so many things.” 

With a number of women engineering students in her program, Ruth is excited for her future as she completes her education and transitions into the profession. Fortunately, she has several strong role models supporting her, including her mother. “It’s really cool that I have women in my family who have been in engineering,” Ruth observes. 

“So many people I know are the first person in their family to go into the engineering field; they’re kind of on their own. I have someone, and I can ask questions. I have that basis that others don’t.” 

“Ruth doesn’t have to do what I did,” Charity says. “Everyone has their own path. My hope is that Ruth has an exciting career that gives her the life she wants. I believe that your career should support the life you want; your life should not support your career. 

“I’ve been able to take our family all over the world, and that’s because I wanted to,” Charity continues. “I think Ruth has found a good school and a good program that’s going to take her to really good places.” 

When Denise Griffin took a short sabbatical from her position as a systems engineer to raise her young children, she never expected that one year would turn into 10 years. 

At the time, the Tufts University graduate and trained electrical engineer was contemplating her future in traditional engineering. She had spent several years working for a large government contractor, writing requirements for software and hardware professionals before the dot-com era quickly changed the landscape. By the time it was in full swing, Cisco had purchased the company she worked for.   

She and her husband, also an engineer, felt they could afford for her to take time off to be with the family while she determined her next steps. 

It didn’t take long for her to move into full-time, stay-at-home mom mode. Yet, she also found a way to maintain her standing in the engineering industry, thanks to the Society of Women Engineers.

“I buried myself in SWE and SWE Boston, especially. I went to conferences and had a variety of board-level positions. My husband saw it as my continuing education,” says Denise. She served in various SWE roles, from Boston section chair to national awards coordinator, traveling often as she made connections, honed her skills, and stayed abreast of industry happenings. She also joined the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). When she dipped her toe back into the job market in 2011, “I had a resume that hadn’t included a paid job for 10 years,” she says, “but SWE and IEEE gave me a page on my resume that I could show people and let them know what I had been doing.” 

Since then, SWE has not only remained part of Denise’s professional life, which has taken her into the customer success arena at OneStream Software, but also become part of her daughter Julia’s trajectory. 

Julia is a student at Tufts University studying chemical engineering and environmental sustainability. In fact, Julia’s path toward engineering has followed a somewhat similar one to her mother’s. Both were inspired to explore the industry by educators outside of their family. Denise discovered electrical engineering when a classmate’s father, a dean at Tufts, spoke at her school about the engineering field. She was captivated by the various opportunities available in science, technology, engineering, and math. 

For Julia, who grew up hearing stories about Tufts University from her parents, who met there, engineering was not necessarily in her future from the start. “I enjoyed STEM from a young age. I loved going to the hardware store with my dad and helping him build things,” she says, “but I was not necessarily pushed toward engineering by my parents.” 

Instead, it was her AP chemistry teacher, Holly Potters, who encouraged her to consider engineering as an option; she soon fell in love with the subject. She chose to co-major in chemical engineering and environmental studies, as they would be applicable to the work she aspires to do in the sustainability or clean energy field after she graduates in 2028. 

“I’m a planner, and I liked the concept that engineering teaches you how to think,” Denise says. Julia adds, “Engineering is so broad and applicable to so many different scenarios. My mom got an electrical engineering degree and has worked in every field. I’m getting a couple of different degrees for different purposes. I want work that gives me a purpose. I want to make the world more sustainable. 

“Our fields are so different, and they will be different when I leave college and enter the professional world,” Julia says. “But we both think similarly because engineering is [about] how you think and how you can solve problems.” 

Of course, engineering in general has changed. Denise was one of the few women in her Tufts electrical engineering program, while Julia sees more women in her own programs than she ever expected. Yet, according to Denise, one thing remains true: “Engineering is super interesting, and it is a platform for so many things. I think it’s the best field to be in.” 

According to Paulina Yanez, it is not easy being the daughter of the director of the civil engineering department at the university you attend — especially when you are pursuing the same degree your mother earned. 

However, when that mother is Monica Woywood, and she is both the director and a professor within your chosen department at the Universidad de Concepción in Chile, then the pride you feel outweighs any discomfort created by the familial connection. 

“She was an amazing example because it wasn’t that common for women to work,” Paulina says of Monica, who retired during the COVID-19 pandemic after more than three decades at the university. “She was the only woman in the department. Everybody had such good things to say about her. They were very proud of her. And I was very proud of having a mom who was doing such important work.” 

Monica discovered civil engineering during high school when various professionals spoke to students about their industries. Her parents wanted her to become a doctor, but she was drawn to engineering. “It was hard at the time because there were only men in the profession,” she says. “I decided to take the challenge.” 

In college, she was one of four women out of 80 students. When she graduated and became a professor at the Universidad de Concepción, ultimately focusing on transportation, she was the only woman out of 15 professors. But she welcomed the opportunity. It allowed her not only to be in the classroom but also to work on regional civil engineering projects across Chile. 

“The projects were always changing, there was always something new,” Monica notes. “Transportation itself was a new minor at the school. It was just starting in Chile. So, there was a lot to learn and apply in the surrounding community.” 

