welcome to bets on the future where we highlight the various career paths in the electrifying Metals World from the vehicle you ride in to the bridge holding it up metals are everywhere why not in your career too I’m Jennifer Betts a medals industry veteran with almost 20 years experience here to highlight these incredible career paths As Told by the women who are living them welcome to bets on the future this week we have two incredible guests joining us we have the dis deemed Stacy Veri she is the general manager of sales and marketing at the association for Iron and Steel technology AISD for those in the industry we also have Kelly Dallas she is the senior director of engineering at Cleveland Cliffs a brief bio of Stacy Veri she has her role as general manager for sales and marketing at the aist that’s Association for Iron and Steel technology is characterized by her 25 years of experience and achieve achievements in strategic planning Business Development and Leadership within the Iron and steel industry in addition to her crucial role in growing A’s membership through technological advancements and Global engagement she plays a pivotal role

in ais’s women in steel initiative aimed at promoting diversity within the workforce and addressing barriers for women in the steel industry this initiative has grown significantly since its Inception in 2018 expanding to include round table discussions features in Industry journals and the establishment of a women in steel award notably female enrollment in as aist has doubled since the initiative began underscoring Stacy’s commitment to fostering inclusivity an opportunity within the sector her contributions have not only Advanced ais’s Mission but also positioned the organization as a leader in technological innovation and member engagement within its sector Stacy holds a Bachelor of Science degree in marketing with a minor in advertising Communications from Ganon University and achieved the designation of certified Association executive from the American Society of Association Executives in 2017 in addition to joining Stacy we have Kelly Dallas she is the senior director of engineering for Cleveland Cliffs she is responsible for managing the capital budget for the steel making facilities as well as the engineering teams for the northwest an Ohio Valley plant her career began with Legacy company Bethlehem Steel in 1999 in the Burns Harbor engineering department and has taken on

increasing responsibilities in the engineering Departments of the Legacy companies Dallas served on the aist board of directors from 2016 to 2018 and is a past chair of the aist foundation material advantage committee and the a aist Midwest member chapter in 2011 she received the 2011 outstanding service award from the Midwest member chapter Dallas currently serves as chair of the aist University industry relations Round Table the aist project and construction management technology committee and the aist women and steel committee she was honored with an aist presidential citation award in 2014 for her work in promoting AISD reaching Beyond colleges to high schools and again in 2024 for her dedication to the success of aist and the aist foundation programs to encourage interest from across a broad and diverse spectrum of membership she received the 2017 influential women of the northwest Indiana award for construction and Manufacturing Dallas is featured in the book women in steel Women of Steel yesterday today and tomorrow she received her BS degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University Northwest and was named 2018 outstanding alumni in mechanical engineering and an MBA from Indiana University a huge thank you to Stacy

Veri and Kelly Dallas for joining on bets on the future today and I am slightly out of breath because both of your your backgrounds are incredibly impressive so huge thank you for coming on the program today because because we have a lot to talk about today we do thank you Jennifer yeah thank you for inviting us yeah absolutely I have to start off the podcast with something that I ask every guest because I’m I’m always curious on this front medals never seems to be the first career choice that most people jump into so I’m going to start off with Kelly on this one I’m curious you have a degree in mechanical engineering and fortunately you finally you know wised up and got the degree from Indiana University spoiler I went to Indiana you know um Purdue is not exactly um a little love haate on that one but uh why why Metals how did you find it where where did you come across that particular field so I’m from Northwest Indiana I have been lived here all my life um and it’s very industrial area there’s a lot of steel mills and refineries and

things in this area but it just never that wasn’t really a choice until I was in uh uh college and we were I was looking I was a non-traditional student I had three children at the time and a husband that keep me very busy um decided to go to school mechanical engineering I had to do with the heart way um so as I was in school you know with three kids you still need additional income so I was doing like part-time work while I was going to school and one of our competitors now um they offered a not only an internship but a year- round internship you were able to work full-time in summer and breaks and then you had like a 18 to 22-hour uh limitation to work uh while you were in school so that worked out perfect Al and and they were very generous is where you can work your 18 to 20 hours 22 hours or something um around your schedule not only your work schedule my life schedule and things like that so that really got my foot in the door to come into the

