Art Meets Engineering

Join us for a riveting episode with Chioma Aso, the force behind STEAMDivas, as she delves into her groundbreaking work in electrical engineering and her commitment to diversifying STEM fields. This episode not only uncovers Chioma's journey of innovation across Space, Gaming, and Manufacturing sectors but also shines a light on her role as an author and advocate. Key insights include:

• Chioma's extensive background in Electrical, Software, Robotics, and Test Engineering, with advanced degrees from the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of South Florida.
• Insights from her book, "Unlocking The Team Puzzle," which explores productivity personalities ('Early starters', 'deep divers', and 'final finishers') and their impact on team synergy.
• The mission of STEAMDivas to blend engineering with art, creating a more inclusive and creative approach to STEM education.
• Effective strategies to address imposter syndrome, fostering an environment where women in tech feel they truly belong.

Chioma Aso is not just an engineer; she's a visionary leader whose work is inspiring a new, diverse generation of STEM professionals. Tune in to discover the power of innovation, leadership, and inclusion in the tech industry.

Connect With Chioma: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiomasteamdiva/

Check out STEAMDivas: https://steamdivas.org/

Get a copy of her book, "Unlocking The Team Puzzle": https://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Team-Puzzle-Harnessing-Finishers/dp/B0C9SF28JB

This Episode was brought to you by David Turner at Process & Automation Specialists.
https://processandautomation.com

Connect with David: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-turner-enterprises/ 

Chapters

• 0:00 Chioma
• 10:37 Productivity Personality Types and Team Dynamics
• 20:11 Overcoming Imposter Syndrome and Emphasizing Environment

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:14

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Failing for you. Today we have our guest, chioma, who is, oh my goodness, the STEM slash STEAM, however you identify with your, your uh, I guess acronym. We're going to get more into that later, but she is the queen of it and she is out here doing so much cool work for our industry, for the kids that want to be in our industry, and has a not only a degree at electrical engineering guys, but she went back and got a master's in electrical. So this girl lives and breathes the engineering world. So, chioma, without further ado, I feel like I'm fumbling your accreditation. Say hello to everybody.

Speaker 2: 0:55

Hi everyone. I'm so happy to be here, so this is about filling right, so I'm really excited to come in and talk about my speciality.

Speaker 1: 1:07

But real quick. Before we get started, let's hear a quick message from our sponsors.

Speaker 3: 1:13

Hi there, I'm David Turner from Process Non-Mation Specialists. In our world, process improvement isn't just a phrase. It's the key to unlocking efficiency in your operations. With over 20 years of hands-on experience in the heart of manufacturing plants, I've walked in your shoes or alongside teams like yours, and understand the ins and outs of your daily challenges. My journey from the plant floor to leading process solutions means I know exactly what it takes to elevate your operations. Interested in transforming your process efficiency, with a partner who's been there, let's connect on LinkedIn. Don't wait for the future of automation. Let's create it. Process and automation specialists engineering efficiency together.

Speaker 1: 1:53

Yeah, I don't see it on the resume, but I definitely have seen some posts that have alluded to some of your failures. Now, before we get to into those stories, I would like if you could just give the audience a little background on you. I know you have written a book, which is super cool. You run a page for the Steam Divas. Can you just walk us through those, because I think it would come better from you and be a bit more well said, so just go with it.

Speaker 2: 2:23

Right, so I have a degree in electrical engineering, like you told you, and that's been my area of interest. However, I have been working in robotics more or less but it's more automation back when I was growing up, back then, being in this industry for over a decade, so I don't age myself. However, I am a full stack robot. I have experienced with the hardware side of things and the software side of things. I've built test automation systems. I have been an engineering leader. I've walked in different industry. I've walked in manufacturing, I've walked in space. I've walked in gaming. I also wrote a book, like you said. I'm an author of a team strategy book that teaches team dynamics on how to build the best team within product circle, and also the founder and president of Steam Divas. Steam Divas is a nonprofit that's focused on increasing women in engineering, and we do this by fusing arts with STEM, and we hope that, at the end of the day, that our students can either take STEM into art or arts into STEM. We don't care, as long as there's a fusion somewhere and we want to get girls who typically would not see themselves as a STEM person, but, because we know that the base of STEM is creativity, as long as you have an inch of creativity within you. We want you to be interested in STEM, so our hackathons bring enhanced own experience for those girls, so they don't get caught up with the grades and mathematics, but rather I've been able to do this product, I've been able to finish it, and this is a fusion of arts within it.

