Working Group Purpose & Mission

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Mission:

EWLSE's vision is to live in a world where women and are men equally represented as leaders in systems engineering. Our mission is to create an open systems engineering environment welcoming to all; promote the demonstrated value of women as systems engineers and leaders; engage women in engineering and systems engineering at all levels of education around the world; and enable increased participation and retention of women in systems engineering leadership.

EWLSE IW2019 Group Photo

To advocate for women, please consider getting involved!

Share Your Stories

How do you advocate for women leaders in systems engineering?  Please send your stories to contact us.

Support EWLSE

Do you have new ideas, comments, suggestions or feedback? 

Or do you want to become a more active part of empowering women in Systems Engineering? 

Then please do contact us.

Join EWLSE

First, please be sure to join INCOSE.  Then to join EWLSE:

  1. Log in (Member Login), 
  2. Select Profile Home, 
  3. Scroll down to My Committees/ Working Groups, 
  4. Select Browse / Join a Working Group, 
  5. Find “Empowering Women”, select (view) on the right,
  6. Scroll (way) down to Committee Tasks and select “Join this Working Group”
Once you join, please also join our Yammer community (see link below).

Initiative

TechOps Domain

163

Members

2015

Established

Chairs

Alice Squires, Founder

Anabel Fraga, EMEA Sector

Stueti Gupta, Asia Oceania Sector

This Could Be You, Americas Sector


Co-Chairs

Lisa Hoverman, Communications

Marilee Wheaton, Professional Outreach

Erik Specking, Mentoring

Heidi Hahn, Professional Inreach

Erika Palmer, Leader at Large

Federica Robinson-Bryant, Persistence in Systems Engineering

Shamsnaz V. Bhada, New Faculty

Inquiries

Scope

EWLSE's scope is to broaden awareness of the current state of women in leadership, remove obstacles for women seeking engineering related leadership roles, collaborate with professional societies, industry, government, academia, and individual advocates, and celebrate the benefits of diversity throughout our culture. Ultimately, we want to integrate efforts to raise international awareness of the value of women leaders in engineering and systems engineering; develop and promote successful strategies for women navigating the systems engineering leadership journey across cultures, geographic locations, and domains; and drive the evolution to an open welcoming professional environment where institutions stimulate motivated and qualified applicants to seek leadership opportunities in systems engineering. What success looks like:

  • The systems engineering environment is open to all:
    1. Boundaries and partitions that limit success are removed.
    2. Women are and know they can aspire to be leaders in systems engineering.
  • All systems engineers are highly valued: ?
    1. Diverse leadership styles are respected and included.
    2. Systems engineering leadership reflects the community.
  • Women and engineering go hand-in-hand:
    1. At least half of graduating engineers are women.
    2. Female engineering graduates choose an engineering career.
    3. Women and men equally share technical leadership.
  • We collaborate as equals:
    1. Women and men have a seat at the table.
    2. Cross-cultural collaboration is the norm.
    3. 3. We work together across domains to build a solution for all.
  • 5. Mentors and enablers are part of the culture:
    1. Only knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitude matter.
    2. There is engagement at all levels of education. 
    3. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are integral to the foundation of systems engineering.

Goals

Our working group goals include the following:
  • 1. Highlighting INCOSE Leadership:
    1. Identify and pursue international opportunities.
    2. Nominate and support women as board members, directors, chairs, fellows, pioneers.
    3. Support INCOSE TLI members.
  • Collaborating With Others:
    1. Connect with academia.
    2. Network across INCOSE sectors and chapters.
    3. Reach out to other societies and groups.
  • Building Mentor/Mentee Relationships:
    1. Support INCOSE mentor and mentee matching.
    2. Support to women pursuing leadership roles.
    3. Encourage pursuit of SE competencies.
  • Celebrating Women:
    1. Demonstrate impact of women in technical leadership.
    2. Share success stories of empowered women.
    3. Publish works that showcase women.
  • Raising Awareness Through Research:
    1. Advance related gender and diversity research.
    2. Share research findings on status and progress.
    3. Invite researchers to showcase their work.
  • Ongoing Outreach for the Future:
    1. Mentor systems engineering practitioners.
    2. Raise awareness of diversity goals across INCOSE sponsored global events.
    3. Support initiatives to build a better world through a systems approach.
    4. Showcase people who are making a difference in the world.
    5. Work to achieve gender parity in systems engineering leadership.