steel industry so when I graduated Again Naturally started looking at industrial uh again lot of Industries to pick from over here um but started looking and that’s really where I applied to work that’s pretty interesting on that career path it’s pretty challenging from that perspective um kudos to you by the way for managing mechanical engineering which by the way just in itself if you just went fulltime without anything else that you were juggling at the time is one of the harder career uh tracks on that front for studying so very impress impressed that you’ve managed to to to do all that it it’s really really impressive that you were able to complete that well thank you Stacy I’m curious for for your career track you work at an association for the steel industry so how did you find the metals industry story is not as interesting as Kelly’s but um my my cousin actually was interning he went to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and he was interning for one of the predecessor organizations the association of Iron and Steel engineers in Pittsburgh and there was a web administrator job open and I was

looking for a job when I graduated in 99 and I just applied and I got the job I didn’t know much about the Ste industry at all so I just started developing content online marketing content to promote the organization and that’s how I got my start and you’ve stayed yeah I have stayed lots of opportunity lots of great people um really once you get into this industry it’s really hard to leave because I don’t do the same things each day um it’s evolved and I love that I love the challenge I love the people I love the staff I love the members so it’s it’s really a a fraternity and that’s hard for me to to say you know because I you know I’m a female but but the industry is that and it’s it’s a great place to be it really is and before we started hitting record for those that are listening versus watching this we were talking about what’s in our backgrounds of our offices beforeand and both Stacy and Kelly have some pretty unique backdrops right now Stacy has an incredible piece of art that came from the women in

steel conference from last year correct that has the logo from women in steel for for aist hand painted right yes restyled from the artist on s correct there I think are videos on LinkedIn right of the artist in action are yes he also did Rosie the Riveter right there on site by memory it was amazing it’s a pretty cool piece of art but that was won by somebody within the industry right like that went home with someone correct that’s it’s got to be on somebody’s office wall or like above a fireplace somewhere all they had had all of their attendees um that joined the conference sign it on the back and they actually put it in their Lobby very cool well Kelly I immediately saw out of the corner of your uh backdrop the the very beautiful painting that you’ve got going on and it might be somewhat challenging AE you know for the audience to to see so to our recycled media production team if they were able to edit the the picture up there it’s of a b and if you haven’t Ted a steel mill whether it’s an integrated or an

eaf once in a lifetime you have to go it’s pretty incredible I imagine Kelly the first time that you ever probably Tor stepped on site oh yeah they probably I’m I’m in sold yeah it it’s anybody who’s done it like you said it’s the first thing you see is wow it’s big um everything is on a very large scale and and just imagining on how you know how we do it nowadays with very safety oriented very much so and you look in the olden times when they didn’t and you imagine how did they get all this done because it it it’s incredible it’s incredible it really is whenever I see a news article that talks about such and such company is starting up so many tons per year new steel mill in this location and then they say how many employees it’s always fascinating to me because you go back to your point 20 years ago 40 years ago 100 years ago and you think about how many employees but you also think about the safety records right from right 100 years ago so it’s very impressive the safety records that are today yes

versus 100 years ago so it’s it’s very appreciative of the technology that we have today that’s one thing our industry takes so serious ly you know every single company out there puts that first and foremost yeah I I was right going to say the same thing if you look at any company safety is usually number one uh and it’s not just verbage it’s not just a sign that they put to do that they actually follow it up to where kind of you know as you said maybe you know many years ago but they they will stop things production will stop things will stop if things aren’t safe for just one individual ual it’s not a it’s you know this it’s very serious um how they take it they want everybody to go home safely absolutely this particular podcast goes the full supply chain all the way from raw materials to oems for those who may not be familiar with aist can you give a brief overview of the organization and its role and initiatives within the industry yeah absolutely I mean we are we cover a lot of ground I mean we’re we’re a

global nonprofit Association um we’ve been around since 1871 um we were we’re headquartered in Pittsburgh and our primary mission is really to advance steel manufacturing technology we have over 177,000 members from 70 plus countries and our membership consists of Steel producers steel suppliers whether it be heavy equipment raw materials Etc your Academia and your research and developers so that’s the basis of kind of how we’re constructed and we are made up of two Grassroots components in which we interact with the Global Steel Community and the first is Our member chapter networks and our member chapters are Regional networks and they conduct their own program and their their programs and activities within their local Steel Community so we now have 22 chapters on six continents and then the second is our technology committee so while Our member chapters engage with members from specific geographical regions are technology committees engage with members focused on specific processes or Technologies in steel manufacturing so we have 29 technology committees and most of aist programs are rooted in Our member chapters and our technology committees however while a majority of our work is focused solely on that we