What’s more, when the men in her department elected her as director, she did things that no one had ever even considered, including applying for grants. This allowed her to oversee the development of a building complete with laboratories featuring equipment like shake tables to study the effects of earthquakes. 

Of her mom, Paulina says, “Nothing fulfills her more than having created a whole new building that is still working at the university today.” 

While Monica honed in on transportation, Paulina was drawn to water. When she had the chance to choose one of five civil engineering paths at the university, she chose hydraulics and earned a master’s degree in industrial engineering from the Universidad del Desarrollo. 

She initially worked for Arcadis, a consulting firm in Santiago, Chile, before marrying and moving to the United States, where she found a job as a civil engineer at Professional Engineering Associates Inc., in South Carolina. “It was very hard. I come from a small country, and my technical English was not where it is today,” she recalls. “But I was able to do so much technical work, and the company grew so much because of what I brought to the table. I became the lead for civil engineering in that firm. Then I realized that I’m good at this. I can do this.”

Today, Paulina serves as a project manager at Jacobs in Sacramento, working with clients such as the Port of San Francisco, which is building up seven and a half miles of shoreline to withstand earthquakes and sea-level rise. 

For Monica, pride is a two-way street with her daughter. “She says it is fantastic to see me where I am because she saw how hard it was for me to adjust to a new culture, the language, the unit system, and more,” Paulina says. “I’ve overcome all of that, and she is very proud.” 

Paulina attributes much of her success to her mother’s advice. “She always told me to be true to yourself,” Paulina says. “She said at the end, life is like a big backpack. Everything you experience, you put in that backpack. You fill up that backpack, and that’s what you bring to the table as a person. It doesn’t matter what kind of profession you are in. You can choose what to put in that backpack, and that’s what you have to give of yourself.”

Anthonia Ohagwa was one of the first students and one of only three girls to participate in the electronics and communications engineering program at the University of Jos in Plateau, Nigeria. Only 16 years old, she had become fascinated with electronics at a young age. 

“I was very curious when the radio played. I wondered what kind of diminutive human beings and tiny instruments were inside that small gadget to play such loud music,” Anthonia says. “My brother and I unscrewed that box when our mommy wasn’t looking, and all we found was electronic plastics. I wanted to know how that sound was transmitted.” 

Her enthusiasm nearly turned to defeat during her first industrial training assignment for school. She worked at the local broadcasting service supervised by a man who did not want a woman engineer on-site. 

“He would give me an assignment, and I would do it to the best of my knowledge. Every time, he said it was not good enough,” she says. “He would say, ‘You can’t make it as an engineer. Don’t dream it.’ I would call my mom and cry. And she would tell me to press on and continue pursuing engineering, that I was just as good as the guys.” 

Anthonia heeded that advice. 

Upon her return to school to present the results of her assignment, the lecturers applauded her incredible work. It was the boost she often recalled as she worked as the first Indigenous woman engineer for the Nigerian Ports Authority, where she ran into similar gender-based discrimination. 

While often dismayed, she doubled down on her abilities, documenting everything she did in her position and ultimately winning over her supervisors. “It took me three years to prove myself,” Anthonia adds. “I had to be extra humble. I had to develop tough skin. It made me become more innovative and more creative with the little resources that we had. They hadn’t seen that kind of efficiency before, and they said, ‘This lady is good. This engineer is good.’” 

Anthonia’s daughter, Chidinma Princess Ohagwa, recognizes that her path has been much easier than her mother’s.  

“I didn’t have to deal with outright gender discrimination, but I can still walk into rooms and be the only woman on the whole floor,” says Chidinma, who moved to the U.S. to study software engineering because similar programs were unavailable in Nigeria. She completed her degree during the pandemic and worked as a software engineer for PAX Technology Inc., in Jacksonville, Florida. She later moved to Dallas to pursue a graduate degree, which she hopes will lead to opportunities in technical project management. Long term, she welcomes the chance to blend her love of technology and teaching in the educational software arena or work with foundations or organizations that support women in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields. 

That desire is born of another example set by her mother, who Chidinma notes is her biggest champion and mentor — a role Anthonia also plays for other young women as chair of the Association of Professional Women Engineers of Nigeria. 

“My mother is a continuous source of inspiration,” Chidinma says, noting that she motivates her to “pass it down.” 

“If my grandmom didn’t encourage my mom, if my mom didn’t encourage me, I wouldn’t be as equipped as I am to face the real world,” she says. “I want to pass down that kindness and support to other female engineers like the women before us who paved the way. If you can help those on the ladder below, pull them up.”

Seeing her daughter, who leaned into her STEM curiosity as a child, make her way in the world of engineering is one of Anthonia’s greatest joys. 

“I feel very fulfilled. I’m so glad she pursued an engineering career,” Anthonia says. “I knew she would do well. And I think more women should be encouraged to enter the field because humanity will benefit from the totality of our femininity, which we bring into the ecosystem. We pay attention to details. We care. And that touch of humanity is needed in technology and engineering. We need technology with a human face.”