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HOW TO HAVE SUCCESS IN THE WORKPLACE? THE CHEMICAL ENGINEERS HIGHLIGHTED IN THIS ARTICLE EACH HAVE THEIR OWN FORMULA. BLESSING OSHIN OF DUPONT SAYS, “SUCCESS IN ANYTHING STARTS WITH SHOWING UP, DOING WHAT YOU SAY YOU ARE GOING TO DO, AND A GOOD MEASURE OF CONSISTENCY.” ABIGAEL MIREAULT AT PFIZER BELIEVES, “YOU HAVE TO DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND EVERYTHING ELSE WILL FOLLOW.” FARHEEN QADIR OF BASF SEEKS HAPPINESS RATHER THAN CAREER SUCCESS. “I RECOMMEND THAT PEOPLE LOOK FOR OPPORTUNITIES ALONG A CAREER PATH THAT ALLOW THEM TO DO THE THINGS THAT MAKE THEM HAPPY.”

Kelly M. Franklin Brendel is a soybean crop lead in Monsanto’s U.S. Row Crops Manufacturing Organization. In her role, she is responsible for long-range, crop, and capacity planning; serves as liaison with technology on projects in the soybean pipeline; and manages the contracts and relationships with all of Monsanto’s external production partners who grow and package soybeans for its brands.

Monsanto’s mission is focused on sustainable agriculture and developing technology solutions to meet farmers’ needs. Initially, Franklin Brendel was attracted to the company 21 years ago because it was a diversified chemical company. Although Monsanto is different today, she “remains attracted because of the focus on developing innovation solutions to address farmers’ needs and food production challenges. For me, I enjoy new and different opportunities that challenge and continue to develop me as a person and an employee.” During her time with Monsanto, she’s worked various roles in industrial chemical, herbicide, animal agriculture, and seed manufacturing, as well as in research in biotechnology and chemistry technology.

Indeed, Franklin Brendel believes that career success is what each person decides it is for him or herself and likely will change throughout one’s career. “For me, career success is having the opportunity to take on different roles that could be in different parts of the organization or business, as well as being continually challenged by the work I do every day,” acknowledges Franklin Brendel. One’s degree is a ticket to an entry role, but it doesn’t necessary assure or limit future opportunities. Where one’s career goes depends more on the skills developed in roles that go along with the degree and make a complete package.”

Franklin Brendel earned her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and her executive master’s of business administration degree at Washington University in St. Louis, MO.

She enjoys the opportunity to be involved in essentially all aspects of soybean production, from working with Monsanto’s technology and commercial groups to launching new products, to working with its production sites and partners on crop planning for the upcoming year, developing strategic longrange plans for how they will operate and manufacture in future years.

As a leader, it is necessary for her to have the experience in and an understanding of manufacturing in general, the ability to work and get things done collaboratively in a team environment, including cross-functional teams, and the ability to influence leadership and others in the organization.

Monsanto operates in a matrix organizational structure, so being a team player is critical for success. “It’s important to get the input, engagement, and support of others/ team members to getting something developed and then ultimately implemented. Having more voices involved leads to a better outcome,” Franklin Brendel states.

Kimberly Clark at AREVA thinks the best way to enhance a career is through tackling a wide variety of experiences. “The problem- solving skills you learn in engineering can be applied in any situation,” she says. Clark is especially mindful of incorporating women into the chemical engineering landscape. “This is what we emphasize when we promote science technology, engineering, and math (or STEM) education. We try to help young girls understand that they don’t have to sit behind a desk doing calculations their entire life. There are a lot of options out there,” she adds.

It’s not that women engineers have a challenge being engineers, Clark explains, but rather that they interact and work in what is still a male-dominated field. “As humans we are more comfortable with those most ‘like us.’ As the minority, this can work against us,” she notes. Reading the book Lean In, she learned that men and women act differently in many ways in the workplace. Her examples are generalities, but in her experience, they hold true 90% of the time. “When joining a meeting, men go straight to the table, while women will sit against the wall and wait to see if there are enough seats at the table for them. And I have witnessed that, even if there is a seat, they will stay on the wall,” she adds. “This makes it difficult to interject your thoughts on what is being discussed, so my message to women is to ‘get to the table.’”

