To girls and women: Technology needs you


Leah Cardillo, a senior at North Providence High School, wants to prove to the guys in her graduating class that they are wrong.



Cardillo, 18, said most of the male students in her school think a career in technology is not for women.



“They think females can’t fix things,” she said. “It really makes me want to prove them wrong.”



The senior, her teacher Linda Parente and 13 of her female classmates attended the Women in Technology Expo on Feb. 14, hosted by the Community College of Rhode Island, Cox Communications and the Rhode Island Technology Council.



Parente, who teaches a career preparatory class at North Providence High, said she brought her students to the event so that they could experience what is out there in the field of technology and dispel some of the notions and stereotypes about women in technology.



“There’s still that gender thing,” Parente said. “I explain to my students that this profession is not all for males.”



Often times, Parente admits, boys at the high school will say “that’s not a girl’s job; that a boy’s job” in referring to jobs in engineering or other fields including the FBI.



Cardillo and her classmates attended the day-long event to hear what other women executives, including CCRI and RIC alum Dot Chesier of Foxboro Co., had to say about their careers in technology.



Chesier, 47, became a single mom nearly two decades ago. She didn’t have a degree, which made it difficult to find a well-paying job.



“What I found out was that the only jobs that would pay me without a degree were factory jobs,” she told the audience of roughly 150 attendees.



Now an executive for the Foxboro Co., who had just returned from setting up a regional office for her company in India, Chesier said she attended school during the day and worked nights.



“I worked in the field of process control, and that’s where I started learning,” she said.



Nearly 14 years ago, after a few job stints which paid $7 an hour, Chesier landed a job in the industry making $17,000. She then went on to work with the Foxboro Co., a subsidiary of Invensys Systems, which makes the largest computer systems for process control in a variety of industries including pharmaceutical, chemical and mining.



“While there, I went to RIC (Rhode Island College) and got a degree in industrial technology,” Chesier told the audience.



“I continued to learn more about technology and went from a technician to an engineer to an engineer II (second-level engineer), to director of development services.”



Today, Chesier manages 50 people and is making “well into the six figures.”



The executive told the group that she continues to encourage women to enter into the field of technology, especially at her company where “they also have women struggling to get into technology.”



As Chesier received applause and comments such as “you go girl” from women in the audience, she encouraged the female students by telling them that “there is plenty of opportunity for you — you just have to continue to push.”



Anita Bergantine, a 2002-2003 Miss Rhode Island delegate, tried to convince the audience that being a female in technology doesn’t mean that you are a geek.



Bergantine, also a CCRI grad, said she never saw herself in a job that required spending the day sitting behind a desk. So she applied for an outside job with Verizon. The job entailed first passing a written exam, then a physical test, which included climbing telephone poles.



Bergantine quickly changed her mind about climbing poles and applied for an inside job that would still allow her to avoid being behind a desk all day. Bergantine became an equipment installer technician in a department where she is one of three women in a 100-person department who installs converters and rectifiers.



“They had not allowed women into that department at that company for about 20 years,” she told the audience.



Fitting in with the men in her department was also difficult.



“Those men look at you and laugh,” she said.



Still, that did not stop Miss Rhode Island from doing her job.



“I’m up and down on ladders and get to work with multi-million dollar pieces of equipment,” she said.



Today, things have changed and Bergantine said Verizon would like to put more women in the field.



Bergantine’s story struck a chord with Cardillo, whose father is an installer for Cox Communications.



“It makes me think that I can do more than {I thought} before,” she said. “If I try hard enough, I can do it too.”

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