Speaker 1: 4:06

That's really cool and I think there's some dabbling of mixing in the fun artsy side with engineering. You see the spot robot. He'll dance with some music. But there's not a lot of intersection between the art and the engineering. So I think it's cool that you have this book in this stance where you're trying to actually blend it and teach people you can do a little bit of both, because I don't think it's necessarily natural. I think some people think, oh, I lean one way, I can only be artsy, or I lean towards engineering. I can only do that. So I think it's refreshing to have someone come on and say hey, you know, we can be kind of okay at a lot of things and just see what we like and how to blend them together. What motivated you to do that? Did you have an interest in any artsy stuff? Or what made you think like, like, steam is something I want to push, because you clearly have a very engineering strong background. So what brought the arts in it for you?

Speaker 2: 5:08

Well, I think that what motivated me to start steam leave was the fact that majority of the time in rooms that I enter when it comes to STEM, I found that I'm always the only one. So I figured I'd say well, what happens if I can make a lot of us come into this area? And I said, looking at how the system has been set up, a lot of times girls between the age of nine they start moving away from science stuff and start looking at more creative outlets because they have this concept of what a STEM person is going to be. You don't have to be fashionable, you don't have to be into art stuff, and sometimes I feel like they can blend who they are into STEM areas. And so I'm trying to get the customers. So I figured, hey, bringing art into the STEM field is one way to get them to embrace them in such a way that they typically wouldn't. And so in the process of doing that, I said finding out that art encompasses so many other things too, that art is also creativity, art is also humanities. And I said looking into how some of the things that we're doing as STEM meets this thing, and this balance is what we should be looking for.

Speaker 1: 6:30

Okay, chioma, in the spirit of failing for you, I want to talk about a post you made the other day, so I'm going to look it on my other screen over here. You quoted a science magazine post on LinkedIn and you said one of the things I mentioned in my presentation with the students was how I failed advanced math despite loving math, and the way students reacted was kind of funny. Can you tell us about this story, because I don't think people are often very open about when they fail a class. I know I even being the queen of failing when I failed my first class in college I wanted to crawl in a hole and die. So tell us about how you delivered that message to students, like what was the idea behind it and how they reacted.

Speaker 2: 7:18

I had this class that I was talking to, about engineering and what it's like, and so I talked about my career path. I've built space vehicle, I've worked on games, gaming, ea sports, ea franchises. I've worked in manufacturing cell phones, computer washing machines. I've built all kinds of things. So this was the beginning part, right. And so somewhere along the line I'm explaining, because part of what I'm presenting to them and telling them this is kind of what I would tell my younger self. So somewhere along the line I was trying to explain, talk to them about challenges, and right there I said well, you know, as I'm doing my undergraduate days, I failed advanced math, even though I love math. And they all had this look on my their face like what you could fail. And I was like it was so funny, you know, just watching their faces like gaps, like you know, not actually, but you could tell from their face. And I said how do you guys think I would get to where I am without failing? Like it's impossible. And so I think that it's going to be a game that a lot of people are not comfortable with, the idea of feeling. Yes, I mean, that was the whole point, okay, so the name of this book is called A Lock in the Team Puzzle and you can find it on Amazon and Kindle. The book is about team building strategy. I came up with this concept because of my engineering leadership and I recognize that everybody had a productivity personality which is different from the other personalities, and I identify this into three groups.

Speaker 1: 9:03

Okay, back to it, guys, for reference, here we've had a couple of technical difficulties, so excuse us, as we are doing the absolute best we can. I typically don't include a technical difficulty in a podcast. But, guys, I think it's kind of funny because, in the spirit of failing for you, sometimes you just time out. So Chioma and I were just like we're hopping back in and out of these browsers, so if we seem a little choppy here and there, that is why. Yeah, so the internet's not been our friend's day, but we are prevailing. So, chioma, back to what you were saying, why don't we shift gears and start talking about your book? Because you know we love an author, steam and diva girly. So could you show us your book and tell us a little bit about it? I know you referenced it earlier. Look at that, look at that beautiful book. So, chioma, your book looks very cool and I think that I really a lot to the early starter person, because I think I tend to get very excited about ideas and I want to try a lot of things out, and I think I tend to do that and then sometimes regret it, because then I'm like, oh man, now I have to actually like, do it, so those are always fun. I do like the concept of learning more about the dynamic of the people who are more the finishers and then the ones that do the deep dives. I think that would be kind of cool so I can get a better point of view of the people that have to deal with me, so I could get a little bit of an introspective there. But I think that sounds like it's very interesting. When did you write this book?

