Meet Laura - Senior Member Engineering Staff
Laura’s parents were both engineers, but she didn’t feel pressured to become one herself. She enjoyed a variety of art and STEM experiences growing up and was shaped by the discipline of her ballet classes. She knew she wanted to apply that same rigor to a career, so she studied engineering, where she could be persistent and methodical on real-world projects.
She never imagined her real-world experience would include spending a week on a U.S. Navy destroyer, working one-on-one with sailors on shipboard radars. “In a regular tech job, you wouldn’t necessarily get as much face time with the customer on their sites, on their equipment,” she says.
Today, she works on Navy ship radar for the Aegis Combat System – in the middle of a cornfield! Her team solves challenges and develops solutions for emerging threats on land first before deploying them in the middle of the ocean.
When Laura joined the Rotary and Mission Systems radar team, she was pleasantly surprised by the knowledge sharing she experienced and the collaborative nature of the team. That’s been invaluable to her as she’s faced feelings of “imposter syndrome,” thinking she didn’t know enough to be an expert. “I learned you’ll never be an expert – you’ll always have more to learn,” she says. “It’s about how you use what you do know to move forward.”
Laura’s managers and mentors have advocated for and supported her career growth and development throughout her career. As one of only three women engineers in her graduating class, Laura says it’s refreshing to see a lot of young women engineers joining the company – and especially the Aegis team.
One piece of advice she’d offer to others: “It’s OK to not know what you want, to ask for what you want and to decide what’s not for you.”