Episode 2 - You're an engineer?

Nadine Maurus

Nadine Maurus earned her Bachelor’s of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering from UBC in 2018. During her studies, she had the opportunity to gain work experience through co-op placements at a variety of organizations, including government and private industry. Through these experiences, it became clear that she wanted to continue in an engineering career that serves the public, promotes sustainability, and has real, tangible results.

Shortly after graduation, she started working on the City of Vancouver’s fleet Strategy and Asset Management team. In her role as an fleet engineer, she manages projects across the City related to asset replacement, fleet electrification, and strategic initiatives. A highlight of her work in this role was replacing the Vancouver Public Library’s delivery van with the first medium duty electric vehicle in Canada.

More recently, she has moved into a role focused on electric vehicle charging infrastructure for the City of Vancouver’s fleet, which supports climate emergency goals and aligns with her passion for sustainability. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking with her puppy, being in nature, and traveling.

Aftab Erfan

Aftab Erfan (she/her) is a long-standing scholar-practitioner in the field of inclusion and social justice, currently serving as the City of Vancouver’s first chief equity officer. She was educated as an environmental scientist and urban planner.

In 2013 Aftab completed a PhD in Community and Regional Planning at UBC, where she subsequently taught for a decade and completed a four-year stint as director of dialogue and conflict engagement for the university. Aftab is a first generation Iranian settler on Coast Salish lands who has worked as a facilitator and teacher on four continents. She is cautiously optimistic about the future of humanity. 
 

Carla Grimann: Today, we're going to be talking to Nadine Maurus. Nadine is a professional engineer at the City of Vancouver. She is one of two female engineers on her team of twelve. We're going to be talking with her about the obstacles she faces as a woman in a traditionally male role and how she navigates through these obstacles and some of the good things and some of the bad things that happen throughout her workday.

I am Carla Grimann and I am the host of Talk it Forward. A new podcast brought to you by the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation and supported by the City of Vancouver. This season, we're going to be talking about women in leadership and women in non-traditional roles. We're also going to be talking about how do we support women in the workplace?

How do we make them strive? And not just, how do we make them strive, but how do we make them thrive? How can we support them to reach their career and their leadership goals in the workplace. Later on in the show, we'll also be talking to Aftab Erfan. She is an Equity Officer at the City of Vancouver. Aftab thinks of her work as taking care of people, taking care of people in marginalized communities. And making sure that our workplaces are safe and equitable.

But first we'll talk with Nadine. At the City of Vancouver, we have a Women's Equity Strategy. And in part of the strategy, we are hoping to increase the amount of underrepresented occupations or women in underrepresented occupations. And this includes engineers, firefighters, trades, and operations, senior management, people in information technology. And so I have invited one of those engineers onto our podcast today. I would like to welcome Nadine Maurus as our guest, she's an engineer in training, I believe. Nadine -- do you want to clarify and tell us who you are, what you do, how long have you been with the city?

Nadine Maurus: For sure. Thanks so much for having me, Carla. I'm very excited. This is my first ever podcast. Thank you. What an awesome opportunity. Yes. So, I am an engineer in training. What that means essentially is I went to school for my bachelor's in Applied Sciences, in Mechanical Engineering.

After you graduate, you have kind of a four-year period at which you gain work experience. And then after that's done, which for me is now, you move on to your professional engineering designation. So, hopefully by the time this podcast airs that'll be completed and I'll be a professional engineer.

But for me those four years, well, three and a half, I guess, have been at the City and so I have been working in the Engineering department, specifically in the Fleet and Manufacturing Services branch. And my role is very much centered on equipment and asset procurement and replacement. Then more recently I've been focused much more on kind of electrification, specifically electric vehicle infrastructure charging, and kind of more of a sustainability focus. So, yeah, that's me.