do understand that promoting a diverse Workforce is really vital to retain and grow our membership so that leads me to our aist foundation so we work closely with a separate entity the aist foundation which is a 501c3 nonprofit it’s organized for charitable education and scientific purposes and our foundation is really in place to attract the next generation of Steel Workers and the goal of our foundation is to provide a million dollars annually to support this initiative through scholarships and internships and academic grants and funding for students to engage in aist programs and interact with the greater Steel Community so for our student program aist partners with three other associations we have the ceramic Society ASM International and the minerals metals and material Society so for a fee of $30 annually students can have access to all of these organizations they become members of them and they can learn more about each material to see which career path appeals to them most so we have approximately 4,000 students and from 100 chapters all around the world and Jennifer you were talking about plant tours earlier you know one thing we do through our foundation

is we will reimburse any University that wants to take a group of students on a plant tour up to $1,500 to do that to get these students into a mill so they can see if this is for them you know we we provide um reimbursements for students traveling to aist training conferences and we provide free registration for that as well again just to give them access to our industry to see if steel is somewhere they they see themselves in their future so that’s amazing it yeah it’s something that I wish I would have known about a little bit before going into college the student members that you’re talking about I have to imagine that you have great relationships with maybe certain professors certain colleges maybe certain even high schools or High School teachers I mean is there a network that you have established or maybe associations with the professors or teacher organizations along those lines yes so professors yes because we have 100 material advantage chapters globally so each those chapters has a professor liaison that we work through to communicate with those material advantage students wow okay that’s yeah and I think

um and not to step on anything Stacy but had done just at the chapter level reached out to at the Midwest chapter did a uh h a seminar for high school students it was a day kind of a day in learn about engineering learn about different things and and that went on for about 13 years it was preco so we l all that yeah we did it for 13 years for again Northwest Indiana we actually had some Illinois schools attend also but the the key to that is was the teachers um you know we had again kind of leg work finding which teacher would be interested in bringing their students and they would bring entire classes to come to this event for a day to learn about engineering with and we added steel into there because we had people from the industry kind of put on little Hands-On type of events but um you know as you said Jennifer and as Stacy’s you know affirming that it it takes the teachers and professors to get to the students to to bring that so if you can get those tied into the industry it

it’s you’re going to get more people to more students and young people to come in yeah and when you look at our internships too I mean we’re doing a lot of good work there we give um $7,500 scholarship for anyone that completes an internship with a steel company for the summer and the steel company they’re paid internships for the summer right so then you get 7500 for a successful completion from aist for that internship and you know that’s real money for for people you know going to school and and and paying for for their college so and and we have extreme success keeping those individuals that have completed an internship in the steel industry like our statistic there I think is 68% of anyone that’s come through our program has kept a job in the steel industry and stayed in the industry that’s a fantastic stat on that it really does show that once you see our industry you experience it you’ve learn about it absolutely you don’t leave you stay here right I think my thought process when I joined six months I’ll get my sales and you know marketing experience and

then bonus time I’ll figure out what I’ll do next two decades later I’m still here oh truly that was mine too Jennifer I thought I was going in because at that point they offered um grad school tuition and I was going to go back and get my MBA and that was my plan and I I stayed yep still still here yeah yeah so go on no I wanted to tie the foundation into really like why is all that important because you know a lot of the work that you do is really trying to educate people on the manufacturing industry and why it is a good career choice and you know and also talking to to women about manufacturing as an opportunity and so you know we we in in 2024 them delight and the manufacturing Institute released a study and they reported that the US manufacturing skills Gap could leave as many as 1. time 1.9 million jobs unfulfilled by 2033 and this is primarily due to retirements or open jobs due to Industry growth because I mean obviously there’s so much investment going into our industry right now with the um decarbonization

