Interview with Barbara Rusinko by Chidalu Aniekwenagbu

2021 EngineerGirl Ambassador Chidalu Aniekwenagbu interviewed Barbara Rusinko as part of the ambassador program in Spring 2022.

Barbara Rusinko was the president of Bechtel Nuclear, Security & Environmental, Inc. and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Below is a brief transcript of the interview with timestamps indicating the location within the video of each question.

0:07 – Could you please describe what you do and what kinds of activities have typically been part of your work as an engineer.

I’ll start way back early in my career. So I’m a mechanical engineer by degree and mechanical’s a very broad field so what I worked on mostly was piping systems except in an industrial environment. A power plant is an example. … So my degree allowed me to design those systems and then help the people in the field install them when it came time for them to take what was on a drawing or on a computer file and actually make it happen out in the field. So you have the book knowledge to show you how we use codes and standards and math and all that stuff to design the system on paper. Here’s what I want it to look like, here’s how it functions, to provide whatever service it is that we’re trying to provide. And then once that’s done the project goes to the field to be built -- that’s my favorite part, going to the field and seeing what was on a piece of paper actually now kind of gets built in front of your eyes and that’s super exciting. … I got to see the fruits of the labor going along.

2:34 – You know, I was thinking of doing civil engineering. I thought mechanical was not my thing but that kind of sounds interesting.

If you’re the kind of person that likes to work on tangible things, civil is a great field, mechanical is a great field. Even instrumentation. Sometimes they couple that with electrical but instrumentation engineers are very interesting. They are kind of a mix between a process engineer, a mechanical engineer, and an electrical engineer. So all the instruments, the thermostat in your house, any kind of instrument, they have to make sure they pick the right one and that it’s actually providing the feedback required in the plant that you’re working on so it’s kind of another more tangible one. To me, I’m passionate about engineering because I think it’s really cool to be able to put it on paper then see it built in the field.

3:40 – I’m a hands-on learner so that whole experience is really awesome.

When you get to college, if there’s any kind of class you can take, even if it’s not in your curriculum, if you have to go to a tech school on a weekend or whatever. Take a welding class, take a carpentry class, take some kind of machine shop class. As you do your engineering, there’s lots of problems you have to solve in your curriculum and having that practical knowledge of how things actually get put together is really important.

4:23 – What made you go into engineering? What was the spark or who was that person that pushed you toward that field?

I was always good at math and science and I didn’t have a teacher, necessarily, that said, ‘engineering is a great field’. But my dad worked as an engineer. …Before WWII … he was going to school to be an accountant. The war came and he signed up and they put him in the CB’s, the construction battalion. So this is a group of soldiers, Navy personnel that go in first with the marines and they build the airfield, they build the docks, it's the construction arm of the Navy. So he spent his two years of the war working for the CBs. Coming out of that, all of a sudden accounting wasn’t very interesting to him anymore …

We lived in New York at the time and my dad used to take my brother and I into the city to his office and while he worked, my brother and I got out the pencils on the drawing boards and were just goofing around. … Then there were a couple of opportunities I had to visit plant sites. I think that kind of was the spark, if you will, to go into a field where I knew what that job meant. … So there were two things, there was my dad and that passion, and then there was that desire to come out the other end of school with something I could say, ‘ I can apply for an engineering job’ … The value of getting a degree in engineering is it's versatile. You can kind of do a lot of things with it.

7:06 – Where do you go for motivation or support? Who's your support system for when things are really hard?

That's a great question. Motivation comes from a lot of places. Internal motivation is really important. So there's two points I think I want to make. The other thing that motivated me -- and this is a personal reason, everybody has their reasons-- my sister had gone through a divorce young, didn't have a career, and struggled for a long time, financially. She was much older than me, thirteen years older than me, and I looked at that and thought ‘I don't ever want to be there’. So my motivation for not just going into engineering also but being able to have a career or a job that paid well that I can take care of myself and my family without relying on others was really important to me and engineering did that for me.

… Colleagues and cohorts are really important, and also, in your career, you will find there’s a couple of mentors that you will pick up along the way that are extremely helpful in getting over these, I’ll call the career humps, or these points where you’re not as motivated. And sometimes those mentors, they see a bigger picture, that I’ve maybe created for myself. …

9:31 – As a woman, making change in your current field, what was one of the hardest things you had to do or any oppressions or any thoughts somebody had against you?

I get this question a lot. The company that I work for -- there were not a lot of, matter of fact, I didn’t have a woman supervisor, like ever. *laughs* … I came up in an organization where that was the norm to me. … I’m not sure if I have thick skin or not, but that stuff didn’t bother me. That’s a bit unfair because it probably should have bothered me or I should have taken up the issue with others. Early in my career I was in construction and you’ve heard all the tales about construction -- catcalls, whistles, all that stuff. Yeah, that was true, and you just walked by it. … Today on my job sites, when I hear that, I walk over to the person and I say, ’let’s talk about this because that’s not acceptable here.’

When I was coming up, that was really hard to do. Where I channeled the energy was working with the men who knew what I was capable of and valued what I brought to the table. Whenever they heard one of their colleagues do something stupid, they would be the ones to walk over there and say, ‘knock it off, she’s in our camp’, so cultivating those [relationships] is important. … We look for allies and those that believe in us and we can stand up for them as well. … There’s lot of opportunities to do that in a way that doesn’t hurt anybody’s credibility. … I think we’re getting better and being able to call out poor behavior and make it a safer work environment for women and people of color. To be honest with you, it’s not just women.

12:52 – Do you have any thoughts that might help other girls who are considering a career in this field?

Having a female cohort together who support one another is really important. People always say, “well, why do you need a society of women engineers?’ Because we are a support network to one another, and don’t be distracted with anybody telling you you can’t do it. I think our natural education system still has those biases in it that want to direct women or girls to something less hard. We’re making progress, what you’re doing is hugely important. … Find a cohort that supports what you want to do. … If this is your career path, only surround yourself with the people that support that, not the naysayers.