ASME INSIDER STEPHANIE VIOLA

I was part of an experimental theater company in New York, and all of our work was original work. When I think about the collaboration in an engineering design or an engineering solution, I could sort of draw that correlation to a lot of the work I did in theater.

I’m quite drawn to the creativity of engineering and the engineers that I’ve crossed paths with, and I’m really intrigued with the story of engineering. I would say that engineering has a big story, and one that needs to be told in some new ways.

I think engineers are the ultimate optimists. There are no dead ends in engineering. There’s lots of problems, but those problems are problems to solve for—whether it’s climate change or food insecurity, water insecurity, clean energy—all of those are engineering challenges, and ASME is ensuring that a sustainability mindset is part of the development.

ASME exists to advance engineering for the benefit of humanity. And the ASME Foundation exists to empower the next generation of engineers. The next generation cares about purpose, and they care about social impact, and we know that. So, it’s very much aligned to our strategies that we provide to companies of recruiting, and retaining, and advancing engineers along their journey.

A lot of organizations know a bit about ASME and certainly our rich history in codes and standards, but not enough people know about our philanthropic programs, which span K through 12 education, scholarships, curriculum development, engineering festivals, career support for community college students, HBCUs, and guidance and support for young inventors and innovators.

Philanthropy has really evolved over the last few decades to be much more representative of the communities it serves. So even in the work that we’ve been building with the Foundation, we’ve spent a lot of time focusing on the diversity of our board, for example. So that the decision-making is really coming out of perspective and a lived experience of the communities that we serve. So, we embrace that, scope of diversity in all aspects of our philanthropic program; the donors, the decision-makers, and of course, our beneficiaries.

There is a perception that we don’t need investment, and the truth is, all of the tremendous programs that ASME has in philanthropy, they are funded through donations. It takes support from the community to run our K through 12 programs, to build our scholarship portfolio, to supply this level of mentorship and guidance to early innovators. We can’t be afraid to ask for what we need to be able to scale and make the impact we want to make.