Speaker 2: 10:40

So I wrote this book last year.

Speaker 1: 10:43

Wow, it's fresh.

Speaker 2: 10:44

I wrote this book last year, so it was I wanted to how I came about writing this book. I was talking to someone about because I can. If you tell me about a company, I can tell you what is the largest percentage of productivity personality they have based on how they deliver their products. And so we're talking about it, and the person used to walk in this big compression before I had no walk there and I said, oh, I feel like they have a lot of these kind of people there. And they were like it's true, because I described the personalities of each one of the other stories and the pros and the cons and I said it's true. And I said I feel like they reward that baby. He says it's true and I said, oh, that's why they have this problem when it comes to deliverable. And he was like, oh, you know what? You should write a book.

Speaker 1: 11:32

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:33

You know I was like I'll worry about, I'll just write an article about it.

Speaker 1: 11:37

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:37

So I started out writing an article because I didn't want it to be a lot, just something. And then I just had too much stuff.

Speaker 3: 11:46

I was like okay.

Speaker 2: 11:47

I'm going to break it down. And then I had to love it. So I said I don't want it to be a big book, so let me just do the introduction and then I'll release the other book. Based on the responses I get, I'll release the other book. So the next book does have a productivity personality test that you can take to identify yourself. Like I know that I am an L to start to, just like you. However, my second in command everyone needs to have a second in command has to be a deep diver, because I can manage the final finish your side of things, because I have the customer service concept that was drummed in me during one of the work. So I understand that, oh, I need to do customer service. Do I really enjoy that side of things? No, but I've trained myself to get comfortable with it. But I always need a deep diver. So, knowing all of this would allow you to know how you build your team Like. Who is the person that I feel will back me up to make sure that it can mitigate any of my weaknesses, and the book does have the option to tell you how to mitigate each one of the weaknesses which we've found in the process, so you can identify who you need within your space to help you become your best self.

Speaker 1: 12:55

Okay, chioma, I have a question I started asking, which is if somebody has a team and they don't have a lot of finishers on the team, or they don't have a lot of deep divers or early starters, can you kind of give us an example of like what it looks like when you're missing one of those pieces? Pick whatever one you want. I don't know the situation well enough to ask which one in particular.

Speaker 2: 13:20

Good question because I did talk a little bit about it in my book. So whenever you have a accompanied, it does not have a lot of final finishes. You're going to see that they start off, have a startup idea of mentality, they have a lot of things starting up but the deliverable is never concluded or the deliverable is really not as good, because some of the problems that you have with a L starter is that they get bored on their journey. When they come up with the ideas and you have a deep diver and a deep dive into it, every one of those people if you look at it like a bell curve, every one of those people will be moving out of the project slowly because deep diver can only deep dive. So far, they are experts within this field. What the final finishing does is that they are the ones that will be like okay, we have lessons to learn. We have a history of what has been discussed happened towards the past. What we're going to do right now is that we're going to see how we're going to bring it to the customer, because we need more lessons learned so we can build our database. Whenever you have a company that has a lot of L starters or not enough final finishes, all reward L starters and deep divers and ignore the final finishes because they're not the star boys, they're not outshining. They see the productivity that the product that they first never really do with customers. There's so many industries that is ignoring their final finishes because final finishes are always coming in last of the project. They're not really like always enthusiastic at the beginning. Sometimes, when people are at work, they try to encourage their employees to be like, be like the L starter, rather than say, okay, this is your strength, let's focus on that and see how we can make that useful within the team. I can identify a company that's full with a lot of deep divers, a company that's full with a lot of final finishes. You always see them like this is how we've always done it. We don't want to change things. You don't have a lot of L starters. They're like oh yeah, let's follow the process and standards. Things take forever before you get delivered. It's fine in that point. In doing your product life cycle, how do we get everybody to walk within that space when we need them? Everyone can wear different hats. It's not like people are like I can do this, but whenever you kick people within a space, that is not that productivity personality for too long. That's when the experience is born. If you're not an L starter and you're in an environment that's constantly in L starter modes usually startups you'll find that you're going to experience burnout. If you're a final finisher and you're an L starter. You put in industry where they're in final finishing mode all the time. They're like let's go through the process before you change your system. That'll do a bunch of analysis and then you start experiencing burnout. It's like come on the form of boredom. I'm bored, nothing's happening, I can't move anything. Just understanding your team and then, as a leader, knowing how to I'll provide, mitigate those issues. Provide opportunities for them to experience their productivity, personality with stretch opportunities, stretch goals, or putting them at the point in the project where they can lead in an area where they have specialty. That allows you to have everybody be content, even when they have to wear the hat for a short time.

