R12| Monday, October 28, 2019 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
JOURNAL REPORTS | DIVERSITY & INCLUSION
A
fter seeing an artificial heart on a
1980s television show, Telva
McGruder started thinking she
might want to become an engi-
neer.
When Ms. McGruder asked her
parents about the heart, her father gave his
usual suggestion: “Go to the library.” That set
Ms. McGruder, a woman of color, on a path of
learning that ultimately helped her move into
a leadership role in engineering atGeneral Mo-
torsCo., one of the 20 most diverse companies
in the S&P 500, according to a new ranking by
The Wall Street Journal’s research analysts.
The 50-year-old Ms. McGruder, who has
worked at the Detroit-based auto maker for
over 25 years, grew up in Dayton, Ohio, with
her mother and father, who operated a piston
rod-grinding machine at GM’s factory there.
Her parents joked that everyone knew at
least one person who worked at GM.
Ms. McGruder went on to earn bachelor’s
and master’s degrees in electrical engineering
from Purdue University in Indiana. In college,
she was often the only woman in her classesBYDIETERHOLGERmodels for black students and op-
portunities for engineers of color to
develop professionally.
At GM, Ms. McGruder is now
helping lead the charge on those is-
sues. Along with holding the title of
director of workplace engineering
and operations solutions, she is the
president of the General Motors Af-
rican Ancestry Network, which has
provided mentorship and network-
ing for GM employees since 1999.
To get younger people of color
interested in engineering, the group
visits K-12 classrooms in the Detroit
area, and creates robotics teams to
help students develop a passion for
coding or electrical engineering.
GM engineers of color also offer ad-
vice on college applications.
While the number of African-
Americans earning engineering de-
grees hasn’t changed much in re-
cent years, the needle does seem to
be moving for Hispanics, who
earned 11.4% of the engineering de-
grees awarded in 2018, up from 7%
in 2010, according to the American
Society for Engineering Education.
Hispanics are the fastest-grow-
ing ethnic group in the U.S., which could ex-
plain some of the growth. But some in the field
say efforts to encourage Hispanic youth to pur-
sue science also is having an effect. “I think
part of the reason you’re going to see a big
pickup in Hispanics in STEM is that we are go-
ing back as a community and helping the com-
munity,” says William Gonzalez, an account
manager atRockwell AutomationInc., where
he also helps recruit engineers and mentor
youth.
Born to Nicaraguan immigrants who came to
the U.S. in 1989, Mr. Gonzalez, now 25, lived in
a trailer park in Miami-Dade County, Fla., until
he was 12. He earned a bachelor’s degree in in-
dustrial engineering from the University of
South Florida in 2017, and completed engineer-
ing internships at Northrop Grumman Corp. and
Eaton Corp. before joining Rockwell, where he
handles sales of automation products to mostly
oil and chemical companies in the Houston area.
Rockwell scored better than 61% of S&P 500
companies in the industrials sector and 50%
over the overall index, according to the study
by The Wall Street Journal research analysts.
It earned top marks for age diversity among
board members and senior management and
for workforce ethnic diversity.
Like GM, Rockwell also is trying to boost in-
terest in engineering among young people of
color. Mr. Gonzalez, for example, helps form ro-
botics teams at K-12 schools in low-income ar-
eas that Rockwell then supports with up to
$6,000 a season.
At high schools, parents have asked Mr.
Gonzalez if their children should continue fam-
ily businesses such as painting or pursue col-
lege. “I ask them, ‘Do you want more for your
son than what you have, or do you want him to
keep doing what you do?’ ” he says. “Their an-
swer is always, ‘I want more.’ ”Mr. Holgeris a reporter for The Wall
Street Journal in Barcelona. Email him at
[email protected].Before landing his dream job as a data scien-
tist atMicrosoftCorp., Joey Chemis, who
holds degrees in comprehensive math, discrete
math and algorithms and statistics, had a hard
time finding a job.
“I worked in mostly minimum-wage jobs
postcollege like Yogurtland and Pizza Hut, and
while they were paying the bills, I didn’t feel
fulfilled,” says the 32-year-old Mr. Chemis.
Out of the hundreds of applications Mr.
Chemis submitted online, some led to phone
interviews. But he would never get past the
initial phone screening despite his academic
pedigree.
Mr. Chemis has autism spectrum disorder,
a condition that tends to affect a person’s abil-
ity to communicate and interact with others.
During interviews, people with autism can ex-
perience anxiety, which may lead them to
freeze up and struggle to share ideas and com-
municate their knowledge.
“Autism gives me superpowers where I can
be hyperfocused on something and, for exam-
ple, get three degrees in math, but I find cer-
tain interview processes nerve-racking,” says
Mr. Chemis.