Carla Grimann: That's cool. And you mentioned fleet, so a very, you know, traditionally male-dominated industry. When you graduated from school and you came into work into the real world and entered into this male-dominated industry, did you have any reservations or concerns about entering into the workforce?

Nadine Maurus: Yeah. I mean, I think those concerns probably started before even starting to work, even just going into the program, at, you know, university level, it was a very stark. It goes from like high school where, you know, it's totally mixed and everyone's with everyone. And then you go into your first year and then your second year, because mechanical engineering gets separated at the second year level. And sort of every year as you progress, there's fewer women. I think I was one of maybe like 10 or so, so it was maybe 10 or 15% and not more than that. So you're very aware from the start that you are different. Yeah, it's not hidden by any means. 

And so I think for me, I did what's called the co-op program and university. So I was actually able to kind of intersperse work experience throughout my university years, or did a total of, I think, 18 months of work placements at various different organizations during my studies. So even then I worked at various government agencies and some private as well. And a lot of those were kind of centered in operations. 

And so even there as like, I was like the one, the one young girl engineer amongst all the trades people and everything. So I've kind of been in that environment in a number of situations now. And, and it's something I've kind of become used to, even though it was definitely very jarring at first.

Carla Grimann: What, what about it was jarring? 

Nadine Maurus: I just like stick out so much.

Carla Grimann: It is very obvious that you are female. Yeah. Did you have any, you know, how do I put this delicately? Any, was there any harassment? I mean, we're not here to shame or embarrass anyone. We're here to educate and help people understand some of the barriers that women face when entering into the work force and, you know, traditionally male workplaces or roles. Is there anything that you would like to say share, or perhaps advise that you would want to give to a younger woman that is going into engineering or any male-dominated workplace?

Nadine Maurus: Yeah, that's a, that's a big question. And I will preface this by saying like I'm still kind of that young engineer. So the advice that I have is very much still from that lens, but, yeah I will say I've for the most part have had very positive experiences. I think, you know, it's all a little bit scary when you walk into the shop and everyone is at least 10, 15 years older than you.

And also, yeah, you are kind of the only woman there, but like from my experience, most people have been very helpful. I do find that you get noticed a lot more, so maybe like your mistakes are also noticed a lot more, which can be challenging. I do find as well, like, because I didn't necessarily look like what people thought of as an engineer. There was always a lot of like surprise, positive and negative like, oh, wow, good for you. You're an engineer, but also a little bit of like, oh, okay this is different which goes kind of goes both ways. 

Carla Grimann: Can I share a story of a positive experience? Of course, when I first started my career here at the City of Vancouver, I was an automotive mechanic. And as you know, at the end of February, all of the insurance expires for all of our fleet vehicles. Which is how many fleet vehicles do we have in the organization Nadine, do you know, off the top of your head?
Nadine Maurus: 1800, I think.

Carla Grimann: Okay. So that's 1800, a lot. Yes. 1800 pieces of insurance and insurance decals need to be changed before the end of February. And it all happens in the last week of February. And I was fixing a police car. And I walked up to the parts counter to order parts. And at the counter was another gentleman picking up his insurance for his vehicle. And he turned and saw me and looked at me in surprise and said to the person behind the parts counter -- a woman? You have a woman working here? And just started laughing.

And I kind of just gave him that sideways look like what's going on. And the gentleman behind the parts counter his eyeballs went as big as saucers and was like, yes, Carla has been a mechanic here for a while. And he just said, well, I can't believe you have a woman working here. And so very, very quickly the guy behind the parts counter was like, well, what, what is your unit number, sir? We'll just, you know, let's get you your insurance and we'll get you on your way. And so, you know, I went back to fixing the police car and the parts guy that got the insurance headed on out and a little while later came back and said, Carla, I can't believe that guy. Like I said to him, you know, buddy, you're so lucky that Carla is so cool and mellow about this.

