A male ally with experience in academics, the military, and business describes how women in STEMM exemplify leadership

Former professor, retired Lieutenant General, and current entrepreneur and board member Jeffrey Talley explains how and why women in STEMM can be great leaders.  He offers his unique insight into supporting women in their leadership journeys. 

By Jeffrey W. Talley with Patricia A. Maurice and Janet G. Hering

15 October 2024, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.13910887 

Jeffrey “Jeff” W. Talley [1] is a retired Lieutenant General (i.e., three star) in the U.S. military who has held a variety of distinguished academic appointments, including leadership roles, and who has also been an entrepreneur, consultant, and business board member.  He and his wife, Linda, have been married over 40 years and have 4 children and 9 grandchildren.  

Jeff, I (Patricia) remember that when you joined our department at Notre Dame (ND) as an assistant professor of environmental engineering, I was struck immediately by your support for women. Over the years, I watched you encourage and successfully mentor female students, offer assistance to junior female faculty seeking to start their research programs and obtain grant funding, and set an example at faculty meetings of treating female colleagues as respected equals.  You served as an excellent role model for our male students on how to interact with women students, faculty and staff in a professional manner.  Although you eventually left ND for new opportunities, my husband and I have been honored to remain friends with you and your wife Linda and to watch your remarkable and diverse career. Thank you for sharing some of your experiences and advice with our readers.

Why do you believe it matters to have women in leadership positions? 

My personal experience in academia, government, and business has demonstrated to me that women are great leaders when they are given the opportunity. The question is how women can gain the career-building experiences that qualify them for senior leadership positions. Some say that “women need to step up and be more assertive”, but when they do, they are often belittled with derogatory or unpleasant labels. After a time, women stop stepping up. This is simply unfair and robs us of the valuable insights that women have. Therefore, I have always felt it was necessary for me as a leader to step up and underwrite the risk for them and others. The main job of a leader is to grow other leaders [2]. We must create an environment where everyone can feel free to contribute their ideas and help the organization find solutions. Sadly, sometimes the culture of an organization or a profession can discourage the best of us, especially if others choose to be unprofessional and unwelcoming.

When I was a three star, I noticed I didn’t have any two star women commanding at the Division-level, which I thought was not good. I saw plenty of great women generals. Many of them had STEMM backgrounds. I spoke to each of them to find out why they had not submitted their packets for command consideration. Simply put, they lacked confidence because no one had ever told them they were good enough. I told them they were good enough and despite their reluctance, I put a number of them in command. They all performed magnificently and the message to all of the other female officers was clear – women generals can command a division! A few years later, after I had retired, the U.S. Army selected the first female Chief of the Army Reserve and Commanding General, U.S. Army Reserve Command, a three star. Although she earned every bit of it, I was proud knowing I had given her the right assignment to make her competitive for that historic selection. By the way, she has a Ph.D. in Computer Science.  

What unique qualities and capabilities do you believe women leaders contribute to organizations and societies?

Woman often have different experiences than men, making it likely that they will have different viewpoints on a given situation. Furthermore, studies suggest that women display more empathy than men in most situations. Finally, in my personal experiences, women in STEMM tend to be very organized. Overall, you get an organized, caring leader with a different point of view – this is a good thing.

What was there in your life and career that led you to become an ally to women in STEMM? 

A defining experience was the encouragement that I received from my friend and classmate, Pam, a young woman who had just received her undergraduate degree in bioengineering with almost a perfect GPA.  When I was taking a couple of graduate courses in engineering at Johns Hopkins, I did well and decided to officially apply for the MSE. I met with a very prominent professor there who discouraged me from applying. I left that meeting somewhat depressed and ready to give up.  But Pam, one of the smartest persons I have ever known, convinced me to apply.  Despite being accepted on a probationary basis, I did very well.  After completing the MSE, I was accepted into the Hopkins Ph.D. program.  I turned Hopkins down and went to Carnegie Mellon to study under Prof. Dick Luthy. So, what does this have to do with Pam, my STEMM friend? Pam became a very close friend of my family and I helped her get her first job. She was great in book learning and tests, but at the time, I could not quite figure out why she wasn’t getting flooded with job opportunities. I started to understand there were barriers for women in STEMM. After that, whether I was in graduate school or in practice, I helped women in STEMM anyway I could.

Did you have any specific leadership training that helped you to become a more effective ally for women in STEMM and more broadly in leadership?

