Organizations that have earned a place among the Winds of Change Top 50 Workplaces for Indigenous STEM Professionals are strong supporters of inclusion. Their staff members know that their contributions will be supported and valued. We asked employees at three of the Top 50 Workplaces what it’s like to be part of the inclusive workforce at their organization.
Merv George poses with United States Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.
Photo courtesy of Merv George
USDA Forest Service
Deputy Regional Forester
Seeing the forest for the trees is a trait that Merv George, deputy regional forester for the Pacific Northwest Region of the U.S. Forest Service, has honed throughout his career. For George, a member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe, understanding the relationship between humans and the surrounding ecosystem is second nature. With family ties to tribes in Northern California and throughout Oregon, he learned early about the role natural resources play in the lives of community members in the Pacific Northwest. He spent some 15 years working in various tribal government positions, including serving as tribal chairman of the Hoopa Valley Tribe, before joining the Forest Service in 2008 as the organization’s tribal relations program manager for the Pacific Southwest Region.
His career with the USFS exposed him to the full spectrum of the forestry ecosystem and related industries. His work entails interaction with tribes, environmental organizations, and industry partners focused on land preservation and conservation. “I rely on many others to provide me with analytics for the projects I support,” says George, who is committed to ensuring that tribal communities are included in conversations about resource management.
George explains that for him and his agency, it’s a balancing act with tribes, fisheries, local mills, environmentalists, and others. “The public,” he says, “doesn’t always agree with how to manage public lands. That’s when it’s critical to understand the social dynamics involved with our community partners and to be able to find solutions sensitive to all those involved. To do my job it’s critical to have an understanding of forests, the ecosystem, the history of the land, and the politics involved with other entities.”
As one of three deputies overseeing 17 national forests encompassing some 24 million acres, George manages several programs, including engineering, fire and aviation, safety, recreation, and wildfire crisis hazard fuels reduction efforts for Oregon and Washington. George points out that management of the lands includes the water that supplies the Pacific Northwest — a water supply dependent on healthy forests. “Having too many trees and excess brush can remove valuable surface and groundwater from the watersheds, which leaves less water making its way to cities,” he explains. Water quality can also be an issue when catastrophic fires remove vegetation that keeps soil in place. “In many areas of the Pacific Northwest, we have seen high severity burned areas get hit with atmospheric rain systems that result in huge sedimentation issues in our creeks and rivers,” he says.
George started learning about the forest ecosystem from his elders from an early age, and after graduating from Cal Poly Humboldt, he garnered early career experiences caring for tribal lands. “We know that regular, low-intense burning in the cooler times of the year is key to healthy forests,” he explains. “This keeps the understories clear of ladder fuels and helps ensure low-intense burns when ignition sources such as lightning find these areas.” According to George, the USFS is working to get back to traditional tribal land stewardship in many of our national forests.
His dedication is evident in the weekly 1,000-mile roundtrip commute George makes from his home in Hoopa, Calif., to his office in Portland, Ore. “I choose to live in Hoopa,” says George, who is the caretaker of his family’s ceremonial village, Takilmilden, and maintains their traditional cedar plank homes. He is also a cultural practitioner and ceremonial leader in charge of hosting the world renewal ceremonies. “It’s an honor and a privilege to make the commute to do my job,” he says.
Prior to George’s current role, he served as the forest supervisor for the Rogue River Siskiyou National Forest in Southwest Oregon and for the Six Rivers, Lassen, and Los Padres National Forests. In his various roles, George has been able to have a big influence over tribal lands. “I enjoy being able to be a bridge of shared stewardship opportunities between tribes and the USFS,” he says. “That is what I enjoy most about my job.”
— Kimberly Durment Locke
fs.usda.gov
“Caring for the Land and Serving People”
The Forest Service is a federal agency under the U.S. Department of Agriculture with an important mission: ensuring that our forests and grasslands will be healthy, protected, productive, and sustainable for future generations to enjoy. The nearly 30,000 diverse employees of the Forest Service manage 193 million acres of public land and natural resources across the United States, from Pacific Coast rain forests to the eastern woodlands and the desert Southwest. In addition, they assist communities and state and local governments, forest industries, and private landowners in protecting and managing non-federal forest and associated lands. The agency also provides technical and financial assistance to state, private, and tribal forestry agencies and makes up the largest forestry research organization in the world.
Kayla Boggess, center, applies her knowledge of industrial engineering in her role as a material area manager at Stellantis.
Courtesy images
Stellantis
Material Area Manager, Detroit Assembly Complex – Mack
When Kayla Boggess was entering her senior year of high school, she had a good idea of what she wanted to study in college and the type of career she planned to pursue. “I thought I was going to be a history major and become a teacher or go into psychology,” she says.
Those plans soon evaporated, mainly because she enrolled in an engineering class that her friends were taking. Boggess loved the projects, like designing and building a rollercoaster with PVC pipe. It didn’t hurt that she has a natural talent for the work. But just as important was the enthusiasm for math and science that her teacher inspired. “She just loved math and science so much that it instilled a love for it in me too,” Boggess recalls.
Boggess was so strongly influenced by that high school teacher that she wanted to follow her path and study mechanical engineering when she enrolled at Ohio State University. Part of her education at Ohio State was realizing that mechanical engineering was not the right fit. Instead, industrial engineering gave her an opportunity to combine her past interests with her newfound love of STEM. “Industrial engineering has the aspects of the people side of psychology and history and the process side of the engineering world that I love,” says Boggess.
