Her Story
About Rose
Rose Francis serves as a Project Manager on the renewables side at WSP, based in Boulder, Colorado. She earned her bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the National Institute of Technology Calicut in 2018 and her master's degree in engineering management from Northwestern in December 2024. Francis began her career in the oil and gas industry at ExxonMobil, where she worked as a valves engineer handling technical design and casing and tubing design before moving into a change management role that introduced her to project management. After approximately two and a half years in that position, she pursued her master's with a focus on renewables through targeted electives and projects. In her current role, she manages proposals, budgets, schedules, and teams for solar and wind farm engineering design projects, often overseeing 12 to 13 projects simultaneously while serving as the liaison between clients and technical teams. She holds PNP certification and maintains PMI membership. Francis values clear communication, honesty, transparency, and the assignment of responsibilities in her work. She also contributes to her community by visiting the All Roads Homeless Shelter in Boulder once a month.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Rose
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I got is to build a strong network around you. So everything is not give and take, but it is always good to have people on your side, people you can trust. If you don't trust anybody in an organization, if you're only thinking about yourself, you cannot... it won't be a good place for you to work. You might get ahead in your career, but you spend most of your life at work, so it is important to make meaningful connections with people at work.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
First do what is assigned to you, and then learn as much as you can. When you first start, you might not be fully busy with work, but reach out to people, understand what is important and what you need to learn, and take that extra effort to learn it on your own. Most of the times, in corporate, nobody would come and tell you, you do this, you do that, but I feel like it's your job to ask around experienced people, understand what is needed, and then make yourself ready by doing all the trainings, doing all the reading you can, so that you're ready from your end when the right work comes.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge is our renewable industry is highly dependent on the policies, the government policies. So, there are... the work adds some flows. So, sometimes it is so much work coming at the same time, and sometimes things are slow. So, you need to be able to adapt based on the pace at which work comes, and manage multiple projects at the same time. So right now, I'm managing around 12 to 13 projects at one time. So, you should be able to adapt and handle multiple things. Take care of different things, so be organized, or you won't be able to handle it.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Being honest and transparent on what's going on, that's important to me, and communication. So, at work, sometimes we won't be able to meet the schedule, or we won't be able to do everything we initially agreed maybe 2 months back, but I feel like it's very important to communicate it clearly, what is going on, why those things are happening. Keeping the client or the team up to date on what is going on, so that everybody's... everybody understand what's going on so there is no later frustrations. I feel like clear communications and assigning responsibilities. Very important.
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