technology Evolution that’s occurring here in the US um and then also other government Investments through different acts that that are have been placed out there so what what they’re looking at is the fact that higher level skills will be required due to the new technologies that are going to be deployed and that’s going to add a skills Gap and then there’s tight labor markets that have also created application gaps so building a sustainable team of employees with the right mix of skill sets for the future it’s going to be imperative and what is also the report also provided a chart that shows the compound annual growth rates of the fastest growing major skill categories and this chart is very interesting because the industry is evolving and the future needs are in areas that people may not generally associate with manufacturing and more specifically the steel industry um I provided this graphic but it it’s a lot of this is in more soft skills and digital Technologies so there’s even more specifics the report also provided a table of major skill categories to make it more comprehensive and so when you drill down even further

and get more specific in each of these segments you can see the specifics for the digital skills and the soft skills so obviously the technical skills are still needed but it’s going to be more than that you’re going to need analytical thinking and brainstorming and change agility Innovation you know strategic thinking the client services customer empowerment you know these are all very important from the the human capital perspective which is very appealing I think also for for women to engage in the industry and provide that that aspect of um of work this chart is very interesting and again if somebody’s watching I’m looking at my other monitor over here to see what is outside of you know the the technical skills what is coming down the pipeline and what is needed in terms of additional skills and it’s interesting in terms of what one of the largest categories the stimul ation simulation software is one of the largest you know combination of digital soft skills high tech high level technical skills and there’s an individual in the industry that is really into the digital twins area which I’ve only relatively recently learned about in

our in our space and I think that just really kind kind of shows that our industry is just kind of learning about some of these types of technological advances that are going to probably be normal or I I don’t know if that’s the correct term to use but going to be more everyday occurrences coming to the Next Generation that comes into our industry and we’re going to need those individuals that are aware of it have the experience in it or maybe the education in it that they know that they can apply it not just in a software Tech world but they can actually go to a b or an eaf uh and apply it in a very cool real world manufacturing application absolutely and I’m not saying all companies um are like there are some companies that have are leading the way in this right some companies are already doing a good job job at at a lot of this so I’m not trying to put every company in that in that um boat saying that they’re they’re going to be growing or or shifting to this but um this is going to be

the the way of the future for for manufacturing it it really is an impressive and insightful to see what is coming from a skill set set MH for the manufacturing space it’s pretty cool we’ll have to see if there’s a way for us to maybe if you’re open to sharing it or maybe we can point to people perhaps onto the a website if that’s something that you you publish or something along those lines because I think more and more people would find it interesting to see what maybe they should start thinking about from an HR or Talent recruitment standpoint for preparing next five 10 years or maybe if maybe it’s even sooner Stacy yeah and I I put the link um right at the bottom of that if you’re going to share the image Jennifer so that the the full report there’s so much more great great content in here that discusses about how companies are evolving and transitioning internally to focus their Workforce mentality on listening to the customer needs so they’re they’re doing more work around learning what the the customer needs and then making their workflow internally um suit that need

right and so there there’s a lot of other really really good content within that report but this this was pertinent to helping me explain how aist fits into the overall picture and and how our wom in steel initiative supports um some of the Workforce Development needs in this space well I do want to put it in a little bit broader of a context because women in manufacturing states that in manufacturing the the gender breakdown is roughly 30% female 70% male and then I believe the stat might be from y’all that in steel what is it 20% female eight is it it possibly could be 20% um if you factor in office okay um workers as well okay uh which when you’re thinking about the growth that we’re seeing in the steel industry domestically it seems like every other day a new steel mill is being built or being announced a new service center is expanding a new mental recycling facility is being built the growth is just expanding essentially in in North America in general and you’re thinking about the Workforce Development we’re leaving out a good chunk of the potential talent pool and

so y this seems like an opportunity for the Metals industry in general but in particular the steel industry to really take a look at how do we recruit an area of the workforce that whenever you talk to a female in the industry and you asked them like I’ve asked Stacy and Kelly here did you take a tour of the steel mill did that lock you in the first time that you saw a b bof the first time that you saw a charge bucket drop into an EF you ask anyone they’re in they’re sold MH and yet we’re still missing some of the opportunities because I don’t think it’s a male or female I think it’s a anyone will find what we do in this industry very fascinating if they get the opportunity to experience themselves absolutely we we couldn’t not agree with you more and I think what what um I think why aist paused and even looking at that for for a bit is because our mission is to advance technology and um when you look at that mission being to advance technology there there seemed to be other groups that were potentially

working on you know the the other elements and so when we started to learn a little bit more about um the workforce needs and and learning more about how to help our industry by establishing the university and Industry relations round table and things of that nature so we we started to evolve our programs and and understand that there was more that we could be doing so that led us to to start to talk about engaging women in the women in steel initiative because you know according to the December 2023 us Bureau of Labor Statistics data you know there are 40 6.7% of women in the workforce so that that basically supports exactly what you just said which is we’re we’re leaving out half of the labor pool when when we are not looking at engaging women so we started our efforts back in 2018 and when we started those efforts the ais’s membership base consisted of only 5.9% women and why I paused are hesitated to answer your question earlier when you asked me how many women are in the industry is because I can only go off of the data that