Today, Boggess works as a material area manager for the Michigan-based automaker Stellantis. Though not technically an industrial engineer, Boggess uses those skills every day. For example, Stellantis applies lean manufacturing principles at its facilities, which puts an emphasis on consistently improving efficiency. Even aspects of the supply chain — how materials and components from suppliers come into a plant and make their way to a Stellantis production line — are included in the scrutiny of lean manufacturing.
One of Boggess’s tasks is analyzing the routes and operations of forklift operators to make them as efficient as possible. “When I’m looking at route efficiency, the best people to talk to are the drivers,” she explains. “How do we make this better? What if we stage those parts over there? What if we move these parts around?”
Boggess hopes to expand the application of her engineering knowledge at Stellantis to improve the flow of materials both inside and outside the plant. “Everything is a puzzle,” she says. “My favorite part of my job has always been talking to people and learning what they know so that I can help them improve their work.”
Both professionally and personally, improvement is nothing new for Boggess. One reason she has been able to continuously improve is because she never let setbacks deter her. In fact, Boggess remembers her excitement when she got an interview for a summer internship at an AISES College and Career Fair. “I bombed it — I did terribly,” Boggess remembers with a laugh. An AISES staff member Boggess met at the fair was determined she wouldn’t fail twice. So at the next opportunity, the staffer prepped her. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a better interview,” says Boggess.
Boggess, Oglala Sioux, is enthusiastic about providing Native students with the same support she received from AISES. She also is eager to share stories about Native culture and challenges.
Boggess gave a presentation to the Stellantis Women in Manufacturing Group about missing and murdered Indigenous women, and she educates people about the resource and educational needs on many reservations.
Whenever she gets a chance, Boggess also loves to tell people about her own family. “One of the big aha moments in my life was in 10th-grade history when the teacher told us our next chapter was going to be on Native Americans and asked us what we think of when we hear ‘Native American,’” says Boggess. “I raised my hand and said, ‘My family.’ He asked if I could think of any ancestors, and I said, ‘Red Cloud.’ He thought that was the coolest thing he had ever heard.”
— Chris Warren
stellantis.com
“Powered by Our Diversity, We Lead the Way the World Moves”
With a corporate heritage of leadership in design and quality, automaker Stellantis comprises 14 legendary automotive brands. Stellantis is focused on building a diverse and inclusive organization — now numbering more than 160 nationalities with industrial operations in 30 countries — that attracts people and inspires ideas across borders and cultures. Committed to a rigorous environmental, social, and governance policy, Stellantis takes pride in its iconic vehicles and innovative services and solutions to engineering and market challenges. The corporate philanthropy arm, the Stellantis Foundation, advances the company’s commitment to sustainability by supporting projects aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Kathryn Bunner Swafford tested four other majors at Stanford before deciding on computer science.
Courtesy image
Google
Software Engineer
Kathryn Bunner Swafford knows where she’s going. No wonder. As a software engineer at Google, she works on a team tasked with improving Google Maps. She and her coworkers use photos from Google’s roving Street View fleet to add safety improvements like stop signs and other benefits to the online service. That work gets noticed — more than a billion drivers depend on Google Maps every month.
At Google’s Mountain View, Calif., campus Swafford feels valued. “People here are super awesome, super collaborative, and always down to help,” she says. “I’m always learning more and making things more efficient.”
Swafford looks forward to holding a leadership role at Google. She hopes that one day she will imagine a new feature, pitch it successfully, and lead the team that creates it. “I’d love to be able to point that out to my friends and family and say, ‘Oh, that was my idea,’” she says.
As happy as she is in her role at Google, creating software was not her first career choice. Swafford always loved math, and she tested four other majors at Stanford before deciding to dive into computer science (her minor is Native American studies). To her surprise, for her first assignment instead of having to wade through abstract theory she got to create something — a robot she trained to pick up objects. Her takeaway is to be open to exploring. “Taking lots of intro classes is exciting because it can give you a feeling of what your different futures might be like,” she points out.
Swafford grew up in Omaha, Neb., far from her Oglala Sioux roots at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Her father was raised by a non-Indigenous family. Growing up she felt disconnected from her heritage, but that changed at Stanford after she joined AISES and other groups for Indigenous and underrepresented people.
Those connections gave her a community at college she would not have otherwise had. “AISES did a great job of making my big college seem small,” she says. “You have a bond with other people when you realize you’re both Native. It’s awesome. You feel so much closer to people knowing that.” She explored AISES career fairs at every opportunity, she recalls, and landed her first summer internship thanks to networking at an AISES conference.
Google tells its employees their job is to “Build for Everyone.” It’s a motto Swafford takes to heart. She is impressed by the diversity of her company’s workforce. Google’s employee resource group GAIN (Google Aboriginal and Indigenous Network) has hundreds of members. It gives them a place to launch initiatives and support Indigenous small businesses. “It’s a mistake to think that high-tech companies hire only a certain type of person,” she says. “I’ve met so many different types of people here — we want all types of people.
— by George Spencer
google.com
“People Using Technology to Benefit Others”
The more than 16 employee resource groups at Google — and the 35,000 employees who belong to one — are evidence that the company is delivering on its commitment to attract and support a diverse workforce. The commitment to diversity exists at all levels, including a goal of increasing representation of Indigenous, Black, and Latinx employees in leadership by 30 percent by next year. An important goal is to ensure every employee feels connected and empowered to participate fully. Climate action and sustainability are also top of mind at Google. The company is striving for net-zero emissions across its global operations by 2030. Providing tools that let people access information, connect, and unlock economic opportunities is an important value at Google.