Her Story
About Gwenna
I started my career with a bachelor's degree in English from Idaho State University, originally intending to teach high school English, but after student teaching I changed my mind. A friend's mother who worked at the Idaho National Laboratory told me they had technical writers, so I applied and it was a good fit for my degree. To be honest, I didn't really know what I wanted to do at the time, but I took that job and started to learn more about the industry and what we do at the Idaho National Laboratory. That became a stepping stone into different areas of work and a bigger career. When the internet was just starting, I took classes on HTML and learned web development, moving to our intranet team. That's when I realized my English degree wasn't going to get me very far in these technical terms, so I pursued my master's degree in computer information systems from University of Phoenix in 2001, which was essentially project management for IT systems. I've been with DOE contractors for 34 years total, including time at Hanford in Washington at their waste treatment plant, and I've been on my current contract for about 16 years. I've been in project and program management for the last 10-11 years. Today, I'm a program manager at the Materials and Fuels Complex at Idaho National Laboratory, working primarily with engineering systems and engineering data - the digital thread and digital transformation. Basically, what it boils down to is keeping our engineers doing engineering and implementing systems to prevent them from entering data twice or looking for data, getting them everything at their fingertips to do their jobs. I'm most proud of being project manager for an 8-year project to upgrade our Enterprise Asset Management Software at the Idaho National Lab, which was very difficult at times but was a significant challenge that opened the door to what I'm doing today.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Gwenna
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Whenever I get a chance to talk to students during STEM outreach, I share with them that there may be jobs out there that they don't know about. I tell them to be open, like I was, and to take advantage of opportunities, even if it doesn't seem like an opportunity or if it seems like a crappy job. If they apply themselves and learn, it can lead to opportunities and experiences that they can't even dream about at their age. So I tell them to set your path and have a goal, but be open to new experiences and learning different things that weren't part of your original plan. I grew up in very small towns and didn't have a lot of exposure to different jobs - everyone was either a teacher, a doctor, or a dentist. When I started at the National Lab as a technical writer, I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I took that job and it became a stepping stone into a bigger career.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
It is a very exciting time to be in the nuclear business. I've spent so many years where nuclear energy wasn't popular, and we shut down reactors and shifted the mission to clean up and did some research on fuels, but now we're in the reactor business again. The complex that I work at, the Idaho National Lab, we are the ones that are bringing in the test beds for the new micro-reactors. We have an Experimental Breeder Reactor 2 at our facility that ran for many, many years, and we've repurposed it. We're partnering with external companies who are designing and fabricating microreactors, and they're bringing them to us to test and start up for the first time. It's a really good time to be in this business, and it's a great place to work because we're the heart of it. It's very cool just to walk around the facility - there's so much construction and so much going on. Things change all the time, which can be good and bad. Priorities change all the time, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere else right now.
03What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I really like helping people. The engineering team comes to me and says, you know, this part of my job is really hard - I'm having trouble, it takes me a long time to get this information, or it takes me a long time to find this, or use this system, or I have to enter data twice. Whatever problem they're having, I really like to solve that for them. The fact that I'm part of our engineering group with my background is quite astounding, but I find it very rewarding to make their jobs easier. I'm also very proud of and really enjoy my work with STEM outreach programs, where we do activities with kids from grade school through high school. I try to share with them that there may be jobs out there they don't know about and encourage them to be open to new experiences and opportunities.
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