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GWBC Radio: Heather Eason with SELECT Power Systems

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Heather Eason, CEO of SELECT Power Systems, is an entrepreneur, blogger, board member, and author.

She has an electrical engineering degree as well as masters of business administration. She truly believes that we have the #powertomakeadifference.

Connect with Heather on LinkedIn.

SELECT Power Systems Transcript

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for GWBC Radio’s Open for Business. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:15] Lee Kantor here. Another episode of GWBC Open for Business. And this is going to be a good one. Today, we have with us Heather Eason with SELECT Power Systems. Welcome, Heather.

Heather Eason: [00:00:28] Thank you, Lee. Glad to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:30] Well, before we get too far into things, tell us about SELECT Power Systems. How are you serving folks?

Heather Eason: [00:00:36] So, SELECT Power Systems is an engineering firm and we service the utility sector, so what we do is we go to utilities and we help them build the power grid. And we also have partners that are prime engineering firms that we partner with to complete that task. And, in addition to engineering services, we have two other divisions. We also have professional services, which offer staffing and recruiting. And we have a division that does PMO, so project management, construction management, AHS, and all of that.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:08] So, how did you get into this line of work?

Heather Eason: [00:01:12] You know, I guess this is my dad’s fault. So, my dad worked for Duke Energy, the coal and nuclear station. And he wasn’t an engineer, but he came home from work talking about what he did and telling stories and got me excited and interested in power. And so, it was just a natural progression for me to get an electrical engineering degree and move my way up through the ladder at various firms and companies. And then, it was one of those things where I said, “You know what? I think I’m going to start my own company.” And I put it on the parachute of hope and jumped out of the airplane and started SELECT Power Systems.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:52] Now, what was it like growing up, being a child that was into the STEM career when there was not a lot of folks probably that look like you, as you were progressing through your education?

Lee Kantor: [00:02:04] You know, it was a little challenging. You know, just not to have, I guess, role models, not to have anybody that was pictured in media or talked about or in my community that I could point to and I could say, “Hey, they’re already doing it. I can do this.” It’s a little challenging, but I was okay with that role. I mean, I was the oddball girl that took two math classes in my ninth grade of high school, the same year. I was usually the only female in many of my engineering classes. There were a couple of times, maybe a physics class or something, there’d be one or two other females.

Heather Eason: [00:02:50] So, it’s a challenge and it’s definitely something that I’m trying to change for the next generation. I’m trying to encourage more girls and try to get them interested in STEM careers, all the way from elementary to high school to college. And then, even mentoring and coaching younger female engineering students in the industry, trying to encourage them to continue to climb the ladder and to continue to stay in a technical field.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:19] Now, we do a lot of work here with women business associations, especially in technology. And it just seems like it’s a challenge at some point in your education. It’s almost like a fork in the road that you’re seeing less and less of women and girls getting involved in these kind of careers. What’s your take on the reason that’s kind of behind that?

Heather Eason: [00:03:48] You know, I can tell you, so I have four children, three boys and a girl. My daughter, Alison, was actually doing an engineering program initially in college. And she came home during break and she said, “Hey, would it be okay if I changed my major?” And I said, “Yeah. Absolutely. I support whatever it is that you want to do. But I’m just curious, why is that?” And it’s hard, you know, she said that the professors wouldn’t call on her. When she would go to business hours and ask questions, they almost seem to put out that she was there to ask questions again. When she tried to build study groups outside of class, she just felt it was difficult. She didn’t connect. And it was hard to get study groups pull together. And she said, “And I’ll be honest, I’ve seen you and you work a ton of hours and I hear your frustrations. I hear some of the complaints you have. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to have to constantly fight to be seen and to be accepted.” And I was like, “I get it. I understand.”

Lee Kantor: [00:05:09] But part of your work now is to kind of help women navigate that?

Heather Eason: [00:05:15] It is. It is. So, you know, how do you meet anyone else? Lee, what can we do to help? It’s everything from, you know, encouraging your niece who’s got a math or a biology exam. To encourage or say, “Hey, you can do this. You got this.” To participating, you talked about some of the engineering societies. You got Women in Engineering. You’ve got Women in Science and Engineering, with WiSE. You’ve got SWE, Society of Women Engineers. You got [inaudible] Women in Engineering. Most of the engineering groups do have sub-chapters specifically for women. So, promoting and supporting those, being willing to go speak and address those groups, you know, that’s another way you can do it.

