Change Leader: Leading a Grassroots Movement for Greater Engineering Diversity

Frances Yarbrough is a civil engineer and director of the SeamonWhiteside (SW+) Charlotte office.

It’s striking to realize the current percentage of females in the field of engineering, at about 17 percent, is a dramatic rise over the last few decades. But progress is still progress, and engineers such as Frances Yarbrough are working hard to continue and improve the trend. She is a founding member of her firm’s Women’s Initiative, which has helped SeamonWhiteside (SW+) beat the industry average and have a female engineering workforce of 25 percent.

Fostering a Community

Yarbrough considers the Women’s Initiative to be more of a community than a support group, as it includes more than 50 men and women with a wide range of experience, ranging from recent college graduates to corporate leaders with 30-plus years on the job. When it started in 2021, Yarbrough was a founding member and on the steering committee. Now as a general member with less responsibility, she enjoys attending the meetings and programming events and learning from what they have to offer.

The group has monthly lunches and coffee talks in smaller settings within each office. It also has larger quarterly events during which speakers talk about, for example, how to improve public speaking or overcome “imposter syndrome.”

A Source of Inspiration

An important aspect for Yarbrough’s career journey was hearing the inspiring stories of female leadership at SW+, learning about the challenges they’ve overcome in a male-dominated industry, the growth opportunities they’ve since seen, and the mentorship opportunities they received and now offer.

“Hearing how they’ve grown in this industry is super inspirational,” she says. “Just to hear their story and how much we can change and impact the field over the next 25 years, that’s been really impactful.”

The simple fact that females have been elevated to leadership positions also inspires Yarbrough. “It shows to me a lot of growth and change when previously there were [women] that were part of the office but didn’t get to those higher positions,” she notes. “That’s been a positive change over the last few years.”

Benefits of Diversity

Providing a diverse set of viewpoints and perspectives has shown tangible benefits to engineering and many other professional endeavors. A uniform workforce provides uniform designs and ideas, and diversity of all types adds much more creativity and inspiration, especially in engineering.

“We’re problem solvers, we’re creating places and sites,” notes Yarbrough. “Different viewpoints provide strength to our industry in general, both on the design and construction sides.

“It’s important to show people, both young men and women, that there’s an opportunity in this field—that you can do this and see the possibilities in the AEC industry,” she adds.

Backing from Management

In addition to attending and speaking at Women’s Initiative events—and progressively hiring more women—Yarbrough notes that SW+ management provides financial backing and support to secure the meeting spaces, outside speakers and collaboration with other firms.

In addition to the business benefits of better designs through diversity, supporting women in engineering leads to much stronger female employee retention, which is as important as bringing women into engineering in the first place. As a mother of two young children, it’s important for Yarbrough to show that female engineers can have a family and stay in this industry, too.

A Template for Others

Although the SW+ Women’s Initiative is an inhouse organization, Yarbrough hopes it can inspire similar efforts in other firms and industries. She cites a friend who works in construction who hopes to recreate a similar initiative.

“She’s reached out to us, and we’ve sat and talked about how we created this group and got others to join,” adds Yarbrough. “I think encouraging and showing them what we do from a programming perspective, from a membership perspective, just kind of all the ‘nuts and bolts’ of how it can work and how other groups can do that is important.

“A big part of it is retention,” she adds. “We’re in a field where everyone’s trying to hire more people. If you can make your people happy, and let them see the growth opportunities and that your firm is invested in you as a leader and employee, I think that brings strength
to any company in this field.”