Feeling discouraged, Mr. Chemis turned to
the autism pages on Facebook to ask if anyone
knew of companies that had special hiring pro-
grams for people with the condition. Most of
the responses pointed to the same company:
Microsoft.
“We realized candidates with autism don’t
get through the initial phone screen because
they may have yes or no answers or they may
not elaborate on other skills,” says Neil Bar-
nett, director of inclusive hiring at the Red-
mond, Wash.-based company. So in 2015 Mi-Experts say individuals with autism tend
to have strong skills in specific areas and,
when they develop an interest in a subject,
can become so knowledgeable about it that
they may end up outperforming their peers.
“People with autism are good at problem
solving, coding, they have strong attention to
detail,” says Mr. Barnett. “Those problem-
solving skills are very important at Micro-
soft.”
Since the launch of the autism hiring pro-
gram, Mr. Barnett says some of the proce-
dures—such as allowing candidates to code on
their own laptops—have been adapted by hir-
ing managers in other parts of the company
and outside Microsoft too, thanks to Autism
@ Work, a coalition Microsoft co-founded
withSAP SE,Ernst & YoungandJP Morgan
Chase& Co. to help other employers put simi-
lar programs in place.
Microsoft has hired over 100 employees
with autism across different teams through its
program. They hold various positions includ-
ing software engineer, data scientist, content
writer and finance-team member.
Mr. Chemis says once people with autism
are given the opportunity to shine in an inter-
view process that is tailored to their needs
and hired, they aren’t treated differently from
other employees. That, he says, is one of the
reasons he loves working at Microsoft.
“My colleagues have realized I am a normal
guy. I am quirky and nerdy like the rest of
them and, while I am happy to disclose the
fact that I have autism, I don’t want to let the
autism define me,” Mr. Chemis says.Ms. Sardonis a reporter for The Wall Street
Journal in Barcelona. Email her at
[email protected].BYMAITANESARDONMICROSOFT’S HIRING PROGRAM ALLOWS PEOPLE WITH AUTISM TO SHINE
FROM TOP: ERIN KIRKLAND FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL; BRANDON THIBODEAUX FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL; QUINN RUSSELL BROWN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNALTelva McGruder, a longtime
GM engineer, tries to cultivate
interest in the field at Detroit-
area schools. William Gonzalez
of Rockwell Automation does
the same in the Houston area.crosoft decided to launch an autism hiring
program that included adapting its hiring pro-
cess to the specific needs of people with the
condition.
The changes include allowing candidates
with autism to apply via a special email and
skip the initial phone screening. The com-
pany also gives such candidates a chance to
do a practice interview and get feedback
from recruiters before doing the official one.
And finally, Microsoft allows them to codeusing their own laptops instead of doing it on
a whiteboard in front of recruiters and other
candidates, which people with autism have
said makes them feel very nervous.
“The process allowed me to showcase some
of my skills and abilities in a way that I don’t
think would have been well-received in a tech-
nical interview where, for example, I have to
whiteboard,” says Mr. Chemis, who has been at
Microsoft for almost four years now and re-
cently got promoted to data scientist II.Joey Chemis worked mostly minimum-wage jobs after college. Now he’s a data scientist.earned high marks on ethnic diversity, as well
as gender diversity of its board, senior man-
agement and workforce.
Like other top performers in the study, GM
supports and recruits from college associations
for women and people of color and sends di-
verse engineers to classrooms in low-income
areas to get children interested in science.
“Our country needs more African-American
engineers to continue our nation’s progress and
fill talent gaps,” says Karl Reid, executive direc-
tor of the National Society of Black Engineers.
He says challenges include an absence of roleand among the very few people
of color. “The environment
proved a little bit shocking,” she
says, adding that had she known
how rare it was for women and
minorities to study engineering,
she might have chosen a differ-
ent path.
Decades later, not much has
changed. As recently as 2015, the
engineering field was 70% white
and 85% male. About 4% of engi-
neering jobs in the U.S. were
held by black people, and less
than 2% were held by black
women, according to the Na-
tional Science Foundation. Mean-
while, the number of African-
Americans earning bachelor’s
degrees in engineering has remained little
changed since 2010, hovering around 4%, ac-
cording to the American Society for Engineer-
ing Education.
In the first diversity and inclusion ranking
by The Wall Street Journal’s environmental, so-
cial and governance research team, the indus-
trial sector—a big employer of engineers—
ranked seventh out of 11 sectors in the S&P- The energy and materials sectors, also big
employers of engineers, tied for last.
The consumer-discretionary sector to which
GM belongs ranked fourth, but the company
GM’s Drive to
Find Engineers
The company looks to instill a
passion for coding in students