In 2022, Ruha Tacey was facing a dilemma: After years as a process engineer in the energy and materials industries, she had stepped back to raise her family and was now looking for ways to re-enter industry. Despite her experience and passion for engineering, her time away had shaken her confidence and made her feel like she didn’t belong in the workforce. To ease back into chemical engineering, she turned toward social media content creation and set the ambitious goal of posting five videos every week. “I wanted something where I could use my brain and creativity and could help me feel connected with chemical engineering,” she says. Today, her Instagram account has more than 90,000 followers, and her videos cover themes such as why math matters, what engineers do, and engineering internship alternatives. To help guide budding engineers, Tacey also launched Future ChemE, a network that offers study tools, mentoring services, and online courses.
Tacey’s work as an engineering advocate emphasizes the importance of creating a space for everyone in chemical engineering, partly inspired by her own experience. Although she had found success in college and her career, graduating from Auburn Univ. in 2012 and going on to work as a process contact engineer at ExxonMobil, she sometimes felt...
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