How to Pivot from Engineering to Tech
- Host – Michele Heyward, Founder, PositiveHire
- Guest – Danielle Pollard, Industrial and Systems Engineering, Founder and CEO of 7 Wolves Consulting, LLC.
Danielle has a background in Industrial and Systems Engineering with more than two decades of training, executive coaching, and most importantly real life in the trenches leadership experience.
How did you become an engineer?
I went to college, and I majored in accounting. I went to NIU or Northern Illinois University, which is a pretty good business school. What came to my thoughts when I saw a fine gentleman reading a book at a table with the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) banner.
Our physics teacher, which was an older white male, invited two of his friends, which were two other older white men to come and talk to us about the field of engineering. And that’s all I remember about engineers.
The next day (after talking to the guy at the NSBE table), I changed my major to industrial engineering.
How did you end up in tech when you’re an industrial engineer?
I had these job experiences building applications and picked up new skill set. I kept building until someone told me that I would be really good as a scrum master.
What software coding language do you primarily use to create the applications?
A language called FORTRAN.
How would you recommend getting a scrum master position from a QA background with a CSM certification but no Scrum experience?
No one has any idea whether you can do the job or not. Until you get there and you do it. So how do you win the role? It’s whoever is not the best person for the job because No one’s done the job, yet for you to be able to compare and contrast, if you’re a hiring manager, the person who wins the role is the person who is best able to articulate their value to the interview.
Scrum is just a framework that is designed to be the answer to uncertainty. And so what that means if we think about right now with the Coronavirus, the COVID-19. Right now, this is very complex time and a very uncertain time and there’s a way to successfully navigate uncertainty.
- How do you feel when they fail?
- How do most organizations deal with the failures?
- Do they reorganize?
The answers to these questions and more are in the full video.
Danielle Pollard
Founder and CEO of 7 Wolves Consulting, LLC. and author of the upcoming book “The Trust Factor: How to Unlock the Power of Trust to Build the Perfect Agile Team, Pollard is passionate about making work fun and cultivating peak performance for individuals, teams and companies across the globe.
Driven by a strong sense of community she has gleaned from her past experiences to impact the lives of hundreds of inner city youth and aspiring women entrepreneurs through her nonprofit performing arts and empowerment programs.
Michele Heyward
Michele Heyward is founder and CEO of PositiveHire, a tech company engineered to bridge the gap between enterprises and underrepresented women in STEM professions. Michele is a civil engineer who is an experienced project manager in the energy sector armed with technical sales and technology transfer experience.
Michele’s vision is to not only help black, Latina and indigenous women find inclusive workplaces, but to prepare enterprises to receive them, and help those enterprises recruit them. This approach makes PositiveHire the premiere recruiting platform for black, Latina and indigenous women professionals.
Michele has a B.S. degree in civil engineering and a M.S. degree in industrial management, both from Clemson University. A South Carolina native, Michele enjoys spending time with her family, traveling, Toastmasters, and making connections personally and professionally. Michele has a passion for engaging with others on social media.
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