SWE honors two from Electronic Systems for leadership and workplace commitment
Januca Berry and Nora Lin represented Electronic Systems at the annual conference of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), where both were honored for their leadership and commitment to the profession.
Berry — manager of Mission Assurance in the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Systems Division in Baltimore — was recognized as an Emerging Leader in the Field of Quality while Lin — received a Fellow Grade Award in honor of her commitment to advancing the role of women in engineering.
Berry was selected for her technical excellence and professional accomplishments. Her responsibilities include overseeing and managing improvement initiatives, risk management, product verification and validation, and providing audit effectiveness.
Before she accepted this position, Berry was co-chair of the RF/Microwave Commodity Design Team, and advised design teams on supply chain requirements and specifications. She has worked on more than 100 programs, creating a database for cross-functional teams to use, in addition to 400 technical specifications for components and assemblies.
She is also an active volunteer who chairs the Professional Development and Mentoring Committee for the African American Task Group (AATG) and visits middle schools to pique students' interest in engineering as a part of the DiscoverE program. It's a role that provides a great deal of satisfaction because her own interest in engineering was sparked by a SWE mentoring program that Berry joined as a middle school student. Suzanne Jenniches, a former vice president who retired from ES in 2010, served as Berry's mentor throughout middle and high school.
"When I first met Suzanne Jenniches, I didn't even know what an engineer was," Berry said. "And now here I am accepting an award from SWE, and it's all — the award, my career — because of a SWE program I joined in middle school."
Lin, who joined SWE in 1997 and became a lifetime member in 2003, was honored as a Fellow Grade Member in recognition of her "continuous service to the advancement of women in the engineering profession."
A naturalized U.S. citizen who was born and raised in Taiwan, Lin earned a bachelor's degree in physics before traveling to the United States and earning a master's degree in physics. She began her career at Northrop Grumman in 1993 and before long advanced to become a technical lead/manager in Software Engineering and led teams that developed relational database applications and real-time software for several military programs.
In her current role she is responsible for technical leadership, system design and development, cost and schedule management, proposal preparation and program staffing.
An active mentor, Lin has dedicated herself to advancing SWE's mission and has held various leadership positions at local, regional and national levels, including president, regional director, Region H governor and Chicago Regional Section president.
Lin is also involved in Northrop Grumman Women Engineers (NGWE) and encourages members to become leaders in SWE and within the profession. She also supports the company's outreach programs such as tutoring, DiscoverE and Connecting Educators to Engineering, among others.
Lin has received many honors including the Women of Color in Technology Career Achievement Award in 2008 and the Asian American Engineer of the Year Award in 2009.
"Currently, there are fewer than 200 SWE Fellows within the entire SWE 20,000-plus membership, so it was a great honor to receive this prestigious recognition and be associated with a group of great women engineers," said Linn. "I now have even more responsibility of empowering more women to study in and advance and achieve their own career dreams in engineering."
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Reprinted from Circuit magazine
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