Like she could have had you fired. I can't believe you said that. And he was quite mad at the parts guy that someone had the audacity to say that, but you know that aside there is still microaggressions, there's still sexism. There is still harassment. There is still disrespect in the workplace. And that is why we have all of these policies within the workplace. And I'm just curious, do you think that there is still the sexism and discrimination, do you think it is still a problem for women starting out in the workplace and starting their careers? 

Nadine Maurus: Definitely. Yeah, I think so. And I think a lot of it too is it's not, it's not maybe overt. Like, I think it's really easy to point to one or two examples, but that you've got like, okay, like this person said something to me, and that was not right. And that's obviously horrible and shouldn't be happening, but I think there's so much internalized bias as well, that you may never really find out where that came from and whether or not that maybe was some sexism or some kind of bias against women. 

I think I told you this story, about the industry event that I went to maybe a couple of months ago, and this was an external event. So, you know, not City-affiliated in any way. But it was centered around fleet vehicles and, yeah. So this is an industry event. It was mostly a presentation format and then a bit of a demonstration of vehicles afterwards. It kinda started out with a breakfast. So, you know, myself and my male colleagues, we grabbed some breakfast.

We kind of were just chatting amongst ourselves when the presenter of this event comes by our table and introduces himself, you know, everything was fine. Um, until he kind of saddles himself right up to me and goes, oh, this should be perfect for you as a whole table of girls over there that you should join.

And he kind of like gestures across the room to this table of three or four women. And he goes, oh, it's like a, it's like a sorority table meetup or something like that. And I was just so shocked. I did not know what to say at all. So I just kind of, I think I just stared at him to be honest. And then he kinda like looks down at my plate and he goes, wow. And look at that hearty breakfast too. Like, is that all for you? Good for you. And honestly, I think I just gave him a blank stare and he kind of looked at me and kind of meandered on to the next table to talk to, uh, whoever his next victim was. But, um, yeah, I was kind of taken aback to be honest. Yeah, I've never, or haven't in recent experience been kind of singled out like that. For being kind of one of a few women at an event. Yeah, just kind of being stereotyped, it doesn’t feel great. 

Carla Grimann: So just curious, do you want to pursue leadership, and do you still think there's barriers for other young women getting into leadership? 

Nadine Maurus: Yeah, I think that's a great question. I mean, I think for me personally, definitely that's something that I'd like to move towards in my career and in terms of barriers, I, unfortunately, I do think so.

I mean, other than all the empirical evidence that shows that that is the case. I think also just for me, just trying to think back on kind of my relatively short career trajectory to date, I will say like my experience of being hired and interviewing and all those kinds of processes for me, I've been so, so lucky to have been championed by other women.

Like I mentioned, I've done kind of three distinct co-op placements during my university terms. Of those, two were ones where I was hired by a female engineering manager. And as you mentioned, like female engineers are quite rare. Female engineering managers are even more rare. Exactly. And so, the odds that I would be hired by two.

I think also it kind of shows how women really champion other women a lot of the time. And so I've been super lucky in that sense that I've had that experience. So I think that's kind of one of the ways that we can close the gap in terms of getting women into leadership positions is, you know, once, once we do have more representation that kind of opens up the pathway for other women to follow.

But, yeah, I mean, like I mentioned, I'm still fairly junior in my roles, so, uh, we'll see what experience I can gain to kind of move in that direction. 

Carla Grimann: I wish you well, as you move forward into that direction. And you’re right, like, I think it's really important that we allow other younger women and women entering into their careers, that they can see those other women in the leadership positions because they can identify with them and say, hey, if they can do that, so can I. 

Nadine Maurus: I was applying to jobs after graduation, I applied to many of the same jobs as my male friends and my university colleagues. And I didn't hear back from nearly as many, even though we had, you know, very similar grades, very similar experiences. We obviously did the exact same course work, um, and exact same kind of project and lab work.

So, that's something that I've been very keenly aware of.

Carla Grimann: And so why do you think that is if you could make an assumption or take a good guess? Why do you think that you didn’t get the call back? 

