Interview: Danielle Schroeder, PE, ENV SP, Content Creator, Civil Engineer, and Mentor as DaniTheEngineer
Founder of https://stemchangemaker.org/ 

by Angela Tai

It is clear you are a leader and mentor for people & women in STEM, what resources did you have when you first got into your field?

First, Thank you. To be honest, I didn’t even hear about engineering until I was in high school and went to an engineering camp for girls at a local college so I didn’t have many resources initially. So in applying to study engineering in college I had to find resources on my own. My website is my way of helping current students figure out what they want to do in STEM and what I wish I had when I was younger and looking for resources. I particularly chose Civil Engineering, but in terms of STEM in general, I try to show all of the different kinds of things you can do because there is such a wide variety. I love showing the next generation all of the awesome things they can do in Engineering!

You mentioned your dream in high school was to become a math & science teacher, but was that because you didn’t think that there were other possibilities?

My mom is actually a teacher and she has so much more patience than I do. As I knew I liked math & science, I naturally gravitated towards them throughout school and also enjoyed the teaching side. In middle school and high school, most students typically take math and sciences classes each year, while engineering classes are not usually offered, at least not any school I attended before college. While I didn’t end up becoming a math or science teacher, I do get to do that in small ways through my STEM outreach. When I am not working or producing STEM content, I try to do a lot of outreach events to kids as young as Kindergarten about what I do as a Civil Engineer. With these events I also try to incorporate a hands-on activity into each event if there is time. In some ways, I do still get to do some teaching even though that is not my full career which has been so rewarding

You recently took your PE Exam. Do you feel this exam is indicative of your abilities as a civil engineer?

Yes and no. To go through what led up to the PE Exam, in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania I had to take a first exam, the fundamentals of engineering exam. Once I passed that and graduated from an ABET-accredited , I got an EIT certification. After that I needed four years of progressive engineering experience and submitted the associated paperwork to Pennsylvania’s licensing board to show them I am ready to take the PE exam. Once approved by my local licensing board PE Civil exam, I then scheduled my exam and chose the transportation depth. 

There are some things I use on a daily basis, but there are other things that are a part of the PE exam that I haven’t touched since college or outside of my current job in the transportation industry. It is a very cumulative test and takes a lot of pieces of civil engineering and my specific depth and brings it all together. In a way, it does show my ability but in a way I’m not using all of what I’ve learned in school in my daily life right now. At the same time, being an engineer you need to have flexibility because things aren’t always going to go perfect. I even had to take the PE Exam twice because I failed the first time. It's hard to open your email and see  “Result: Failed”, but I was reminded by one of my mentors that this test doesn’t define you. When I failed the first time, I took some time off but then I got back to studying and thankfully passed the second time. It was definitely a journey in itself and I was very happy that I went through that process and got back into studying soon after I failed. It is the importance of grit and resilience to keep going to take that exam and go through the process and is an important lesson I will use throughout my career.

Being an SWE Senator is a huge accomplishment, can you tell me what it means to you to be involved and why you wanted to be involved?

SWE is very dear to my heart because I joined my first year of college. I loved SWE primarily because of the community. In college, SWE gave me a community of women engineers and allies who were such a supportive group when studying & classes got hard. It was the community I could go to where we all shared our struggles but also shared our wins. Now, as an early career professional, it is nice being able to empower the students currently studying engineering and also be able to talk to Engineers who are in different career backgrounds 20 or 30 years ahead of me who are SWE members. It has been really helpful to talk to these engineers when it comes to career progression and advice and I hope my advice has been helpful to the students I have spoken with. Being an SWE senator, I was on a three-year term and I got to work with so many fantastic women in Engineering in different career stages & backgrounds throughout my leadership role. The SWE Senate is the strategic side of SWE, essentially asking where we want to see SWE in 5, 10, even 20 years from now. I had such a fantastic team to work with to help bring that strategic plan to life.

I know you have been such an advocate in terms of teaching, career fairs, and how to prepare for Engineering. What are some of the common questions you get asked by entry-level engineers when hosting these panels?

I think the most common question I get is, what general advice would I give to students that are going from the classroom to the boardroom? The advice I usually share is, you don’t know everything and you aren’t expected to know everything. Also, that it is okay to ask questions. I think we get it in our head that we went to school and studied and now you’re an engineer then you go to your first job and you realize how little you know. School does a good job at teaching theories and going through different general engineering topics but there are a lot of little parts and distinctive things that I needed to learn on the job about my specific role that school is never going to teach you. It’s about being okay with the fact that you don’t know everything and asking questions to your team because your team wants to help you and wants you to succeed. 

What are some of the things you wish you knew going into your field as an entry-level engineer?

I wish I knew how important it would be to advocate for yourself. In school, you learn that studying hard will generally produce good grades, so on and so forth. Whereas in the corporate world, keeping your head down and doing a good job will only take you so far. I know it sounds sad but it’s true. You need to learn to advocate for yourself and show that you’re maybe completing a project early or under budget, or finding different innovative ways to problem solve. It is important to let your boss or supervisor know these accomplishments because they are most likely managing a bunch of different people and you need to show that you’re doing these things. It was hard for me to get used to advocating for myself and sometimes still is for me, but it's needed and a very important part of the process if you want to progress through a company.