Speaker 1: 17:07

Yeah, it's interesting when you explain these, because my day job as a marketing engineer. We have a very small marketing team and there's only a couple of us that are doing the technical marketing and I actually get to do each of these roles but I do notice there's ones that I gravitate towards more. For instance, it's a small team so if I have a good idea they're like yeah, go for it. They're very encouraging of the early starter mentality, because we're a bunch of early starter type people that got this department going. They'll say, okay, go for it. But then, being the engineer, I have to do the deep dive. I literally do reports called deep dives and then I deliver those out and then it's like, okay, well, now that I have this report that's internal and I've educated everybody, how do I make this customer facing? Then I have to be the finisher and I have to create this document. That's customer facing. I find the finisher part is so important and when I'm in my early starter mentality I have to consider, when it comes to being finisher time, how do I set that version or that part of me up for success? It can be so difficult because it feels like it's a good idea when I go to word it of. How do I want to say this? How do I want to put it out there? How do I want to format it? Oh, it's like pulling hair. My brain does not work that way. Every time I get close and I'm through my deep dive and I have this jumble of research. I sit down with my boss and he asked me the same five questions. He asked me every single time I do a project and he's like what is it? What's the point? Who should care? What are the typical business questions? They're always the same questions, but I have to hear him say it out loud. Each time it's like my cycle and then I can bring myself through the finish line. But it is so interesting you say there's, we naturally gravitate towards some and I feel like I have to finish the project because it's up to me too. But if I take too long to finish it, I start losing that inspiration for the cycle again to be the early starter. If I had a perfect world I would just get to do early starter idea things. But then I see the flip side of that in my personal business. Chioma, you obviously had a very impressive career. By all means, I feel like on paper, off paper, all the above. It's very, very cool to watch you and hear your story. We've touched on some of the parts where, along the way, you've experienced failure. But within all these impressive roles, would you say you've ever experienced imposter syndrome, or do you feel like you've always just been like you know what? Yeah, I deserve to be here. What's your experience been like with that?

Speaker 2: 19:50

I don't believe in imposter syndrome. Go off clean. The reason is because one thing that I need to feel safe is the fact that I need to have confidence within that space. If I'm doing something, I feel like, okay, I feel confident, I feel like imposter syndrome is. So at the point in time I realized that I didn't have any imposter syndrome. I didn't have any of that. I got to a point where I was feeling like an odd ball out because everyone was saying that I'm having imposter syndrome and I'm going to tell you that I lied a little bit. I was like, yeah, I probably have imposter syndrome, so I could feed in right.

Speaker 1: 20:28

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:28

Kids. You know what can we say. However, after I kept growing up now trying to figure myself out and instead asking myself questions like could something be wrong with me if I'm not experiencing imposter syndrome, I said no, just that it was a process. Syndrome is something that was predominantly women, and now I'm walking within the space where I'm dealing with real life situation, where environments are not kept for women or kept safe for women for us to thrive, and I've just been more of a person that has been raised around no limits, and so it's kind of interesting that I have never felt like I'm in a space where I didn't belong. I feel like from there, I belong there. So there was always that clash. So since I didn't I say asking all these questions that I'm trying to figure out, I was like this is supposed to sound a little bit fishy. It feels like trying to fix the victim of an environment rather than fixing the environment. Most times they will hear things like you need to do this, you need to speak up, you need to do that. I myself have given those bad advice to people before where I've said hey, when you're speaking in a group, make sure your voice is deeper so you can sound like they can listen to you, and all that rather than telling people to be the authentic self and then telling the environment to adjust. So for the deed, I realized that the problem here is not you feel like an impostor. The problem is you've been in an environment that wasn't built for you, so definitely you're going to feel like an outsider within that space, but you're not an impostor. So instead of us telling young girls to try to fix themselves to fit in this environment, we should fix the environment. So we updated part of our vision with our mission with SteamDiverse is that we said whatever companies we're working with, we're going to have them make a pledge for us that they're going to make sure that the environments that our girls will be going into is safe, is a place where they can feel like themselves. Everybody else should just adjust. We shouldn't be coming in trying to be anything other than an authentic self.

