Our Speaker, Nattalia Lea

 

My claim to fame is that I was one of the first women to complete a degree in bioscience engineering at the University of British Columbia. When I graduated in the 1970s, fewer than one half of one percent of all engineers were women. I have held fourteen positions in engineering and lost my job twelve times. While I had several career changes, including forays into journalism, film and television, I currently work as an engineer in energy leadership and environmental design.

 

I am from Vancouver, and I am a divorcee with two adult children, Elise and Cody. I enjoy many activities, and I have done my fair share of volunteer work. I founded High-tech Women for the 21^st Century, a not-for-profit that encouraged women to find careers in technology. I also founded a Calgary networking group called Sustainable Industrial Development for the 21^st Century, which operated from 2009 to 2012.

 

I grew up a science nerd, entering projects in science fairs, which I loved. I got my first job at age 13 after my father passed away, cleaning houses in Vancouver’s Shaughnessy neighbourhood. Possessing good study habits and a strong belief that hard work would allow me to move beyond my working-class background, I paid for my post-secondary education at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT). I learned valuable life lessons, and this experience formed the person I am today.

 

While I worked as a technician at Environment Canada in the 1970s, I realized during the United Nations International Women’s Year (1975) that there was a good chance that a woman would not be able to have a successful engineering career. Despite this, I earned my UBC engineering degree in 1978.

 

When I graduated, there were no more than one hundred women in Canada licensed to practice engineering. On graduation, I moved to Calgary as the unemployment rate here was four percent, while it was closer to eight percent in Vancouver. My first job in Calgary was designing sewer systems for Reid Crowther & Partners, and I was the first woman engineer hired by that firm. I endured discrimination in that workplace but decided not to complain to protect my reputation and future employment prospects. I think there are situations in life where we must choose our battles.

 

I elected not to sue my employer to continue working as an engineer. Fortunately, Fluor came to town, and I went to work there as a scheduling engineer. We all know about the ups and downs of the oil and gas sector, and I received a layoff notice from Fluor in 1982. After a brief period of employment with an oilfield services company, I thought I hit pay dirt when I landed a job working with Husky as a project engineer. I did not have any mentors or role models because there were no women in those roles. Despite this, I have remained active in the community of professional engineers. It has been over forty years, but I still attend monthly meetings of the Canadian Society of Engineering Management (CSEM), and I like the technical rigour and learning about current happenings in engineering. I enjoy the fellowship of these men whom I have known for over forty years, and I appreciate the mutual respect of this group.

 

I do not know whether today is worse than 1986 when the price of oil dropped from $28 to $14, but we are living our version of the Valentine’s Day Massacre. Following the 1986 price crash, I found myself out of work again. It was during this period that I lost my first child to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome at age four months. That was a real game-changer, and I would never wish that experience on anyone. It stays with you and becomes part of your psyche.

 

It was during the child-rearing years that I decided to become a freelance journalist. I learned from a journalism instructor at Mount Royal College that the only way to get better at writing is to write more. I wrote for sixteen years, and you may have seen my byline in the Globe and Mail, Oil Week, and various national and provincial journals. This prolific period ended when I developed a writer’s block.

 

I found my joy of writing being taken over by a desire to return to engineering. I was writing for Alberta Construction Magazine, and I missed being part of construction work. Approaching age 50, I returned to engineering practice. In 2004 I was hired as the lead Environment, Health and Safety Engineer at Suncor’s Millennium mine. Millennium was a two-billion-dollar project, and the work there was not a nine to five job. Raising two teenagers while frequently travelling to Fort McMurray was a challenge, and the long hours did not produce a healthy work-life balance. We all face challenges balancing everything in our lives, but it was fulfilling to be part of the Millennium mine project for ten years. I returned to Husky and worked Statoil until 2014, the year that marked the beginning of Calgary’s protracted downturn.

 

After exiting the oil and gas industry, I found myself working in film and television. While running the Sustainable Industrial Development for the 21^st Century, we went to Seattle to learn more about sustainability, which led me to write a screenplay. I entered a screenplay competition and won the grand prize.

 

There are transferable skills from engineering to film and television, whether you are building an engineering plant, or you are trying to produce the film. The processes are similar. I applied to the Canada Media Fund for pre-development financing for some television projects, one of which was called Ghetto Mom. The premise of this program is single mothers chasing get-rich-quick schemes for their children. Another was called the Lady with the Iron Ring, which led me to write a book with the same title, which launched six months ago.

 

Life teaches us forgiveness, and there no point in holding anger towards somebody who does not even know they upset you. We do not need to beat ourselves up. Looking back, I am grateful that I had opportunities to work as an engineer. Four other women graduated from UBC with me in 1978, and I was the only one that went on to work in engineering.

You never know what life will bring, and sometimes we cannot control the outcome. I want to leave you with a quotation from Leonardo DaVinci. “Love shows itself more through adversity than prosperity as light does, which shines the most where the places our darkest.” I embrace what Rotary is. I think I might be getting close to breaking even on my project, and if so, I would like to donate to your organization because I believe what you guys are doing is essential. Thank you.