I have here at aist and when I explain what our membership base consisted of it’s really the producers and the suppliers and the academics and the researchers so really those that are focused on the technological advancements so you know while we do have some HR and sales and marketing and administrators engaged um historically there hadn’t been a large amount of that grouping engaged with aist because we did not have a significant amount of content for them to engage with so we started in 2018 at 5.9% women we conducted a focus group um small focus group where that that group determined hey just go out and Survey the membership and determine if they want us to utilize ais’s resources to talk more about building programs for women so we did that we spent months constructing questions to determine if we should release a survey and the survey it provided a lot of good data but the the predominantly it was 70% of those respondents in our membership felt that we we should continue to evolve these discussions so we did I mean we h a multitude of round tables for years to just continue

to understand how can we help how can we help how can we help and um you know our most recent Round Table was in 2024 at aist Tech our annual meeting in Columbus and at these round taes we talk about real situations you know real things and I’m just going to read a couple of comments that you know we we collect feedback from the attendees before they attend the round table and we initially only took 50 people for the round table because we wanted to have very productive discussion um and then we had to expand it to 100 this year because we sold out not even 24 hours of being open so our International audience didn’t even have a chance to register by the time that we had opened it so we had to give them another day so we had a 100 attendees this year at our round table and we Anon anonymously allow individuals to submit topics they want to discuss and I’m just going to read a few because these are the things that we we try try to group into categories and we try to have these tables break out

and provide us with feedback and ideas as to how to provide training to help anybody dealing with these types of conflicts in their workplace so comments from our attendees addressing gender sensitive topics in the workplace feminine product availability maternity leave addressing sexism discrimination PPE physical limit ations family flexible schedules they want to be able to address these things to and with male co-workers and Leadership they wanted guidance on how to start a Grassroots women’s group they wanted engagement of women in more senior positions or veterans to support the evolution of women in the industry they wanted help dealing with disrespectful people in the workplace where some have an old school train of thought and struggle with dealing with women in careers that have typically been taken by men men they want help uh situations where strong women who stick up for themselves or push for higher standards Etc are considered mean inappropriate Etc but the same behavior can be made by a man and considered authoritative strong and in control so those are just some of the comments that were received and so like I mentioned we we group them all into topics

um we put them out for the group to talk about and then they provide us with tons of programming ideas that we then in turn take and we build into our annual wom and steel conference that that we developed we held our first one last year in September which pretty quickly by the way uh because I was not able to register in time because I was Tardy on registering on that one within like two weeks of opening up the registration yeah it was three weeks and we have to work with the facility to um expand as much space as we possibly could and so we switch rooms and so we we we expanded the space as much as we possibly could within the property that we had contracted and we were able to fit 273 attendees in the space we had 30 people we could not get in that were on the wait list but we had so many calls of people that just quit putting themselves on the wait list because they knew that they were so far down the line that they probably would and get in so we just we really

I don’t know if we anticipated really having that much interest um and and we did so we and Kelly’s gonna talk a little bit about our conference in 2024 but we didn’t make that mistake for 24 yeah but I yeah so I mean we we’ve grown our membership through these small efforts um that we’ve made to 11% now so we’ve we’ve doubled our membership uh we’re getting more and more women interested and engaged we’ve had calls from all over the the the world truly of people that are hearing about what we’re doing here and they want us to do more webinars and provide content that they can start to share with the women’s groups that they’re administering within their own facilities uh monthly so we’re talking about that we have a steering committee now that our board formally approved it’s the first one that we’ve had as far as a membership committees concerned so we have one for women in steel and we have one for our young professionals so these are both for Workforce Development programs for for those specific segments um you know our largest group of of females within aist is