Men tend to use more directive language with peers and subordinates, while women ask for things, saying “please” and “thank you” more often. Men sometimes see this less directive nature as a weakness and, if the majority of high-level executives are men, then they tend to reward behaviors similar to their own. “In order for women to advance we must be aware of these differences and learn to adapt our behaviors in different circumstances,” she explains. “This doesn’t mean change who you are, but it does mean being able to adjust your style when needed. It’s great if you can learn to do this because when you master many different styles, you can empathize with larger groups of people, and you will start to learn what individuals respond to best. It’s also a great sales tool. But don’t forget to be true to yourself.”

Clark actually provided the book Lean In to her peers at work (mostly men), encouraging them to read it. She knows they did as she saw a change in behaviors. One example was an in creased effort to get the women on their teams to the table in meetings.

Throughout her career, Clark has tried to seek out female role models. Why does it matter? “For me, it was important to seek out different perspectives on balancing work and family and I wanted someone to talk to with whom I could relate. I was looking for someone who may have already faced some of the hard decisions I was facing,” she recalls.

She started her career at a consulting firm that was heavily involved in military contracts and then moved into the paper industry; both industries were very maledominated. “It may take more work but if you think you need a mentor and your company doesn’t provide you with any options, look outside your company; it’s a great way to network while accomplishing your goals. Today, I personally get a lot of requests to be a mentor because there are still so few female engineers in executive roles,” she remarks. She tries to accept every request.

Before coming to AREVA, Clark worked for one of its competitors in the nuclear field. “Over time nuclear energy has become a passion for me because of what it represents in our world: sustainable, affordable, clean, safe energy,” she comments. “I am focused on ensuring that my great-grandchildren have clean air to breathe. This is a small industry and through my professional network I met executives from AREVA and was compelled to join the only fully integrated nuclear company in the world.”

AREVA’s mission is to provide clean, low-carbon energy solutions to the world. As a leader in nuclear energy and a significant, growing player in the renewable energies sector, sustainable development is a core component of AREVA’s strategy. Its nearly 5,000 U.S. and Canadian employees work every day to make AREVA a responsible industrial player helping to supply ever cleaner, safer, and more economical energy to the greatest number of people. The North American operations are headquartered in Charlotte, NC.

As chief customer relations and marketing officer for AREVA, Clark supports all AREVA’S business development efforts in North America, in all of their business groups: uranium services, nuclear fuel fabrication, reactors and services, new nuclear build, spent fuel storage, deconstruction, decommissioning, and finally, renewable energy, that includes solar, wind, and biomass along with energy storage technology.

“A day-in-the-life consists of listening to customers discuss their business and technical challenges. I then relate those challenges back to my colleagues in AREVA so that we can provide innovative, cost-effective solutions so that our customers can continue to provide safe, clean energy to their consumers,” Clark states.

While her engineering degree helps her to understand the technical side of the business, the skill of being able to interact with all sorts of people, such as those in finance, communications, plant managers, and CEOs, is also necessary. “It’s just as important to be able to walk on the shop floor and talk technically as being able to have a business conversation to resolve issues with a CEO,” she says. AREVA sponsors a sales academy where it promotes the “counselor salesperson” approach that teaches employees how to ask the right questions and, more important, how to listen. In addition, the company is involved in industry groups, such as the Institute of Nuclear Power Operators (INPO) and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), which improves an understanding of what is important to the company’s customers.

Team-building is so important to success. “You won’t accomplish anything without a team,” Clark emphasizes. With the complexity of business today, which includes customer challenges, regulations, and politics, creating a diverse team that includes various genders, ethnicities, backgrounds, and training is much more likely to solve a problem. No single person knows as much as all those brains put together, Clark says, calling it “every brain in the game.” Diversity of the workforce and diversity of thought are critical for AREVA’s success going forward, she adds.

Diversity at even the executive level is apparent. “It may be surprising that someone who has an engineering degree has become the head of customer relations because it’s not the normal career path that people think of for an engineer. I didn’t chart this path directly. Instead, I was lucky enough to have had many opportunities for mobility that allowed me to come to this role,” Clark reports.

