Her Story
About Marlene
Marlene Moya serves as a safety engineer for Mortenson Construction. She began her career in January 2019 and currently supports the structured cabling operating group, where her team handles fiber installations inside data centers. Moya earned her degree from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in 2019 after switching from an initial focus on finance and accounting. She is a member of the American Society of Safety Professionals, an organization she joined while in school. Moya credits her professional success to maintaining a curious mentality, asking questions when unsure, speaking up, and advocating for herself as a first-generation college graduate. She emphasizes leading with influence rather than authority by building trust and relationships with team members. Moya advises young women entering the construction safety field to remain confident, approach challenges with an open mindset, and recognize that they will figure things out. She notes that rapid industry growth has made mentoring new safety professionals both a challenge and a rewarding opportunity.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Marlene
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think having a curious mentality and asking questions when I'm not sure, and speaking up and advocating for myself. I'm a first generation in my family to graduate from college, so I just kept that curiosity and was able to work through figuring out a lot of the details.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
With your career and the position that we're in, we have a lot of rules and regulations that we want our team members to follow so that they are safe. But making sure that when we lead, it's more with influence rather than authority. Anyone can tell someone what to do, but it's most effective when you as the safety professional or as a leader build a meaningful relationship and trust with the team members to inspire them to do the right thing when no one's looking. You catch more bees with honey than vinegar.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Be confident in yourself. Imposter syndrome is contagious and very relevant when you're starting off, but just go into everything with an open mindset and knowing that you're gonna figure it out one way or another. That will go a long way.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
We're growing so fast and there are a ton of job opportunities, so mentoring new team members and new safety professionals has been both a big challenge and honestly rewarding. It feels like we're running a training mill on one of our job sites. The day-to-day is hard because it takes longer when you're showing someone the ropes, but at the end of the day it can be worth it.
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