in that 35 years of age and younger so we’re doing so much better to attract these women and now these groups that we’ve established here we’ve just got to work to retain them and when I when I look at the student statistics we have 35% female in our student group so now we have to work to attract these students to our industry to Steel so these this is the work that our our women in steel standing committee um is going to be doing here in the near term and we have an amazing group of women from many different companies engaged and I cannot say enough about what a great great experience it’s been being able to work with them and how passionate everybody is to move this Mission forward well Kelly I have to ask on the student side of things in the women in steel conference out of curiosity are students allowed to participate or to come to the conference as well yes yes and and it’s they are um as as Stacy said we do offer um reimbursements and grants for students to come to conferences and it’s included so students are

allowed to come to our conference that’s wonderful okay yeah well and I also do have to make a note the conference is not only open to just females you’ve had males and females attend in the past and it is openly encouraged for both correct absolutely absolutely right now we have um as Stacy said we’ve got we had 273 we maxed out last year but as of today we are about 370 enrolled and we still have what six weeks five six weeks left to go um so we really are anticipating to surpass our goal of 500 this year uh which is amazing um I I’m sure nobody would have thought we would get 500 you know participants at this event again just being the second year um and of that 5% over around 5% over is male uh so they are interested to come we encourage him to come because this is again they don’t understand our issues and if we kind of go through it it’s more of an education and allies and help us get through that side of it so um we are doing it in September again um it’s going to

be September 16th through the 19th um for anybody who’s interested and uh at the day Lawrence Conference Center in Pittsburgh um again we moved from we had it in the hotel and now we are actually in the conference center because of the size of uh anticipated uh participants um one of the other unique things is that if you’ve ever gone and I’m sure you’ve gone to some conferences Jennifer and and with Stacy with our participation we are kind of as as she said we’re kind of um identified as supplier um I’m going to supplier producer and uh and and I’m a producer so supplier producer and Academia and usually the suppliers because they want to sell you know where there usually more suppliers than there are producers I don’t know about a 25 to 75% is type of thing and right now we’re showing 55% are producers so that that’s a pretty big you know swing to get people that are interested in coming in here uh to do that so so we’re really excited about that um you know kind of as you said the um just getting in to be able to

come we actually started out and we had some sponsorships and we actually had to create additional sponsorships because we sold that out right away and people kept calling Stacy and the group uh to say hey I want to support this so to get companies to actually call and say how can I give you some money uh to support this EV event is is really phenomenal so they aist has done a great job in creating not just hey give me money it’s to creating sponsorship to support the to show the support of the companies that that are uh actually supporting us uh so to do that and then the other thing that was brought up is you know at conferences they wanted again some other type of uh exhibits you know not just we we do a lot of uh networking but to have exhibitors there for us us to talk to and and to visit and to promote some of their so right now we wanted to keep again on a smaller scale so we have probably about 10 booths available if anybody wants to come in and and have an exhibit during this

event again we’ll we’ll we’re open to that um and then as we went through as she said we we’ve got some feedback so a lot of the content in this is based on what the feedback we received from our last round tables and our last cont conference um you know last year again anybody can go online and and to a.org and and see there’s videos there’s a lot of uh uh documents and there’s a lot of photos out there of the last year’s events um but coming from there one of the big things is they wanted some professional development uh to happen at the conference so we left that as an option um we are doing it on the first day uh in the afternoon and actually one of the the big things that came out of this is a lot of conferences start on Mondays so people have to travel on Sundays and people said well if you’re looking at Family Value why are we traveling on a Sunday so we actually moved it so our conference officially starts on Tuesday uh we do have a reception Monday night but we do

have the workshops if people do want to come in early and the workshops we’re very excited about um we have an option they’re two hours piece so you have an option of going to one or two can’t go to all four uh but there’s options depending on where you want to go um our first one uh R dogra from uh Vision to Market limited is doing a a um workshop on making the transition from technical to management um the participants are going to be shown how to manage that transition um and what skills they need to focus on to do that um it’ll enable them to use those skills uh to develop and then it’s also for existing managers who want to rep uh who um to get in opportunities to rate their existing soft skills portfolio uh to identify which areas that they need to improve so that’s one that we can go through um another one is Allison Grizzle from the uh she’s the founder and president of clear viw strategy partner and she’s actually going to put on a predictive um index assessment so if anybody’s gone through a PMI or

