Kickstart: Goals, improvisation and inspiration

I spent the first half of this week in Scottsdale, Ariz., for the Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum, where nearly 200 women from all levels of the industry gathered to get inspired, share advice and generally prepare themselves to make even bigger advances in the plastics and rubber industries.

One big, overarching theme: imposter syndrome and overcoming it. (More on that coming in the Nov. 20 print issue of Plastics News.)

It's hard to wrap up two days of really interesting conversations and advice here in one easy-to-digest email. PN and Rubber News have posted a few stories from the event so far, and more are on the way. But in the meantime, I thought it was worth highlighting a few shorter items here.

Alex Buck began her career as a lawyer. She set her sights high and was part of a national legal firm.

"I loved my career; I loved going to trial," she said. "What motivated me at that point in my career was power and money. I wanted as many cases as they could give me."

Then she found herself as the lead associate on three cases going to court at the same time in three different cities while seven months pregnant. And her goals changed.

"I don't care about power and money," she thought. "I don't want to be throwing up in the back of airplanes."

She was offered a chance to work with medical industry manufacturer Abbott Industries and left law. She's now group president for supply chain solutions at Quantix, a resin and chemical industry logistics and shipping specialist.

She still believes in setting big targets for herself, working off of a five-year plan. But that plan is also open to changes as new opportunities and new motivations appear.

"As women, be unapologetically selfish in planning your career," she said.

When Laurie Ford joined the U.S. Army at the age of 19, she was given a small pamphlet of standard operating procedures. It regulated how clothes should be stored, how kitchens should be run, how to maintain your weapon and almost every other element of day-to-day life. The military says those rules are for safety and to ensure unit cohesion.

Ford noted those rules also are very similar to concepts embraced in private life in terms of individual company operating systems used to maintain standards for safety and efficiency. Critical medical devices, for instance, also require a high level of precision.

Military training also taught her how to think quickly as needed, another important lesson on the shop floor. She is now the director of product safety with Charter Next Generation Inc.

"What do you do in manufacturing? You find solutions with what you have," Ford said.

Sylvia Moore, director of technical development at PVC supplier Shintech, said there are still relatively few women in her branch of the industry. At the start of her career, she was often not only the only woman in the room but also the first woman in her job.

She had to deal with men who didn't think she was capable and instead asked bosses to send someone else. But not only did she prove them wrong but also they began to draw new lessons from her career.

"I found that later some of these same men had daughters, and when those daughters were heading into college, they very much wanted them to be able to follow them, and they came to me," Moore said.