Speaker 1: 22:46

Yeah, that is so cool. I feel like I've never heard anyone be so confident in that position on impostor syndrome. I feel like there's very little people I've met in the technical space who have that self-assurance because I relate a little bit of you know. I know I worked hard and I know that I deserve to be here kind of thing. But also I think my side of why I don't have it it's a bit more cynical in the sense of I think, well, I think everybody is struggling here or there. Nobody's as smart as they pretend to be. A lot of people are putting on an act, kind of thing, and I think a lot of times I'm like I don't feel out of place because I know that everybody's just figuring it out and doing the best they can, and although there are some people who are just incredibly smart and talented and just born for what they do. But I think in my mind I've always seen people as very human in the fact that, like you know, we're all just figuring it out day by day and so it is interesting I've never had somebody, like you said, come on and just be like, yeah, no, I actually don't struggle with that. Silly Billy is like I had to pretend I did, but no, I totally relate to that because it's like funny when you're younger. It's like you don't fit in unless you're also struggling and people want to like complain together and if you're not complaining they're like what's wrong with you? Weirdo.

Speaker 2: 24:05

I think the most important thing here I want to point out is that it's not because I feel like I'm good at everything. It's because I'm comfortable with feeling I'm going to tell you I don't understand. Can you explain it to me? Oh, this is hard, I'm not getting it. But one thing I know is that I've taught myself how to learn something. So I sit down there and I'm like okay, can you teach me how to do it? And I guarantee you when I learn it, I'll be good at it. The fact that anybody can tell me that there's someone out there who, given an opportunity to learn the way that they can learn, that they can get something, then that's unless something is really wrong with them medically what everybody has an opportunity to learn, and that's why I don't write people off. I have a difficult time saying, oh, this is not for you, the extent is not for you, maybe you need to learn more math, and I think that's what enables me to be able to do what I do. When I say everybody can do STEM, come on, let's just figure out how we can include it in your space the way you like to have it. And so for me, feeling is not a terrible idea. That's the way it's, not something like I would be like, oh, I failed it, but let me try and learn it Right, and so that's what helps me to get past the imposter syndrome. I think most people are like, oh, I don't want to make a mistake, oh, I don't want to fail, I don't want to do all that kind of stuff, but I'm comfortable with it. I'm like, oh yeah, we messed up. What did you learn from it? How can we go to the next step? Can we move up to the next thing?

Speaker 1: 25:41

Chioma, thank you so much for coming on today and giving us your perspectives on failure, telling us about your book, which I need to order as soon as we hang up, and I will put all the links for that below and all your Steam Diva links and everything, so you guys can keep up with everything she's doing. But before we sign off, is there any last message you want to leave the listeners with?

Speaker 2: 26:04

My last message will be just remember, feel quickly, get to root cause, implement your corrective action and then repeat. And also, please, if you know a young girl who you think is going to benefit from Steam which I think is all young girls please go to our website and register them wwwsteamdiversorg. Steam S-T-E-E-A-M, d-v-s-e-i-b-e-a-s, and then we also have places for parents to get resources on how to keep a young girl within Steam, and so register on our website. And if you're someone who likes the idea of mentoring, who likes the idea of volunteering in our hackathon or helping out the students when they have a little bit of interest, please go ahead and sign up again on our website. And we have a Slack channel. We have a community there where we're coming together, coming up with ideas on what we think the students would like and where we can mentor and talk to them. And also look out for my two books coming down the line.

Speaker 1: 27:17

Well, that looks like we have a lot to keep up with and you know, guys, you don't have to remember the links. Like I said, I'll put it below. But, yeah, I'm super excited to see what the future holds and to continue to follow along with you, chioma. So, thank you so much for coming on and, guys, thank you so much for listening and, as always, I'm your host, jordan Yates, and in the meantime, I'll be failing for you. See you next time.