Pi predictive index um I guess um Allison she’s going to discuss um how companies use Behavior analytics to drive the bottom line uh from that and then help people individuals go through and identify their style strengths in blind spots to be able for so kind of a takeaway for yourself on a personal level um we’re going to also have Jamie Lewis Smith who’s the um executive uh CEO of uh pixel leadership group um she’s going to do a defining embodying and bringing visibility to your brand so a lot of people want to know how can I promote my own brand my personal brand to uh go through that so they’ll be step by step on to be able to create your own brand from there and then uh Jerry Burns will be doing an introduction to a con a conscious living and Leadership so that’s an interactive Workshop uh to be able to int to be introduced and to modify uh opportunities to um try concept and tools associated with conscious living uh that we can do in your own life so again a very good day to to pick and choose what you

want to do from that um you know going into uh the day two we have again we’re full of uh a lot of people and a lot of women who are coming in this is just exciting to me um we’re going to start with uh shushma Walker who’s the president of uh business technology for new cor um she is going to we’re going to do an interview with her to start off uh to kick off our session we’re going to have two panels uh that day uh with industry uh people sitting on those as panelists the first one is going to be I wish I knew what I know now um so back then and then boots on the ground on how women are Paving the way to operations so that’s people who started as uh on the floor and work their way up to management um and then then uh R dgro will come back and do an emotional intelligence session for us um and then throughout this we’re going to have networking opportunities because that’s to me the key to a lot of this is just walking around and being able to

talk to people and interact with people that uh you either know or going to get to know from that point and we’re also going to have the CEO of McGee women’s health research institute come and talk about the state of women’s health research um which is Big so um that that’s going to be especially now these days of we don’t know how things are going with women’s health so we want to keep on top of that on on where we are from there um and then our final day we’re going to have actually two keynote speakers from industry uh Carol Jackson who was the former president uh chairman and CEO of harvest and Walker International and then we will also have Tracy Forester Executive Vice President of environmental and sustainability from Cleveland Cliffs so very excited to have Tracy come talk for us um we’re going to have uh another industry panel which is improving uh workplace climate with employee resource groups and as Stacy said this was a huge topic of getting resource groups and uh the the hopefully from this more people will start doing it because it was harder to find

people who actually do do this type of thing is has resource groups within their companies so um hopefully this will be a kickoff for them um Jamie Lewis Smith will be back and she’s going to give a session on combating stress and burnout which I think is great and then uh Morin zapala will come and talk about impostor syndrome something I think we all kind of associate with so again and more networking and and things from that and um uh yeah we’re we’re extremely excited to have this event again five weeks away and um uh again please if you are interested in registering please go ahead to a.org um and it’s women in steel and you can register there um like I said and if you’re still on the fence a little bit go to there’s again look at what we did last year um it’s amazing um I think Stacy and if you haven’t mentioned it already you can mention it now it was one of the top social media stayed on the social media for quite a while a lot of people posted a lot of people were very excited by

this event um so it’s it’s great it is actually I’m looking forward to it long as show life yes well y’all did a fantastic job during the event you you not only promoted it ahead of time obviously because it sold out immediately but that also clearly showed that there was a need for it yeah but you did a great job during the event because you were doing interviews during the event then you posted those interviews on the day that the interviews were happening you did feedback from actual attendees at the event like outside some of the sessions even with feedback of what happened in the session I mean it was kind of for the people that couldn’t get in a in real time feedback via link a little taste of what was happening without being able to actually attend so I really do see you selling out again I mean you’ve already sold out the room blocks correct I mean those are room but we’re adding more like the city of Pittsburgh is going to work with us so we are continuing to add more rooms um we could go up to 700 in

the convention center which is why we put it there like last year not being able to serve the community of of individuals that wanted to join and learn um was it was really you know a bummer for us so we we really don’t want to repeat that mistake so we do have room to grow this year and I mean at some point we’ll have to cut it off but we will reach 500 and and potentially more depending on how these next few weeks weeks of registration shape up it’s we’re hoping you can join us Jennifer to do some live podcasts from our event yes I do need to book my travel it’s I mean spoiler alert yes we are quickly approaching it so I need to actually get my travel and the reason why I haven’t is because it’s backtack weeks with the Rema roundtables in Chicago so I’m just trying to figure out do I go to Pittsburgh and then fly back across the country to fly back to Chicago or do I see some friends in um the Midwest for a girl’s weekend and then just save some flights and yeah so

