Her Story
About Maya
Maya Ault serves as Manager of Transmission Outage Coordination at ISO New England, a role she has held since transitioning from long-term outage coordination and her initial position as a NERC certified System Operator upon joining the organization in 2013. In this capacity, she manages the transmission outage coordination team, ensuring reliable power delivery across New England by calculating engineering limits and supporting day-ahead market operations and creating the next-day Operating Plan for the Control Room.
Prior to her utility career, Maya spent 13 years in the Navy Nuclear program as an engineering laboratory technician after joining following high school to give back to the country that provided her family opportunities after escaping the Khmer Rouge. She is currently pursuing a master's degree in Strategic Management and Executive Leadership at Penn State. Maya credits her professional drive to the values of independence and strength instilled by her father and finds fulfillment in mentoring team members to overcome obstacles and develop new capabilities. She advises young women entering the field to speak up for the opportunities they seek rather than selling themselves short.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Maya
01What do you attribute your success to?
I feel like it's how I was raised. My dad would always say I do this for you so when you grow up you need to make sure you make sacrifices for your child too. He told me don't ever depend on a man. You need to make sure you're out there, you're independent, you're taking care of yourself because you never know what's going to happen in life. You have to be a strong woman. I've always had that kind of mindset throughout my career.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
One thing I would share is that I wish I learned earlier on that I should speak up for the things that I wanted. I think oftentimes I would sell myself short. I would do all the extra hours. I would work really hard, and people would just assume that Maya just wants to be an individual contributor. I wish I had told my younger self ... if you want it, you gotta just say it. Be comfortable with what you want unless you speak it.
03What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
It's just being true to who you are and what you want to do. No matter what job I'm doing, no matter how bad it gets, it's seeing the people that are on my team. If I'm able to get them to a point where they're overcoming an obstacle or developing things that they thought they weren't able to do in the past, and I'm able to help them get there. Being true to who you are and being true to what makes you happy and trying to figure out how you can share that.
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