Outcomes

Outcomes include:
  • Consistently raise awareness of the EWLSE vision, mission, scope, and goals.
  • Provide a set of resources for women in engineering and systems engineering (see News and Events, and Resources buttons near bottom of page).
  • Support a mentor/mentee program in systems engineering (see http://incose.org/mentoring - must be logged into your INCOSE account) across INCOSE for all members (men and women).
  • Hold "Not for Women Only" focused EWLSE events around the world, including workshops, tutorials, and panels at INCOSE IS, INCOSE IW, APCOSE, CSER, SWE, NoSE, JOSE and other international, national, regional and local conferences and events.
  • Publish EWLSE related research through many different publications including INCOSE SE Handbook, SEBoK wiki, Future of SE, SE Vision, INCOSE Insight, Journal of Systems Engineering, and through other publishers.
  • Nominate one or more women leaders annually from around the world to participate in the INCOSE Technical Leadership Institute.
  • Sponsor women leaders in INCOSE leadership positions throughout the INCOSE community (chapters, working groups, Fellows, CAB, Academic Council, initiatives, and the INCOSE board, etc.).
  • Support the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Advisory team and Associate Director.

IW23: International Workshop Focus

Our objectives for IW23 working session are as follows:

  1. Hold a session on Emerging Trends in Systems Engineering Leadership and share our leadership goals for 2023 and forward plans for reaching those goals!
  2. Plan EWLSE sponsored events in collaboration with DEI, at regional, national, and international conferences, for each sector, for 2023 and beyond.
  3. Brainstorm our next EWLSE sponsored publication(s) designed to provide publish opportunities for women and to raise awareness of EWLSE related vision, mission, strategic objectives.
  4. Propose and plan nominations for candidates for the next INCOSE TLI cohort.
  5. Propose and plan nominations for INCOSE recognition awards including Pioneer, Fellows, Founder's, Outstanding Service Award, Working Group Award, Systems Engineering Influencer Award,  Certification Champion Award, Presidential Benefactor Award, Joint  ASEE SED /INCOSE Systems Engineering Educator  Award.

 

Planned Activities

  • Increase use of Yammer to provide information about EWLSE initiatives and activities to EWLSE members and anyone who has chosen to join the Empowering Women Yammer community, open to any and all  INCOSE members to join.
  • Sponsor one or more  events at existing international, national, and regional planned INCOSE related conference events.
  • Nominate one or more candidates to next INCOSE TLI cohort.
  • Nominate one or more candidates for INCOSE recognition awards.
  • Raise awareness of EWLSE sponsored publications:

Planned Work Products

  • EWLSE will be represented at "Women Advancing Systems Engineering" Conference Day in Israel, January 24, 2023 by Alice Squires.  She will also be presenting “Data-driven decision analysis for systems engineers” to the Israel chapter on January 25, 2023. 
  • EWLSE plans to produce a presentation that can be used by anyone to discuss emerging trends in systems engineering leadership.  The plan is to make this a dynamic presentation that updates over time as the world changes!
  • EWLSE plans to organize a set of invited talks for March 8th, International Women’s Day. Stay Tuned!
  • EWLSE will hold a workshop to create awareness about, discuss, and reflect on diversity, equity and inclusion in EMEA. This workshop will be held at the INCOSE EMEA WSEC 2023 conferencehosted in Seville, Spain from April 24-26, 2023. Anabel Fraga will be representing EWLSE at the conference.
  • EWLSE 2023 will be on October 14 following and aligned with AOSEC 2023. EWLSE 2023 will feature a leadership workshop. EWLSE is also planning a penel at AOSEC 2023 which is Oct 11 - 13.  Stueti Gupta will be representing EWLSE at the conference.
  • EWLSE is having discussions on a possible next book titled: “Sustainable Solutions for a Better World: Emerging System Architectures”.  Send in your feedback to ewlse-leaders@incose.net.
Find out more by visiting the Working Group Yammer community today!

 

Yammer is INCOSE's social media platform for members. Use your INCOSE-issued Microsoft credential to login and join the conversation. INCOSE credentials are in the form of first.last@incose.net or first.last@incose.buzz.