A Non-Engineer’s Journey to IEEE Management

Sharlene Brown typically accompanied her husband, IEEE Senior Member Damith Wickramanayake, to group conferences. He has held management positions within the IEEE Jamaica Part, in IEEE Area 3, and on the IEEE Member and Geographic Actions board. Each are from Jamaica.

She both waited exterior the convention room or helped with duties resembling serving refreshments. Though her husband inspired her to sit down in on the conferences, she says, she felt uncomfortable doing so as a result of she wasn’t an engineer. Brown is an accountant and human assets skilled. Her husband is a pc science professor on the College of Expertise, Jamaica, in Kingston. He’s presently Area 3’s training actions coordinator and a member of the part’s training and outreach committee for the IEEE Instructional Actions Board.

After incomes her grasp’s diploma in public administration in 2017, Brown says, she felt she lastly was certified to hitch IEEE, so she utilized. Membership is open to people who, by training or expertise, are competent in several fields together with administration. She was authorised the identical 12 months.

“After I joined IEEE, I’d spend lengthy hours at evening studying numerous operations manuals and insurance policies as a result of I wished to know what I used to be moving into,” she says. “I used to be all the time studying. That’s how I bought to know numerous issues concerning the group.”

Brown is now a senior member and an lively IEEE volunteer. She based the Jamaica Part’s Girls in Engineering group; established a pupil department; sits on a number of high-level IEEE boards; and ran a number of profitable recruitment campaigns to extend the variety of senior members in Jamaica and all through Area 3.

Brown was additionally a member of the subcommittee of the worldwide Girls in Engineering committee; she served as membership coordinator and ran a number of profitable senior member campaigns, elevating girls on the committee and throughout IEEE.

Brown additionally was integral within the promotion and follow-up actions for the One IEEE occasion held in January on the College of Expertise, Jamaica. The primary-of-its-kind workshop linked greater than 200 members to one another and to the group by showcasing Jamaica’s lively engineering group. The Jamaica Part has 135 IEEE members.

From manufacturing facility employee to accountant

Brown grew up in Lavatory Stroll, a rural city within the parish of St. Catherine. As a result of she had low grades in highschool, the one job she was capable of get after graduating was as a short lived manufacturing facility employee on the close by Nestlé plant. She labored as many shifts as she may to assist help her household.

“I didn’t thoughts working,” she says, “as a result of I used to be making my mark. Something I do, I’m going to be wonderful at, whether or not it’s cleansing the ground or doing workplace work.” However she had larger plans than being a manufacturing facility employee, she says.

A buddy instructed her a few short-term job overseeing exams on the Jamaican Institute of Administration, now a part of the College of Expertise. Brown labored each jobs for a time till the varsity employed her full time to do administrative work in its accounting division.

One of many perks of working there was free tuition for workers, and Brown took full benefit. She studied data administration and pc functions, Jamaican securities, fraud detection, forensic auditing, and supervisory administration, incomes an affiliate diploma in enterprise administration in 2007. The varsity employed her in 2002 as an accountant, and she or he labored there for 5 years.

In 2007 she joined the Workplace of the Prime Minister, in Kingston, initially as an officer dealing with funds to suppliers. Her onerous work and constructive angle bought her observed by different managers, she says. After a month she was tapped by the finances division to turn into a dedication management officer, answerable for allocating and overseeing funding for 4 of the nation’s ministries.

“What I noticed by my volunteer work in IEEE is that you simply’re by no means alone. There’s all the time any individual to information you.”

As a younger accountant, she didn’t have hands-on expertise with budgeting, however she was a fast learner who produced high quality work, she says. She discovered the budgeting course of by serving to her colleagues when her work slowed down and through her lunch breaks.

That information gave her the abilities she wanted to land her present job as an assistant accountant with the finances and administration accounts group within the Maritime Authority of Jamaica accounts division, a place she has held since 2013.

Whereas she was working for the Workplace of the Prime Minister, Brown continued to additional her training. She took evening programs on the College of Expertise and, in 2012, earned a bachelor’s diploma in enterprise administration. She majored in accounting and minored in human assets administration.

She secured a full scholarship in 2016 from the Chinese language authorities to review public administration in Beijing at Tsinghua College, incomes a grasp’s diploma with distinction in 2017.

Brown says she is now able to shift to a human assets profession. Though she has been supervising individuals for greater than 17 years, although, she is having a tough time discovering an HR place, she says.

Nonetheless keen to tackle challenges, she is growing her expertise by volunteering with an HR consulting agency in Jamaica. To get extra formal coaching, she is presently engaged on an HR certification from the Society for Human Useful resource Administration.

Sharlene Brown organized for the acquisition of 350 desk shields for Jamaican colleges through the COVID-19 pandemic.Sharlene Brown

Constructing a vibrant group

After graduating from Tsinghua College, Brown started volunteering for the IEEE Jamaica Part and Area 3.

In 2019 she based the part’s IEEE Girls in Engineering affinity group, which she chaired for 3 years. She advocated for extra girls in management roles and has run profitable campaigns to extend the variety of feminine senior members domestically, regionally, and globally throughout IEEE. She herself was elevated to senior member in 2019.

Brown additionally bought the WIE group extra concerned in serving to the group. One venture she is especially happy with is the acquisition of 350 desk shields for Jamaican colleges so college students may extra safely attend courses and examination classes in individual through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brown was impressed to undertake the venture when a pupil defined on a neighborhood information program that his household couldn’t afford Web for his or her house, so he was unable to attend courses remotely.

“Each time I watched the video clip, I’d cry,” she says. “This younger man is likely to be the following engineer, the nation’s subsequent minister, or the following skilled.

“I’m so glad we had been capable of get funding from Area 3 and a neighborhood group to offer these shields.”

She established an IEEE pupil department on the Caribbean Maritime College, in Kingston. The department had virtually 40 college students on the time of formation.

Brown is working to type pupil branches at different Jamaican universities, and she or he is trying to ascertain an IEEE Energy & Power Society chapter within the part.

She is a member of a number of IEEE committees together with the Election Oversight and Tellers. She serves as chair for the area’s Skilled Actions Committee.

“What I noticed by my volunteer work in IEEE is that you simply’re by no means alone,” she says. “There’s all the time any individual to assist information you. In the event that they don’t know one thing, they are going to level you to the one who does.

“Additionally, you’re allowed to make errors,” she says. “In some organizations, for those who make a mistake, you may lose your job or should pay to your error. However IEEE is your skilled house, the place you be taught, develop, and make errors.”

On a few of the IEEE committees the place she serves, she is the one girl of shade, however she says she has not confronted any discrimination—solely respect.

“I really feel snug and appreciated by the individuals and the communities I work with,” she says. “That motivates me to proceed to do properly and to the touch lives positively. That’s what makes me so lively in serving in IEEE: You’re appreciated and rewarded to your onerous work.”