Retaining Women in Chemical Engineering Careers

Dr. Meredith Sellers is a Senior Managing Engineer in the Materials and Corrosion Engineering Practice at Exponent, an engineering and scientific consulting firm. As a Licensed Professional Chemical Engineer, she assists clients evaluate and investigate failures associated with material properties, processing, and performance. Dr. Sellers has significant experience assisting clients in the oil and natural gas and aerospace industries engaged in domestic and global legal disputes. She holds a B.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, respectively. Dr. Sellers is a long-standing member of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and the Association for Women in Science (AWIS). She is involved in corporate initiatives within Exponent to both attract and retain women and underrepresented minorities in the workplace.

Dr. Felicia Etzkorn is Professor of Chemistry at Virginia Tech. She has a BS from Missouri State University, a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and was an NIH post-doc Harvard Medical School. Her research concerns the stabilization of proteins with small molecules to investigate cell division and collagen structure. She has been the sole PI on 3 major NIH grants, one NSF grant, and multiple smaller grants. She participates in two major NIH biomedical training grants for underrepresented students. She created a Green Chemistry course for senior undergraduates at VT in 2007. Her textbook, Green Chemistry: Principles and Case Studies was published in January 2020.

Motunrayo Kemiki is a Renewable Energy and Project Management Professional with more than 10 years experience in the federal government. She currently works at the Office of Renewable Energy Programs at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) where she is responsible for managing reviews of technical plans submitted for offshore renewable energy projects in the Outer Continental Shelf. Prior to joining BOEM in 2014, she worked as a Project Manager at the Department of Energy Loan Program Office (where she managed technical due diligence of multi-million dollars renewable energy projects -biofuel, energy efficiency & transmission-under Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act) and as a project engineer at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (where she coordinated the manufacturing of rocket motor propellant for the MK6).

She has a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Maryland, College Park. She is also a licensed Project Management Professional.

Named one of the 100 Women Leaders in STEM by STEMconnector, Tricia Berry leads efforts to recruit and graduate women in the Cockrell School of Engineering as Director of the Women in Engineering Program at The University of Texas at Austin. She concurrently serves as Collaborative Lead for the Texas Girls Collaborative Project (TxGCP), leading the dissemination of STEM best practices and informal curriculum across Texas in coordination with the National Girls Collaborative Project. Through both roles, she connects and supports organizations and individuals working to advance gender equity in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields across Texas and beyond.

Tricia is the co-author of You Can't Eat Your Degree: Combine Your Passions and Philosophies to Create the Story of Your Future and Exceeds Expectations: Take Control of Your Performance Review. Previously, Berry worked as a Process Engineer and a Product Development Engineer at The Dow Chemical Company in Freeport, Texas.

Dr. Jessie DeAro is an expert in broadening participation in STEM education research and diversity programs and has nineteen years of experience designing, implementing, and leading federal grant programs at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Education. She has the managed several different diversity related grant programs at the NSF and is currently the NSF ADVANCE program lead and a program director with the EHR Core Research and the Science and Technology Centers programs. She has served in leadership as acting Deputy Division Director at NSF and in policy roles as a senior policy advisor at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in 2010.

Ekin O. Gozen is currently the Strategic Portfolio Advisor at Shell located in SF Bay Area. In her current role, as part of Technology Portfolio team, Ekin supports portfolio management and decision making for the Vice President of Refining, Catalyst and Analytical technologies. She delivers cross-portfolio analysis and insights on Shell Technology strategy implementation, productivity of technology portfolio, alignment of portfolio to business technology needs for CTO, the Technology Leadership Team and other key stakeholders. Prior to her current role, Ekin held various roles at Shell Martinez Refinery including the Team Lead for the Quality Assurance group and Process Engineer at Projects team. Ekin joined Shell in 2013 as a Research Engineer in Process Evaluations where she provided technical and economical guidance to various Shell businesses such as Alternative Future Energy, Chemicals, CO₂ management and Upstream. Ekin holds a PhD in Energy Resources Engineering from Stanford University and MSc and BSc in Chemical Engineering from Middle East Technical University in Turkey. In her spare time, Ekin enjoys singing with her band, running and cycling.