figuring out those details before but yes I unfortunately will not get one of the room blocks for right now we we could help you maybe maybe we’ll see we’ll see we’ll see on that sty knows people Stacy knows I might I might know a couple people on that on that front I was talking to some within the industry a couple weeks ago and they were they started in steel making 30 plus years ago and they were visiting a steel mill in um uh I won’t say the area because it’ll give away which one it is uh but they were shocked in a good way about the amount of women that were on the production floor not necessarily you know in the quote traditional female POS you know um roles there but he was saying it surprised him again in a good way but from he’s remembering from 30 plus years ago not seeing you know the managers being female at the Rolling Mill not seeing them from you know supervisors on the floor but he he in his words said quote they were everywhere it was impressive to see that and it was not

an issue like he was on a tour and it it just it wasn’t it was an issue it it I don’t remember exactly the percentage that he gave me but it made an impression on him and it seemed like it was not an issue at that particular steel mill and so it’s clearly and it’s one of the more profitable ones so it’s it’s it’s coming along initiatives like what you’re working on at aist with women in steel with helping the Next Generation understand what we’re working on in this industry is incredible with Kelly’s beautiful painting in the the background um with Stacy’s awesome painting as well uh in the background is incredible I have to on that note ask are we going to get an artist at the women in steel conference or is that a is that a secret we cannot release yet on yeah I mean we’re talking about doing a few new things this year um we’re not opposed to bring them back because we loved them okay but we’re seeing if we can do a few new things we’re not done yet with this planning portion okay well the the

industry is definitely evolving it’s changing we weren’t 70% eafs 20 right so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that our Workforce is going to be the same as it was 20 years ago so if our way that we produce steel or decarbonize or technology advancements adjust why wouldn’t some of the way that we recruit or encourage Workforce Development adjust along with the times so I think what you’re working on at a is really incredible and really salute you for what you’re working on thank you oh same same we appreciate everything you’re doing as well and I mean and there’s plenty of companies that are out there forging the way as well you know um you know some of our data is not representative of the entire industry and it’s really important that I do say that because of you know what you mentioned with um you know the gentleman you were speaking with walking into the mill there are some companies that really are out there pushing ahead um with this initiative so it’s important to note that absolutely and I know we went a little bit over time but uh I do want to give

both of y’all an opportunity to make sure that if there was any other topics that we didn’t get to if there was any advice for anyone potentially looking to get into the industry anything along those lines I want to at least give you an opportunity to share anything that maybe we just haven’t had the opportunity to get to um I think again kind of advice is look for companies who do offer internships especially college students um it it’s a great way and and I think as as I can attest and as as you both said this is the way to get in to me it’s it’s a it’s a long um job interview because you can find out you don’t like it um but if you do like it you’re there apply for scholarships again for 12 weeks to get not only paid for it but to get an extra $7,500 I mean that’s it’s awesome um to do that and it’s diverse I mean you go to you can go from I I want to go out to the blast furnace or eaf or I want to go on the finishing side

where everything’s nice and shiny um you know I want to go and process automation I want to go into sales I want to go into accounting I mean we use there’s just about every job that you can go in through through here so huge opportunities please look into it talk to professors talk to your teachers um go from there talk to a professional come to a conference um you will get a lot of experience um and and good good things come out of it yeah I second everything Kelly said Network network network network I mean associations are really really important um you look at our material advantage program if you don’t know yet which industry you want to go into but you’re leaning towards manufacturing or materials $30 get you access to four industries that have a pletho of um Material Science that that you can explore so and on the connecting side what’s the best way way to get a hold of a the website best way LinkedIn yeah either website linked in our staff contacts are out there there’s a listing of um all of our staff and the Departments and what

they do feel free to reach out to me directly my information’s out there yep and for Stacy and Kelly perhaps directly LinkedIn as well LinkedIn yes yeah great Stacy Kelly I want to just say huge thank you for coming on to the program today Stacy vermei she is the general manager sales and marketing for the association for Iron and Steel technology AISD and Kelly Dallas she’s the senior director engineering at Cleveland Cliffs Stacy and Kelly just huge thank you for your time your knowledge everything that you’re working on within the industry thank you thank you so much for coming to the program today thank you very much looking forward to see meeting you face to face in Pittsburgh absolutely very soon yes yes thank you