By David Giambusso
06/14/16 08:58 PM EDT
Energy remains a male-dominated field, but like the industry itself, that is slowly changing, a panel of New York-based female executives said Tuesday.
During a panel discussion entitled “Women Disrupting Power,” part of New York Energy Week, Colleen Calhoun, a GE executive,Tina Palmero, deputy director of the state Department of Public Service, and Andrianne Payson, co-chair of DLA Piper’s U.S. energy-power sector, told of their experiences rising through the ranks and offered advice to a new generation of women entering the field.
“I’ve noticed a difference in women of our vintage versus the younger women in the industry,” Payson said. “When we were coming up, we were a lot more cautious and a lot more deferential … Now, it’s very different.”
All three said that when they were in their early 20s, they were among the only women in the board room or on a project site. They all said the fear of speaking up in those settings was something they now regret.
“It’s difficult when you’re younger. You see things and you think ‘I don’t think this is right,”’ Calhoun said. “I kick myself looking back and think ‘I should have said something.'”
Palmero added, “I, too, wish I had spoken up more in public.”
Amanda Levin, an energy consultant with PA Consulting, moderated the group. She advised women, specifically engineers, to take a course in public speaking.
“If you want to be heard and you want to get to the executive level, you have to find your voice,” she said.
Each of the women said that perhaps the best thing for young women in the field is to be around older, successful women. Calhoun urged women to not be overly concerned with quick advancement, but to become an expert in a given area of the business.
“You have to build an expertise at something,” she said. “The expertise that I built … is still what the company knows me for.”
A recent list of “session chairs” for the 2016 Advanced Energy Conference in New York provides an anecdotal illustration of how energy remains a male-centric industry. Out of a list of 31 chairs, or experts in a given sector, only four women were chosen.
Still, the women at Tuesday’s panel said there are signs of progress. Audrey Zibelman, Palmero’s boss, chairs the state Public Service Commission and Angelique Mercurio is the CEO of EnerKnol, the energy analytics company that runs Energy Week.
The panel discussion itself was something of a novelty, the panelists said.
“I’ve never been involved in a conversation like this and I’ve been in the industry for 30 years,” Palmero said.
