Her Story
About Justine
I've been in aerospace engineering for almost 20 years, inspired by my dad who worked on aircraft engines in San Antonio where I grew up. Seeing big aircraft take off from the flight line that I never thought could possibly take off just inspired me, so I took after it and got my engineering degree. My dad maintained them at the time, and now I build them, I design them. Throughout my career, I've had extensive management experience, but I made the tough decision to transition back to an individual contributor role because I was burned out. I didn't want to leave my program or my company - I still love my company - but I needed to take a step back from managing people and simply manage a product. Thankfully, I had tons of support from my company and my peers. This transition has turned into something unexpected - I actually have more leadership and more say now than I had as a manager. As the chief engineer of my program, I'm able to make decisions at a high level and not only execute them on my own, but grab a team and bring them up with me. We're all going to do this together. As a manager, I was only over a small scope of tasks and metrics, but now with staff-level management and leadership, I have so much more say.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Justine
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
I had a previous manager of mine, especially as I just came out of college, and I was very bright-eyed and bushy tail, just a sponge, happy to learn. He stayed with me through most of my career, up until including today. And he constantly reminds me, 'Don't forget who you are.' Every year, that means something different to somebody, right? We change into 100 different people throughout our life. So me being able to know - who am I in this moment? Who am I in my career? And what value do I put on my time? You can imagine it just turns into a hundred different versions of knowing this is what I can bring to the table. And despite whether there's a high or a low in my career, I have to remember that I know I can bring it to the table.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I personally love going to conferences, not just for the interviews and the speakers that you get, but also for that room time that you get with various companies. I hear so many new hires say 'I don't know if I'll meet anybody there that can help me' - they're already shooting themselves in the foot. Networking, especially for young engineers, is super key, because in aerospace, I still talk to the people that I worked with on my first year, because you never know when you're going to need a professional reference, or just a professional opinion from somebody who's had a different career in your same field.
03What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
My biggest one is trust. I know it's a business, but at the end of the day, whether you're trusting your team, your leadership, or even your own competency - do I have all the skills I need? Trust is huge for me. Training is something that has allowed me to see my position from the view of a new hire versus a very senior executive, so that way I might be able to better complete my company's position. Training's huge for me. The last one is leadership. There's many ways to be a leader, and some of those core values of being able to provide not just technical leadership, but people leadership - the leadership to be able to pull a team through the keyhole and be able to accomplish success. So those are my three main ones: trust, leadership, and the training aspect of the job.
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