Yes, indirectly. When I accepted my first academic assignment at ND, I was coming from the U.S. Army Engineer Research Engineer Development Center (ERDC) in Vicksburg, MS. At that time, ERDC was the largest engineering R&D center in the U.S. and I was experienced in writing research proposals, conducting research, and writing papers. However, I had never taught a class and I was nervous about this. I was encouraged by some of the women STEMM faculty at ND to apply for an NSF teaching fellowship. It was a “how to teach bootcamp” at the University of Arkansas. It was great. All of the faculty were women in STEMM, who were great teachers. They really helped me in so many ways and this just inspired me to do more for women in STEMM.  

Could you offer some examples of things you have done or seen other men do that have been particularly helpful for advancing women in leadership?

A technique I have seen and used in academia, military, and business is hosting a seminar or short conference with panels that deliberately, but not too obviously, highlight women.  The panel should feature women who are up and coming or stars intermixed with men.  Make sure you advertise. Ensure a good showing of students if you do this in an academic setting. If you are able to take questions from the audience, this is always good. You want to focus on promoting leadership that includes women, not specifically promoting women in leadership. It is a subtle but important difference. The women I know don’t want to be advanced because they are women, but rather, because they are good solid leaders who happen to be women! 

What do you think academia could learn from other sectors to help better support women, especially in leadership?

In the military, I used to look at the demographics of my command and compare this to the demographics of my leadership team. I would ask myself, does my leadership team reflect the command or not and why? I am not suggesting hiring diversity for its own sake, but if your student body, faculty, and staff looks very different that your senior leadership team, then ask why? Work hard to have the leadership demographics match the demographics for the rest of your organization. People need to look up and see leaders that look like them and have similarities to them – it reminds them of what they can be and could aspire to become. If the university is 50% women, but the majority of the faculty and senior leadership is men, what message does this send?  

Another solution is to focus on what I think is an image problem. People talk about what they hear and see. We often hear about the problem of the lack of women in STEMM, but perhaps we don’t hear enough about the success stories. Everyone likes a winner, and all of our organizations have winners. If you have not done so yet, you should engage a media/image consultant on women and minorities in STEMM and have a very targeted campaign plan. Just like sports figures engage with the communities to encourage sports, why can’t we have STEMM stars do the same at the K-12 schools to encourage future students and their parents?

As an engineer with a great deal of leadership experience in academic, government, military, business and philanthropic organizations, do you have any thoughts on the current state of women in STEMM in the USA and abroad?

In my response, I would like to address only “STEM” (i.e., not explicitly including medicine).  Depending on what reports or studies you read, women only make up about 1/3 of the STEM workforce, and less than 20% of engineers and architects. Simply put, this is a crisis. To put it in military terms, we are losing the battles, but we have not lost the war. There is good news. We know how to turn things around. As a society we have to start early and change our culture to teach ourselves and others that STEM fields are not exclusively male, and that girls’ math abilities are absolutely equal to those of boys. This must be reinforced from K-12 by parents and STEM role models. K-12 teachers who have math anxieties have to be educated and trained in such a way that they do not pass on such anxieties to girl students, causing them to lose confidence to do math and therefore avoid STEM.

What can we as an international community do to help women break through glass ceilings in STEMM and be successful in leadership positions?

I believe all of my suggestions and comments remain valid for women in STEMM wherever they are. Remember, it’s all about leadership. Demonstrate good solid leadership by identifying clear goals/objectives that support your overall strategic plan. Look for clear and visible wins (even if they are small) that can show the world what we all know – women are great leaders, and we need more of them in STEMM now!

Conclusions and questions for further thought

Jeff, we would like to thank you for sharing your expertise and especially for expressing some important distinctions clearly and concisely. How we present a message can be key to acceptance and implementation.  

Here are some questions our readers might consider:

·       What are your thoughts on the distinction: “on promoting leadership that includes women, not specifically promoting women in leadership”? Do you agree? Why or why not?

·       Jeff Talley gives examples of the role women colleagues and mentors played in his career. What are your thoughts on building a more equitable workplace by focusing on senior women mentoring men?

·       If we follow the advice to highlight superstar women, how can we ensure that young women are encouraged by what they might accomplish and not discouraged into thinking they could never accomplish that much, themselves? 

Notes and references:

[1] You can read about Jeff Talley’s diverse and illustrious career at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_W._Talley

[2] This echoes some comments by Melinda French Gates that we highlighted in our review (https://www.epistimi.org/blog/the-moment-of-lift-by-melinda-gates) of her book “The Moment of Lift”.