You spoke about minimizing your own achievements and that it doesn’t feel natural to talk about them. Why is that? Would you consider yourself an introvert or extrovert and how does that play into your success?

I am definitely an introvert. Sometimes people meet me and don’t think so as I can definitely communicate with people and be social, but being social empties my gas tank. Being an introvert I also find it harder to speak up or self-advocate. For me, how I have worked on this was finding that community, like SWE, or those people who hype you up to get comfortable advocating for myself. It is a two-way street where we both lean on each other, which is fantastic. You need to keep working at it as I am still getting used to it!

In your experience, what has been your journey when it comes to finding mentors, mentees, or networking?

I have been networking and have had mentors since college and have gotten different experiences. Going back to being a part of SWE at Drexel, I had the honor of being invited to some awesome events that our college of Engineering would host. It’s a little bit scary being an introvert going into these things, but getting out there is part of making that network and it’s really helpful to have that network when looking for internships and such. That's why finding my community has been so helpful because it allows me to get out of my own comfort zone and maybe try things that I wouldn’t necessarily try on my own. It has been so helpful to have that community to cheer me on when I need those extra words of encouragement.

You mention you’ve been told, “you’re only studying engineering because you are trying to find a husband.” How did you answer that comment then and how would you answer it today?

I don’t think I had an answer for it then, I think I was more shocked hearing something like that being that I was a student studying engineering and while being one of the few women in my classes, I hadn’t experienced too much with comments like this before. Unfortunately, that stuff still happens. Now if that same situation were to happen to me, I try to be patient and break those comments down or ask them to repeat themselves. Many times it will come more as someone telling a joke, but jokes can be microaggressions and fairly harmful.  I try to give people the benefit of the doubt and if it is intentional I try to make them see how their comment or joke is harmful. The comment I still get very often is “you don’t look like an engineer”. And even though that doesn’t seem like a hurtful comment, it's one of those things if you hear it enough, you might start believing that you aren’t cut out for this. Going back to the previous question, this is why it is so important to have mentors in your field that can remind you that you do belong! 

When you hear the phrase, “shattering your glass ceiling” what do you think of? 

I think “shattering the glass ceiling” to me is seeing folks that look like you excelling in the career that you want to go into. If you want to become an astronaut, being able to see someone that looks like you can mean the world of a difference to a kid looking into that field. It’s also about showing the next generation what they can do. Also as a woman in STEM there are still a lot of firsts that exist, like becoming the first woman VP in a company. It also makes me think of the quote by Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she was doing an interview: “…I'm sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]? And I say when there are nine, people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that."

Have you ever been in a situation where you are the token, or you are the “only”. What was that like and how did that make you feel?

I definitely still find myself the only woman on a project site or in a room sometimes. Thankfully we have some fantastic women engineers in our overall group and throughout our corporate business lines but it definitely still happens. We only send a few people to job sites, so most likely I will be the only woman or maybe one of three women on the site. Unfortunately, tokenism is a little more indirect. I have not had anyone be as direct as the “you’re only an engineer to find a husband” type of comment now being post-graduation. I try to put that in the back of my head and tell myself I am here for a reason and to do the best job I can regardless of my gender. So even when I am the only, I keep in mind that I am an equipped engineer and I know what I’m doing. 

Sustainability is one of your passions. What are some of the things that you yourself take to live a more conscious life or what can we as people do?

On the technical side, I got my Envision Sustainability Professional Credential at the end of 2020, so that has been cool to utilize. Beyond that in terms of sustainability, some small things you can do is use metal or reusable straws instead of plastic straws. You can even change your typical tree toilet paper to bamboo toilet paper as bamboo is much more of a renewable resource than the trees we cut down. As I am learning myself, I am trying to bring people along in my sustainability journey. Again, for example, I got reusable K-Cups containers where I put my own coffee grounds in them instead of continuously throwing out typical K-Cups and buying new ones. It’s these small little differences that we can make in our own daily life that I have enjoyed learning myself and a cool educational experience to help others in their own sustainability journey. 

Since you are so busy putting out content and being involved in community & work, how do you manage your stress and keep going?

It has definitely changed since March of 2020 as I think I have gotten better at it over the past two years. Social media can be a fantastic tool but it can also lead to negativity and getting some not so nice comments. Sometimes I’ll take the time to break it down with the person and sometimes I just realize it is not worth my time. I'm sorry that people feel a certain way but I’m sure something else is happening in their own life as to why they are lashing out at me in that way. It has taken me some time to get to this point of being more mature and patient about it but for me it's also about focusing on the positives that I am doing and why I started sharing my journey in the first place. When someone messages me saying that they failed the PE exam and they saw my story and that helped them get back to studying. Those are the stories that I hold on to so when I get those negative messages or comments, I just say it's not worth my time and ignore it. 

What do you want the takeaway to be when someone learns about you and your experience and your stories?

If they can get anything coming away from my story it would be to go for your dreams and continue to work for your dreams no matter how many times or how long it takes. That is the reason why I talk about not passing the PE exam for the first time and sharing those parts of my journey. I am not perfect, I am a human being so naturally it's going to take me some time. Studying engineering can be hard but I kept with it and want to encourage those to keep with it as well. Graduating with an engineering degree took a lot of hard work but it was 100% worth it. Continue to work on your dreams, it might take you twice as long but you’ll get there.