How women can succeed in male-dominated trades like robotics, according to one worker who’s done it

The New Economy Collaborative of Southwestern Pennsylvania announced a $62.7 million Build Back Better grant toward workforce development in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Follow Technical.ly’s coverage of the 11-county project here.

Katie Lynn was the first female machinist hired at her company when she was just 18 years old – but that didn’t scare her. Actually, she said she thrived under the pressure. 

The 25-year-old from Ligonier said she’s often been the only woman in the room. Starting her sophomore year, Lynn was one of the only girls at Ligonier Valley High School to participate in a vocational tech program. After graduating, she joined Composidie, Inc. as its first woman machinist, and has now worked there for the last seven years.

Now, as a student studying robotics at Westmoreland County Community College (WCCC), Lynn is still the only woman in many of her classes. But being different from her peers hasn’t deterred Lynn from working and studying in male-dominated fields, in fact, she’s learned being “non-traditional” or uncommon can be beneficial to the people she works with. 

“I think the more you see women being successful in the industry, the more it’s going to grow,” Lynn told Technical.ly. 

One of Lynn’s secrets to success is she doesn’t turn down opportunities that come her way. While she was already planning to go to school, an advisor swayed her toward the WCCC program thanks to its perks. 

She’s been able to attend WCCC on a scholarship made possible by the Build Back Better (BBB) Regional Challenge Grant, a $1 billion investment from the federal government to boost economic recovery from the pandemic and rebuild American communities, including those grappling with decades of disinvestment. 

Her specific program, the Robotics AAS program at WCCC’s Advanced Technology Center, works with the New Economy Collaborative of Southwestern Pennsylvania, an initiative to deploy BBB funding, to provide scholarships to individuals from historically excluded communities. 

Lynn also doesn’t let the need for sleep get in her way. 

As a full-time student by day, a full-time machinist by night, a volunteer firefighter and a horse trainer in her free time, Lynn said she doesn’t rely on caffeine to keep her going. Instead, her pursuit of knowledge and ability to thrive under pressure has motivated her to juggle all the different responsibilities in her life. 

“This is a field where you can never really be bored,” Lynn said. “You’re always learning something, and I think that’s the real beauty of it. Technology is constantly changing, so that provides new challenges every single day.”

In this edition of Technical.ly’s How I Got Here series, Lynn shares the skills and opportunities that have helped her succeed in male-dominated spaces and offers insights on how others can learn from her journey. 

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. 

What skills have helped you excel in your career so far? 

My work ethic has definitely been a key player in this whole journey through school and everything else. If I wasn’t a driven person, most people would have given up on this quite a while ago. 

Overall, I feel like I’ve really developed my ability to problem solve and to think at a higher level, instead of just looking at something and saying I don’t know. I’m actually delving into troubleshooting to find the root of a problem. I’ve really been developing those skills throughout my journey.

Those opportunities that keep presenting themselves to me keep me striving for more. I would say that the biggest thing is just the constant search for, let’s see what’s next. As far as accomplishments, I believe that I’ve defied the odds in a lot of ways.

What opportunities have you taken advantage of during your career journey that you would recommend to others? 

In December of my first year of college, I got an email from Becky Parker, the director of the Advanced Technology Center at Westmoreland County Community College. She reached out to me about a program with Carnegie Mellon University, looking for people to train with them to teach a camp-style class about AI robotics. 

I was like, what is this? Why are they emailing me about this? So, I emailed her back. CMU sounds really good on a resume, if nothing else, right? She emailed me back and was like, we want you to train with the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy and we want you to eventually teach at a camp for the college. 

Originally, I believe we were supposed to start out with five people for that training program. There were just two of us that ended up actually completing it. I don’t know what the other person is doing with the training, but I ran a camp at CMU last summer for high school kids and it was a little bumpy at points in time, but overall it was a successful camp. The kids really seemed to enjoy it. 

Teaching, by far, is not my specialty. I never claimed to be a teacher, but we had fun. Anyone that’s presented with an opportunity to further their education one way or another, I’d say take it, because education is one thing that no one can ever take away from you. 

What is the greatest career challenge you’ve had to overcome? 

No offense, the male ego. Being the first woman ever hired on the floor at my company definitely presented its challenges.  

Being 18, that was the second shop that I worked at. I worked a summer at another machine shop before I went full-time at this one. And honestly, it was hard to be heard. I had a lot of really good trainers, but there were certain ones that didn’t want to show me how to do things because I might end up being better than they were, or more efficient, or my ideas of doing things were a little bit different. But, it is what it is. 

I’ve been there for seven years. My coworkers, they’re like a second family at this point because we’re a relatively small shop. There are between 40 and 50 of us, and we also don’t have a high turnaround rate, so I’ve been with the same group of people for the last seven years, give or take. But it was really a lot of having to prove to myself that I wasn’t just a little girl. 

They were really hard on me for a lot of things, like their expectations, they made it tough. But overall, I guess it made me a better machinist, a better worker and all of that. 

What advice would you give other women interested in the field? 

My biggest advice would probably be don’t be afraid to take a chance and you have to have thick skin. 

For women in today’s society, as a whole, you hear people talk about you in ways that you may not want to be perceived and you, within reason, have to be able to let that go. You can’t take everything to heart, and honestly, you have to be able to accept criticism from male authority. 

The main thing that I’ve always lived by is don’t be afraid to be uncommon. I’ve always been called non-traditional, and not that I’m a big fan of that kind of phrase, but don’t be afraid to take a chance. Trust your gut. Do what you feel you’re being called to do.