Nadine Maurus: It is, um, it is something that I will never know for sure, but I, I mean, I definitely, I have my guesses.
Carla Grimann: But let's just politely leave it at that.

Nadine Maurus: I also will say a big part of it is like, I, even for jobs where I made it through to the interview stage and, you know, things I thought went well. There's always kind of that piece where, the culture might just not be a good fit is I think what, what the term often is. A lot of the times it's nothing to do with, your kind of ability or how good you are at report writing or at the technical aspects of your job.

It's whether or not you're going to be someone that fits in well to the culture at a certain firm or company. And yeah, just looking at me or, you know, trying to talk about the hockey with me is probably enough. We might not share the same interests and same hobbies and things and that even might be enough for me not to get that call back.

And so that is something that I am acutely aware of is just that I might not be able to make those kinds of personal connections as well with certain hiring managers, depending on what their assumptions are about me or, you know, even just how I interact with them. Yeah. 

Carla Grimann: That's interesting though, I mean, you mentioned culture and, you know, hockey. I wonder if that was, you know, they looked at you through this lens of, well, when we have our annual company weekend away, where we all go on a fishing trip, How is this girl going to fit in?

And I find that really unfortunate because I think that some companies do put that factor in there and I feel that they are missing out on an incredibly capable employee that they're not hiring them because they identify as a woman. So thank you so much Nadine for your time. And for joining us on the podcast today, Talk it Forward.

I'm glad that we had this opportunity to chat further with you and inspire other young women to think about going into engineering.

Nadine Maurus: Thanks so much, Carla, for having me, this has been a great experience. 

Carla Grimann: You're listening to Talk it Forward, brought to you by the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation. And I'm your host, Carla Grimann. 

To learn more about how this podcast started make sure you go listen to episode one, if you haven't already. Today, we're talking about what it's like to be a young woman entering into a traditionally male role and the obstacles that they face and how they navigate throughout the workplace and their workday.

We'll also be talking about strategies for improving hiring practices and creating a safe workplace for everyone, as well as what strategies can you use to keep yourself going. To help you thrive and strive in the workplace.

Aftab Erfan is the Equity Officer at the City of Vancouver. She is passionate about taking care of people, especially people that are in marginalized communities. This may include someone who is the only woman in the workplace or someone who is of color. She makes sure that work places are safe and secure and equitable for everyone.

Thank you, Aftab for joining us. It is lovely to have you here with us today. And I'm just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what you do here at the City of Vancouver and what is your job title? I think it's Equity Officer or Director of Equity. 

Aftab Erfan: Yes. Thank you for having me, Carla. It's so nice to be in conversation with you.

My title officially is the Chief Equity Officer for the City of Vancouver. I very often drop the chief and just talk about myself as the Equity Officer, and there's all kinds of interesting dynamics around the word ‘chief’ and the Indigenous significance of that word and are we appropriating when we were using that word.

But, I think, it's a little bit like code switching, you know, like sometimes the chief title is what I need and, but I think of myself as the Equity Officer for the City and that's definitely a good way to refer to me. 

Carla Grimann: And could you tell us, what does the Equity Office do here at the City of Vancouver? What is its purpose? 
Aftab Erfan: Yeah, for sure. So, we are, first of all, a relatively new office we've been in operation for just over a year. And the purpose of the office is really to attend to some systemic changes that need to happen in order that we can really serve the people of Vancouver better, but also in particular serve the communities that have been historically and systemically marginalized.

So, it might mean folks who are living below the poverty line. It could mean racialized folks, Indigenous folks. It often will mean women in low-income neighborhoods. It also means women in the workplace and racialized folks in the workplace. And so actually most of my time is spent working with colleagues at the City of Vancouver, trying to build capacity internally to support each other better.

And really, it's like a culture change role that I have to try to make the workplace more supportive for who is working here and making that more representative of the many communities that we serve at the City of Vancouver. 

