Her Story
About Emma
I've been in the automation and control systems industry for over 20 years, starting when I came to the US from London originally to attend college. My uncle worked in an automation company and gave me my first break, allowing me to do admin work as a student - photocopying P&IDs and technical documents, building physical proposals. When I was fairly far into my degree, they offered me a sales position and I shadowed my uncle and other sales professionals to learn the business. I worked for a system integrator on and off, taking time away when I had my oldest daughter, then briefly tried recruitment but came back to automation solution selling. I've worked for a cybersecurity and SCADA integrator doing business development and sales, then at ABB where I traveled to West Texas for upstream onshore projects. For almost 5 years now, I've been at Honeywell as a global account manager focused on EPC companies - engineering, procurement, and construction companies. My day-to-day involves client-facing work, understanding project needs and timelines, getting buy-in from internal stakeholders across Honeywell's extensive technology portfolio to build solutions for clients, coordinating proposal teams, and finding opportunities to introduce clients to additional Honeywell technologies and services. I also do long-term relationship building through lunch and learns, workshops, and connecting our senior leadership with client leadership. I'm currently pursuing an MBA at St Mary's University in Twickenham, which accepted my US college credits and 20 years of experience along with references from my bosses.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Emma
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've ever received is that regardless of title, everybody - people are just people. We all breathe the same, we cry the same, we all eat and do all the other human functions. Never be afraid of a title. People are just people. This advice was given to me by a very old man on a very rough job site, and it's stuck with me throughout my career.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say use your voice. Trust your intuition, use your voice, don't be afraid, and don't back down. If you feel like something is not right, don't be afraid to call it out, and if you have an idea, don't be afraid to share it. There are no stupid questions, and people are not going to judge you - and if they do, that's not about you, that's more about them. I think that as women, we are particularly taught that our voices are somehow not as important because they're not male, and I think that that is just something that our industry really needs to start changing. For every 20 meetings that I go to, there might be one other woman in the room. It's really that dire in the oil and gas industry.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Definitely AI, definitely cybersecurity - the semiconductor industry is booming and we're seeing demand for data centers immediately. There's a lot of money there to be had, and a lot of contracts are being made without some due diligence even. Research and development is huge, and semiconductors and the technologies that enable those semiconductors - all of your computers, memory chips, those types of infrastructure that help those AI hyperscalers like Amazon and Google get off the ground - that's where we're seeing a lot of opportunity right now. Cybersecurity is still underfunded in our industry, however, as we move towards these huge data centers, we're going to need more than ever that level of cybersecurity and protection on these systems that are being built.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
My values are: Am I proud of the work that I'm doing? Did I do the best job that I could have done? Did I do absolutely everything to the fullest extent of my capabilities, and did I do it in good nature? Was I a good person? Was I kind? Was I helpful? I have two daughters and a son, and I like to imagine a lot - would my girls be proud of me today? I think about that a lot.
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