Cassie Leonard
BIO
Aerospace engineer, author, and founder and career coach at ELMM Coaching (USA). Mother of two.
Cassie Leonard
“I was blissfully naïve about the challenges I would face as a woman in a highly technical field.”
My unexpected journey has taken me from aspiring to be an engineer to becoming a senior aerospace leader and then pivoting to being an author and advocate for mothers in STEM. I say ‘unexpected’ because until recently I had never dreamed of being anything other than an engineer.
As a child, I was surrounded by women in technical careers. My aunt owned her own civil engineering firm. My dad’s boss at the refinery was a working mom and even my grandma has a BSc in Chemistry. A STEM career was the logical choice. I decided I wanted to be an aerospace engineer when I was just 13 years old while driving past LAX with my mom. From that moment, I never looked back.
I was blissfully naïve about the challenges I would face as a woman in a highly technical field. In college, I did the work and I progressed. Yes, there were fewer and fewer women in each class I took, but I was so busy that I didn’t have the brain space to notice. The girls that I shared a dorm with were studying microbiology and organic chemistry. I had no reason to doubt I was normal.
But then I started my very first corporate aerospace job. It took 3 minutes to realize I was no longer ‘normal.’
My new boss welcomed me warmly. He mentioned there was a team meeting going on and walked me down the hall to meet everyone. Turns out ‘everyone’ was 32 men. Some young, some old. Mostly white. All men.
In my 16 years as a structural engineer, lead engineer, design manager, and senior manager, it was the first time in STEM where I truly felt like the ‘other.’ I grew to become keenly aware that the choices I made were being watched.
When I had to pick up children, I chose my words very carefully.
I had heard what coworkers nonchalantly said about other women in the building when they left for similar reasons. I had also heard the celebration of ‘what a good dad he is’ when a man would leave for kid-pick-up duty. When a potluck needed to be organized, I avoided joining the party planning committee in any way I could. I wanted to be ‘one of the guys’ desperately.
Then, a thoughtless coworker told me that my career advancement goals held no value. He said, “Someday you will have a bad day and just quit to be home with your kids.” His comment broke me.
For years, his belittling of my career aspirations sat right under my skin. His ignorant generalization of all working moms and his perception of their lack of commitment made me so angry, but for the life of me, I couldn’t articulate why.
Despite (or maybe in spite of) his comment, my career flourished. I became a leader of leaders on major programs in the air and subsea. I began mentoring women, developing training programs for high-potential engineers.
I did my first speaking engagement at a national conference. As I grew, I felt my passion shift from developing products to developing people, and yet I stayed. I was so afraid to let that man (who I can’t even remember the name of now) win. I was building spreadsheets instead of pursuing my coaching credentials because I wanted to prove I was committed. I was climbing the corporate ladder and suffering the associated ballooning of time demands because I wanted to prove I had aspirations.
Today, I no longer allow ignorant biases to define me. I chose to grow past corporate engineering to open my own coaching business focused on supporting women and mothers in technical careers.
This does not mean I lack aspiration. I’ll wager it might just take more aspiration. And writing and self-publishing a book about my journey as a STEM Mom took courage. Some might call it quitting. I don’t. Some may think I did it to spend more time with my kids. I hope they do! My kids are so much fun to spend time with.