Her advice for female engineers is to tackle the hard job because it is the one you will learn from. Take the shift work job, dive into problems that no one else wants to solve. “I spent my career doing that and building the experience that enabled me to, today, be one of our company’s female executives,” she declares.

If she had not worked graveyard shifts, she would not understand what the outage crews do every day. If she hadn’t run a fuel fabrication facility, she wouldn’t know the details about how fuel is manufactured or how to handle nuclear material. If she had not reluctantly agreed to a sales role because she’s not a salesperson, she wouldn’t understand how to align customer needs with a product or solution.

“All of these experiences allowed me to put the pieces together to make our customers and AREVA successful and show other female and diverse candidates that there is no one career path. When people see what I do, I hope they think, ‘I need more mobility and more experiences to help me get to that point and have that much fun working,’” she concludes.

Stay motivated, she adds. “Don’t allow yourself to become stagnant–I watch this happen so often. Always look for improvement opportunities for yourself and the company. It’s important to be respectful, respected, and sincere. Most of all, leave the ego at home; lock it in a box if you can.”

In 2002, after working in the industry for more than ten years, she saw Airgas as an innovative company on the move. “Airgas was very dynamic, growing quickly, and really shaking it up in the marketplace. After I interviewed for the position, I felt driven to come to Airgas. I remember practically holding my breath until I got the offer. It was very exciting and is even more exciting today,” she recalls.

For more than a decade in her previous role as Airgas specialty gas product manager, she utilized her chemical engineering background to provide tech support to customers for all gas and chemical products, including evaluating chemical properties and gravimetric and partial pressure mixture calculations. In her current position as Airgas manager of tech service marketing for gases, Shillingford provides training on all of Airgas’s gas and chemical products as well as on the business processes involved in the sales and marketing of those products through Airgas’s unique telesales channel, Airgas Total Access.

Airgas is one of the nation’s leading suppliers of industrial, medical, and specialty gases, and hardwoods, such as welding equipment and related products. Airgas is a leading U.S. producer of atmospheric gases with 16 air separation plants, a leading producer of carbon dioxide, dry ice, and nitrous oxide, one of the largest U.S. suppliers of safety products, and a leading U.S. supplier of refrigerants, ammonia products, and process chemicals. More than 15,000 associates work in approximately 1,100 locations, including branches, retail stores, gas fill plants, specialty gas labs, production facilities, and distribution centers. It also markets its products and services through e-Business, catalog and telesales channels.

Shillingford earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering at Drexel University and a master’s of business administration degree from LaSalle University. Both universities are in Philadelphia.

She now uses all of the experiences and relationships she’s built for nearly ten years to train the most dynamic salesforce in the industry. “I didn’t even think I was ‘trainer’ material, but couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be at the forefront in this exciting channel to market,” she admits.

To be successful in her role, Shillingford has developed listening and communication skills, an aptitude for teamwork and relationship building, a strong working knowledge of business analysis and reporting, a firm technical understanding of the products, the company, and its operations, as well as proven sales and marketing skills. “In my role and throughout Airgas, being a team player is extremely im portant. You cannot grow personally or professionally in a vacuum and a company cannot grow with associates working in a vacuum. If you are not a team player, you won’t thrive at Airgas-I feel very strongly about this,” Shillingford says.

Farheen Qadir of BASF manages a team of experts that provides consulting services to BASF businesses in the area of marketing, sales, supply chain, and strategy. She was attracted to BASF because of its commitment to innovation, sustainability, and its role as an industry leader with a broad portfolio serving customers in nearly every sector, and its global footprint.

BASF’s purpose is to create chemistry for a sustainable future, combining economic success, social responsibility, and environment protection. Through science and innovation, BASF enables its customers in almost all industries to meet the current and future needs of society. “Working on solutions for strategic problems with my talented colleagues is what excites me most about my job,” Qadir explains.

She earned her master’s of business administration degree at The Wharton School; master’s of arts degree in international studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and bachelor’s and master’s of science degrees in chemical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Because BASF values creativity, openness, acting responsibly, and entrepreneurial drive, these are all important skills Qadir has brought to her position. “Additionally, the ability to lead teams, communicate effectively, and challenge the status quo helps to ensure my team and I are successful and that we are performing at the highest level,” she notes.