Carla Grimann: That's a lot. 

Aftab Erfan: It is a lot. 

Carla Grimann: It's a big job, but, you mentioned the Equity Office has been sort of functioning for about a year now.

Can you tell us when you started with the organization, what was the City doing well in order to support women and make things more equitable for them in the workplace? And what is the Equity Office looking to do going forward to keep furthering equity for women in the workplace?

Aftab Erfan: So it turns out that in recent years we've actually been doing pretty well in increasing the representation of women in some parts of the organization, including in the upper echelons, if you will. So in terms of leadership and senior leadership, we're actually not doing too badly.

Right. So there's actually more, both the representation, and I think the sense of belonging for women. So that aspect of inclusion, I think, is working also better than it has in the past. Of course, it's also a fairly, um, it's not like we've always been measuring and paying close attention to this.

So, you can take this with a grain of salt, but I kind of feel like I saw a pretty good gender balance in leadership and where we are lacking is in many actually of the professions within the City and where you're sitting would be one of those places where we don't have that representation.

And what troubles me more is that we don't always have a full sense of inclusion. That there isn't a feeling of comfort and that I belong like everybody else and that I'm taken seriously and I'm safe from microaggressions and things that could happen. There's some of that, that we could be doing a lot better on.

And I think we are not unique in this way. This is a pretty, ubiquitous almost phenomenon for large organizations like the City of Vancouver. But I think it's really in those areas of the City and the professions where we have, that tend to have lower numbers. We also really need to be working on the culture to make it more welcoming.

And these are chicken and egg, right? Like if you don't have a good culture, that's very welcoming, it would be harder to get women to want to work in that environment. And the other way around, if there's very few women, it's hard to make that culture. So that's part of the difficulty of why it's a big job. And a big piece to try to shift is because these pieces are so interconnected with each other.

Carla Grimann: Earlier in the episode, I had an opportunity to speak with Nadine Maurus. She's an engineer here at the City of Vancouver and she's quite a newer engineer. She did speak about feeling how she kind of stands out as being one of the only women in her workplace, or sometimes in many work situations.

And I'm wondering, how do you think we can better support women that are on their own in their department or even other people that are the only person of colour, or a say a person with a physical disability? How can we support them better in their workplace? 

Aftab Erfan: Yeah, that's a really good question. And, kudos to Nadine for joining.

That is a such a hard place to be when you're the first one or, or the only one. I think it is very important for people who find themselves in that position to be connected with others who share their identity and their characteristics. So at the City of Vancouver over the past year or so, we've created, I think, we have up to 12 now employee resource groups, which are groups of people who share an aspect of identity.

So there's one for women in operations, which might be the one that Nadine might want to join. We have also one for women in STEM. And then there's one for Indigenous staff. There's one for Black staff. We have a whole number of different ones, but those identity safe spaces are actually completely crucial because it's the one place that you can go to just kind of relax and take a breath and be with others who you don't have to explain things to. You can just kind of say, this was my experience, and they understand that you don't have to prove it, that they can actually just hear you. If we don't have those supports in place, most of us will leave. It's just, it actually is really important to have community when you are one of the only in your group.

So that would be my first suggestion is you need to do a different type of networking if you will. And that's for not just for professional development, but it is also just for your mental health and for your ability to find a place of comfort. And so then the City does some supporting of these employee resource groups. We offer some training, we do some kind of like special sessions that might be of interest to that group as we are rolling out new policies or new programs. These are the groups that we consult with because you know, the experience of those few women in the yards or working in engineering are going to be really useful when we revise our Respectful Workplace policy.

