Daniale D Rosse

I attribute my success to just being very goal-oriented and having a great support system at home with my family. Through the trials and tribulations of passing classes, being in school, finding employment, having faith in myself - all that comes from having a strong family unit. My son actually encouraged me to go back to school after he graduated, telling me I needed to go back to school for something I really liked and was passionate about and put some time into myself. That support and encouragement gave me the confidence to pursue my dreams later in life.

The best career advice I've ever received came from my architectural teacher for professional practice at MCTC. She told me that as a woman in this field, no matter what you do, you're going to have to do it 3 times better - one time because you're a woman, twice because it's fully a man's field, and three times because everybody's always going to question you. She was very passionate about what she did and even more passionate about teaching us how to do it the right way. She made everything you did feel like an accomplishment, and once you get some of those accomplishments, it just makes you want to go to the next level, and to the next level, and to the next level. Another piece of advice that stuck with me is: even if you don't know how to do it, try, because you're never going to have a success if you don't have a failure.

I would say don't ever let nobody tell you you can't do something. If you can write it on a piece of paper, you can do it. Always have faith in yourself, you can do this. I think people should really follow their dreams, because that's one thing I love - I love what I do, so I'm probably one of the few people who look forward to coming to work. When you love what you do, it does not feel like work when you enjoy it, and you only thrive to get better at what you do. If you want to do anything, I'm a strong believer that if you put the work in, you get the accomplishment out. I will not say that it's not hard work - it is some of the hardest work I've ever done in my life - but it is so rewarding when I drive by somewhere and I look and I say, hey, I designed that! I know if I'm in this building, everybody in there is safe if fire starts.

The biggest challenges in my field right now are not only just being a woman, but it's very challenging because there's not a lot of room for error, and people constantly expect you to be perfect, being that it is life safety. So the scrutiny that you put on yourself is more than anybody else could ever put on you. If my design doesn't work right, it could potentially be catastrophic. People ask me, how are you so calm? And I'm like, because if I'm not calm, I can't think, and if I can't think, I can't do this properly. Another challenge is that everything constantly changes in this field - it's constantly being updated. We're constantly trying to improve different chemicals and things that we use so that there's no carcinogens or cancer causers. So one system is phased out, a new one comes in, like, almost every two years they're updating everything with the way technology is. You do not stop learning in this industry. It takes a person with cognitive thinking skills and that human inside of you to understand some things - how somebody's going to actually react in a fire situation isn't how you think people would normally act. It really takes a huge human being behind every design to know how someone is really going to react.

Family first. Family's always first. If I set aside all my personal values and just have to put a work value, I then value having good leadership and a good team that works with you, because with what we do in the safety industry, every design I do could be life or death for somebody if the system doesn't work. So to have other people with more knowledge that I'm able to lean on - I'd say communication and partnership, having that proper support. It's so important to have people you can rely on when the stakes are this high.