DRIVING THROUGH A MALE DOMINATED INDUSTRY AT FULL SPEED

Happy Women’s History Month y’all!

I love using these moments in time to really focus in on history makers past present and future in my field because it inspires me to keep going and to not get discouraged or let moments of insecurity from some of my peers leave me mentally suspended in time, if that makes sense. It also encourages me to give people making waves right now their flowers, which is so incredibly important! I am absolutely in love with what I do. I adore all the ladies who have reached out, share their time and their ideas with me and quite literally lift as they climb. One of my favorite mentors and friends, Penny, says this often and the notion lives rent free in my mind. Every day is an adventure, every new goal is like forging a new path and it’s exciting! But let’s be real, constantly figuring things out as you go is extremely exhausting… or is that just me?! 🤣

Being a woman in the automotive space isn’t easy. For me, there are many moments of imposter syndrome, self doubt & making myself small. I’m sure I’m not the only one, and if you’re in a male dominated industry yourself you could probably relate. It can be quite exhausting explaining my presence in auto spaces and wondering if weird side comments or assumptions are being made because I’m a woman. This is what I mean when I say I’m mentally suspended in time — in the back of the room playing mental Olympics when I should/could just be present and taking everything in like everyone else.

My energy is taken up with wondering if there will be any other ladies in the room with me when I’m invited to automotive events and it’s either a pleasant surprise or a disappointing revelation. Will I be challenged in a room today or will I be made to feel like I belong there? Thankfully I was pleasantly surprised when I was flown out to Montreal by Polestar to check out their ice driving experience! I wasn’t the only women! Amazing. I got to experience Polestar in harsh conditions and see how the vehicle would respond. It was truly epic, but there was a moment I turned to my new friend and said … you know we can’t put this car into a snow bank right? We were so clearly on the same page but it was in that moment it really weighed on me that we couldn’t just.. be.

We couldn’t be in the moment, brush off a scuffle with a snowbank, push the car to the absolute limit… we still had to be EXTRA careful. Now, obviously no one else came into this saying they were going to floor it head first into a snow bank and have no regard for anything but it’s the underlying conversation and side eyes that we both understood we’d get expressed in such few words that we collectively just KNEW we couldn’t be on the receiving end of. I can in fact report, no snow banks were harmed by us during this experience, can’t say the same for some of the other drivers. After that, we definitely lightened up and pushed a little harder.

I share this experience and tell this story to show we’re more alike on these journeys through male dominated industry’s than you think… and that although the work I do is incredible and I wouldn’t change it for the world — there is still so much work to do.

How do you not let societal “norms” and/or “expectations” affect your behavior?