There is very little that you can do on your own in a business environment, Qadir states, “so being a team player is critical to sustained career growth and success, requiring you to communicate effectively by being an active listener and also inspiring others. It also requires members of the team to respect one another so that the team can work together to achieve common goals,” she adds.

Rather than seek career success, Qadir adds, she seeks happiness, which can be found by doing meaningful work that matters to her. “I am lucky that I have found a career and work that inspires me at a company doing great things that matter. I recommend that people look for opportunities along a career path that allow them to do the things that make them happy,” she offers.

scientist Abigael Mireault works in bioprocess research and development in a Non-GMP Pilot Facility at Pfizer as part of a diverse team of scientists, engineers, and technicians. They are focused on the scale-up and optimization of mammalian and microbial processes to enable the efficient production of toxicology and process development supplies required to advance Pfizer’s biotherapeutics portfolio. She is also involved in developing and implementing next-generation bioprocessing capabilities such as new emerging technology.

Mireault joined Pfizer as part of the Wyeth acquisition in 2009 and enjoys working there, as the missions of the two companies align well. “We are in the business of developing medicines that im prove peoples’ lives and always put the patient first in everything we do,” she says. “I am proud to play a role in developing therapies that can help people extend and significantly improve their lives.”

Since Pfizer was founded by cousins Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhart in 1849, the company has remained dedicated to discovering and developing new, and better, ways to prevent and treat disease and improve the health and quality of life for people around the world. Pfizer is committed to applying science and global resources to improve health and well-being at every stage of life and strives to provide access to safe, effective, and affordable medicines and related health care services to the people who need them.

What excites her about the job is “the science, and the fact that what I am doing is affecting people’s lives all around the world,” Mireault says. “Additionally, I am very lucky to have an opportunity to work with the best and brightest in our field and learn so much from them each and every day as I look to develop myself and pursue my career goals.”

Beyond a scientific or engineering background, a curiosity to learn and patience are both vital skills to have for her position, since things don’t always go as planned, even when using the most sophisticated tools and technology that are available. Working with a diverse group of engineers and scientists, she adds, is gratifying. Everyone brings something to the table.

For instance, dealing primarily with upstream cell culture-growing cells that eventually produce proteins of interest under controlled conditions, she relies on her downstream colleagues to purify the material that they make, and the analytical group to analyze the material to ensure they have the protein of interest and at the right concentrations. “There are also additional groups upstream of my lab that do much of the development work that is necessary prior to any molecule making it into my lab. All of these groups need to work synergistically to make any single molecule,” she reports.

Blessing Oshin of DuPont is a global energy and environmental consultant, translating to: “I am a field engineer, which means I am committed to work on multiple assignments at various DuPont sites for at least two assignments.” Currently she works her third assignment. Prior to that, she worked as a project team leader and a process engineer. “Now as an energy consultant for DuPont Sustainable Solutions, I work with other DuPont experts and solution architects to deliver energy solutions, efficiency, and operational excellence to various clients in manufacturing, oil and gas, mining, and other industrial sites,” she explains.

The long history of DuPont attracted her to work for the company. As a company that has been around for decades, with the reputation for solving problems in every facet of life through science and engineering, she wanted to be part of that fabric of hard work, authenticity, and family.

Oshin graduated from the University of Florida with a chemical engineering degree and currently pursues her master’s degree in energy and environmental management. Her job involves solving systemic failures that have long contributed to performance deficiencies.

Her position requires the skills of possessing the right technical and soft-skills required to deliver value effectively to customers. “But more important,” she adds, “you need to be enthusiastic about solving energy and environmental challenges.”

Teamwork is the foundation of her job because as a consultant, she works with many other professionals. “Problems are rarely solved alone, and various experts in the room have unique experiences that can offer unique solutions to our clients,” she remarks.

There’s no formula to finding career success, according to Oshin. “But, I do know that success in anything starts with showing up, doing what you say you are going to do, and a good measure of consistency,” she declares.