By: Shelby Cohen, Electronic Systems Communications Manager

For the majority of my 20-year career, I have worked in the defense industry.

But I’m no STEM whiz.

Ironically, I failed my final math exam in the tenth grade and had to complete summer school to maintain my honor roll standing and grade point average. In college, math classes triggered panic attacks so severe, I would have to leave the room. I wasn’t what anyone would call a good STEM student.

STEM – or science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – is a priority area for the U.S. education system, particularly for girls. Because young women typically begin to fall behind in these subjects in middle school – opting instead for English, history, art, or music – the public and private sectors have made huge efforts over the last decade to encourage girls' participation.

(Left) Shelby at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany in 2015. She was there supporting BAE Systems, Inc.’s Commercial Aircraft Solutions business area for a media briefing./ (Right) Shelby, in 2016, hosting the local Chairman’s Awards event in Endicott, N.Y. Interested in a career that revolutionizes the air industry? Endicott specializes in this area. Find your next career opportunity here.

The fact is, tech companies can’t hire enough women engineers and computing professionals because not enough women stick with these subjects in school. That, in turn, means these companies struggle to meet diversity goals, and wage gaps and gender bias persist over time due to a lack of female candidates in the talent pool.

The issue is even more complex than that. Don’t get me started on what happens if a woman decides to have a family, and how that can affect her long-term career opportunities if an organization doesn’t recognize the demands of working moms.

When I was in school in the 90s in upstate New York, there were no STEM programs or corporations investing in my public school to inspire my interest in math or science. Even if there had been, I suspect I still would have gravitated toward other disciplines.

Words have always made sense to me – numbers, not quite so much. So while I thrived in Advanced Placement English and was thrilled to discover there was a career in which I could use words to influence others, I drifted further and further from an interest in those STEM subjects.

Yet, at just 23, I began working for a large defense technology company. I was writing articles about planes and electronic warfare systems that gave American soldiers the ability to distinguish friends from foes on modern battlefields, and working with some of the most brilliant engineering minds on the planet. It was my job to understand what they did and turn the tech into digestible information.

In 2007, Shelby received a helicopter flight as a thank you from a former employer for a crisis communication plan.

All these years later, for BAE Systems, Inc., I work with reporters from outlets like Aviation Week and Janes Defence to explain technology that gives intelligence analysts information from disparate sources in real time, so that they can give higher quality, up-to-the-minute data to warfighters in the modern battlespace. And yes, I also pitch stories about how important STEM education is in our schools.

Most tech companies also need people like me – non-technical professionals. We’re financial wizards, organizational nerds, human resources experts, and contracts gurus. In my company, the communications team, along with other departments, enable our engineers to invent, develop, produce, and sell our products and capabilities.

But even though we’re not engineers, we’re steeped in the innovation taking place inside our walls. There are thousands of people who work for my company with fantastic careers in one of the biggest high-tech organizations in the world, who are specialists in all kinds of disciplines outside of engineering or the sciences. Trust me with your press release, just don’t ask me to figure out the tip after dinner.

You know Kristen Wiig’s character in The Martian, incredulous when her colleagues name a secret meeting after a scene in The Lord of the Rings? That kind of interaction is a regular occurrence for me. But despite the fact that I am not an engineer, I very much have a successful career in technology that has allowed me to meet presidential candidates, collaborate with Oscar-winning film directors, fly on helicopters, and travel the world.

(Left) Shelby and former First Lady Laura Bush at a 2016 BAE Systems community investment event in Austin, Texas. Bush’s charity Texan by Nature was a partner of the event. The foundation brings conservation and business efforts together./ (Right) Shelby and award-winning film director Spike Lee in 2012 at a commercial shoot for the New York State Economic Development Council.

My job requires me to understand our products enough to educate the masses about why they’re beneficial for our military. No, I don’t understand how the chip inside a single board computer is designed or built, but you better believe I have to know what it does once it’s orbiting Earth in a satellite. Still, by most people’s standards, I would not be considered a woman in technology. It’s time to change that perception.

Let’s open our apertures on what it means to work in the careers of tomorrow. Yes, we absolutely need more girls to follow STEM paths, if that’s where their talents lie. But let’s also welcome those with incredible passions for literature, art, sociology, history, and music. They have immense value and a place in the tech industry, too.

Shelby in Amsterdam in 2014 at a trade show supporting media relations for the BAE Systems Electronic Systems sector’s Commercial Aircraft Solutions business area.

That girl who always talks to her neighbor during class could be Google’s vice president of human resources in 25 years. That boy who flunks every bio lab experiment, because holding a frog funeral rather than a dissection makes more sense to him, may be the business development executive for whom Ford will be searching in a decade or so. That student who excels in art could become the graphic designer who heads up the ad campaign that propels the next big social media giant into the hearts of customers.

Science and math are not the only keys to unlocking a career in tech. I’m living proof: you can have a successful career in the thriving technology industry even if you failed your Math II final.

There’s more than one path to success.

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