Lindsey Miller

I would say really pre-think through your goals and don't go too far - I'm not saying figure out what your next 10 years are, but definitely start pre-planning and learning how to make those small adjustments to get to your future goals. Home ownership is a big one that I wanted to do very early, and I made sure it happened, but there were some small things I had to do straight out of college, like making sure your credit is not messed up with your credit cards and paying attention to your debt-to-income ratio. Take it in 5-year increments and make those adjustments now. Get the certifications while you have time, for sure, because as you get older, things start piling up. Just make those adjustments early on, and then take it every 5 years and see where you are. If you achieved it, make some more adjustments and look at the next 5 years. Foresight is my biggest life lesson. Career-specific, don't be afraid to take the positions that you feel like you might not be necessarily ready for, or outside of your required experience level. I know they asked for experience 1 to 5 years, but you have 4, so you didn't apply - don't do that. Apply.

The biggest challenge I would say is growth and opportunity for women. There's not a lot of electrical engineering females coming into the workforce, so we do have to work harder, work smarter, and just by sheer numbers, it's a feat in itself because there's just not a lot of us. Right now the landscape of the industry is lacking a bit in that regard. Prior to COVID, work-life balance was the biggest thing, and I think COVID kind of gave it to us. We realized how much we were lacking in the life part of the balance, especially being a mom. I look back at how I got up, took a kid to school, picked him up, started traveling, and I realized how much less of the life side we had. Being in the technical field, most of us have been home and we all work from home now, and I think that really brought home that work-life balance that I kind of needed. So that's not even really an issue anymore. Now it's just continuing to get those opportunities in for our girls, exposing ourselves, doing stuff like this, and making sure that we have mentorship opportunities and organizations to usher in the new regime of female engineers.

My number one thing is maintaining your integrity and just maintaining yourself. The two values that are important to you - if it's be truthful, speak with dignity, be charismatic - there's so much happening every day outside, inside, at work, on playground. I do think that a lot of us are starting to be swayed by our environment, and I think it's very, very important to know who you are and stay stagnant in who you are with the ever-changing landscape of friends, Instagram, and Facebook. There are just so many distractions. My biggest thing right now is stay true to yourself, maintain your values and your qualities as you navigate through life. Find those 5 core non-negotiables. I know I have mine - don't lie, be honest, if you've done something wrong come forth and be forthcoming with those things. Definitely be proactive on a daily basis, not even the day-to-day, but be thinking about where do you want to be in 5 years and make those small adjustments. Proactiveness is huge for me. Those are the core values that I have, and those are the ones that I just stick with, and they're definitely non-negotiables for my day-to-day.