Rebecca Ponton, Forbes Contributor “I joke that I made either the stupidest or the smartest decision of my life,” Dianna Liu says laughing, “when I left my refinery job.” Liu is president and founder of ARIX Technologies, Inc., described on the company’s website as an early stage, venture backed robotics and…
By Rebecca Ponton, Forbes Contributor “It was an opportunity women my age could have only in Alaska,” Joey Roth, a veteran senior drilling engineer for Shell, says of working on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline (TAPS) in 1976. “They didn’t care if you were a woman or black or green; they just…
by Rebecca Ponton, Forbes.com contributor “Racism is systemic. It’s pervasive. The workplace is a microcosm of our society. The biggest problem is our history. George Floyd had to [lose] his life for people to say [systemic racism] is an issue, but it’s been an issue and continues to be an…
by Rebecca Ponton, Forbes Contributor It has been ten years since the devastating Deepwater Horizon tragedy, which took the lives of 11 men from among the 126-member crew working on the BP-operated Macondo prospect. Not much has been written about the five women named on Transocean RIG ’s personnel on board (POB)…
by Rebecca Ponton, Forbes contributor “I always wanted to be the love-child of Beyoncé and Bill Nye the Science Guy,” Jessica O. Matthews says with a laugh. “That’s the perfect embodiment of hard work, looking good, but also the science – the belief and interest. Bill Nye the Science Guy…
By Rebecca Ponton It’s a rare CEO that would travel almost 3,500 miles to do field research, but Gwenaëlle Avice-Huet, head of ENGIE North America, Inc., a company whose mission is two-fold – a zero-carbon transition and a zero-carbon economy – left her new home in Houston last year to…
By Rebecca Ponton To say Amelia Florence Behrens Musser Furniss led a colorful life would be an understatement. Born July 6, 1895, just one year before the discovery of Summerland oil field in Santa Barbara County, California, the site of the first offshore discovery in the U.S. from wells drilled…
by Rebecca Ponton, Forbes Contributor Following five months in Europe after graduating from the University of Delaware with a marketing management degree, Paula Glover, then in her early 20s, had the choice between a position with the German luxury designer, Escada, in Manhattan or a decidedly less glamorous job with…
by Rebecca Ponton, contributor to Forbes “Why waste a good crisis?” has long been the motto of Katie Mehnert, founder and CEO of Pink Petro, and the universe has been happy to oblige with a number of crises. A two-time cancer survivor, she also survived the wrath of Hurricane Harvey,…
by Rebecca Ponton, contributor to Forbes “No! That doesn’t impact us,” was Alex Gerbasi’s initial reaction when her husband, who was studying for the ministry, told her he instead felt called to work against human trafficking. Despite her misgivings, she began praying about it. A week later, the massage studio…