Or when thinking about what mental health supports do we bring in? What packages or what do they look like? Like these are what accommodations are needed. What about shift scheduling? You know, those women are going to have really, really useful input that if we just survey the whole group, we are not going to get, but interviews with those employee resource groups are actually also very helpful in creating systemic change that begins to move our system in the direction of being more welcoming so that we can get out of that chicken and egg situation that we talked about. That if we have the right policies in place, let's say that we have a more flexible work schedule where folks can come in after nine o'clock when they drop off their children. There's probably going to be a whole lot of mothers who need that arrangement in order to become employed in that unit. So if we put that in place, likely we'll get more women. But to get to the point of making that policy shift, we need the women in our existing system to speak up for it.

So that's some of the ways that I think about it. It's like find other people who have experiences like you, know where to go for support, find some mentors. I mean, you know, we are actually in a good moment in this way that even if they're not in your group, there are women in positions of leadership. There's many of them in engineering now, and there's also several in engineering ops in fairly high level. So, reaching out to them, as a mentor, I think is a really good idea. And even if you have very little contact with them, but just you know that they're there for when you need them.

Carla Grimann: Interesting that you, you know, you mentioned the mentorship. When I was interviewing Nadine, she did stress a couple of times when I chatted with her that she found it very interesting that out of all of the resumes she put out there and interviews she had, the two times that she did get hired was by a woman.

It was a woman that hired her. Any other interview or a place she kind of applied for, sort of, she didn't get hired by them. Don't really know why. I think we can make assumptions. So how do, how do we change that? How do we sort of reduce that barrier? 

Aftab Erfan: I mean, I think this also speaks to why having women leaders in positions to hire others is going to be the thing that makes a lot of difference. I do think there's a lot just in the hiring process. There's more that we can do. But there is a lot of bias that's at play when you're hiring. Like a lot of us tend to want to hire people we feel comfortable with, people we want to hang out with, people who are like us in some way.

And so if it's men in positions of hiring, that's like the default is going to be skewed in that direction. Now I'm not saying that every single man is going to do that, but when you look at it, statistically, we are going to lean in that direction. So. That is a bias. That's probably an implicit or unconscious bias that unless we become aware of we can’t counteract.

And so training for selection committees, and for hiring managers, around unconscious bias, I think is pretty important. And I mean, I also wonder it would be interesting to talk to men about what's happening there because I kind of wonder if it is actually. Like, I wonder if they're afraid that if there are women in the workplace, not that they won't be able to do the job, but that there will be, a lot of, for one thing, like more complaints about sexism because the sexism that's there will become apparent, you know?

So, the solution to that is not to not hire the women. Okay. To change the culture, but it would be interesting to have a real conversation about like, what's really the fear there. To what degree are men who are hiring aware of what they're doing. If we show them the data, how do they make sense of that?

Carla Grimann: It's interesting you bring that up because in a further episode, I will be bringing some men onto the panel and we will be chatting and because they are part of the solution. So I'm going to write down that question and I will ask them for you. And I hope to get back to you and our listeners with that answer.

So, I noticed I'm keeping an eye on the time and I know that you're incredibly busy with your workday, so thank you again so much for joining. I hope you enjoyed your time on our show. 

Aftab Erfan:  I sure did. Thank you very much. I'm so glad you're doing this. And it’s nice to learn a little bit more about you, Carla. It's always great to connect this way. 

Carla Grimann: Thank you, Aftab. This has been Talk it Forward and I am Carla Grimann, the host.

I'd like to thank Nadine for sharing what it's like to be a young woman, starting out your career in a traditionally male occupation and for Aftab for being so passionate about building safer communities and workplaces.

So, as you go throughout your workday, and if you're suffering from 1 million paper cuts, remember that you were making change and that there are people supporting you. So, keep going. In our next episode, we will be looking at how caregiving affects women in the workplace and the obstacles that it creates as they pursue leadership.

Have you had a chance to listen to our first episode yet? Please go back and check out more about this podcast, how it was born and what we'll be discussing the season. If you would like to learn more about the Women's Equity Strategy, you can check out vancouver.ca/womensequity. Thank you for listening.