Heather Eason: [00:06:10] I do try to always mentor one of the local female engineering students at NC State every semester. Just give them encouragement and help them and guide them. And ensuring the workplace, if you identify someone who’s a top talent or someone who, maybe, is struggling a little bit to fit in, take them under your wing. Take them out to lunch and just say, “Hey, you’re doing a great job. I’m here to help. Is there anything I can do to help?” Most of the time I found they just need somebody to listen. They need an ear. They need somebody to say, “I hear you. And I care. And you got this. I’m here to support you.” They’re not always looking for fixes or solutions or recommendations. Sometimes they are, but usually they just kind of want to vent. So, those are the things that you, me, and everybody can do as we go through life on a daily basis to try to help improve and increase the number of women in engineering and STEM careers.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:17] Now, you’ve tried to kind of build a community around this. Is that part of your blog and the power to make a difference?

Heather Eason: [00:07:26] It is. So, Power to Make a Difference is the motto of SELECT Power Systems. And it really encompasses a lot of things. So, power to make a difference, of course, we support power industry. We believe that power does make a difference in people’s lives. Beyond that, you know, we try to make a positive impact in the communities in which we live and work. So, really, that power to make a difference is the communal. You know, humans are our best assets for each other. When we pull together and help each other, we can accomplish great things.

Heather Eason: [00:08:00] And my blog, leanedon.com, I actually started it six years ago. I started it, in part, because I just wanted to connect with other people. I wanted to share what I was experiencing, what I found that worked, ideas. And the reason why the name of it is leanedon.com because it’s the idea of, you know, leaning on the career ladder and climbing on. One of the things that I see, unfortunately, is around the seven year mark a lot of women engineers, that’s when they exit to nontechnical careers. So, how do we improve and increase the number of women CEOs and in the C-Suite and, also, in the boardroom? How can we improve those numbers if we can’t get them past mid-career?

Heather Eason: [00:09:00] COVID, especially, right now, man, it’s a difficult time. I’ve had eight female engineers make the decision to, basically, quit their jobs and stay home and educate their children. And I completely understand that decision. But we are losing so much talent and just great, wonderful skills and abilities out of our talent pool. And I’m just worried about how that’s going to affect us long term.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:28] Now, in your community, when you’re talking to folks about these subjects, is this kind of a conversation that people are becoming more and more open to or do they get defensive? How are the actual conversations going for you?

Heather Eason: [00:09:46] So, I’ll be honest, when I first started my blog, I had a senior VP of the large corporation that I was working for call me personally. And he said that someone else has shared my blog with him and he was concerned that I was riding around, you know, talent — women engineers were facing. And that he didn’t see that. And he talked to his daughter and she didn’t feel the same way. And asked me if I would remove my blog. And, you know, for me, it was like, “Hey, this is a personal blog. I am not doing anything negative.” Matter of fact, it’s very supportive. You know, trying to really rally a group together and provide support for each other and make it a positive thing. And so, I didn’t see how that request was appropriate.

Heather Eason: [00:10:43] And so, I kept blogging. I didn’t receive any more pushback, which was great. And I since started to receive a lot of positive momentum. You know, I love having people reach out to me and they’ll say, “Hey, someone shared a blog with me.” I just had someone last week reach out and say, “Hey, you know, I’m in technical sales. I’m not an engineer, but I moved into oil and gas and I’m struggling. Since you know about the industry, would you mind me having a short call with you piquing your brain?” And I was like, “Absolutely. Absolutely. Let’s put something on the calendar.” So, I’ve seen that it’s become a very positive thing.

Heather Eason: [00:11:26] And you have a lot of other groups that we collaborate with. You know, you’ve got Pink Petra, you’ve got Ally. You’ve got Leaned in Energy. And they’re doing some great things. And so, there’s definitely a lot of momentum around, “Hey, let’s support each other. Let’s help each other grow.” We have a skills gap in engineering and women and minorities are the way to fill it. So, it’s important that we do this and we support each other.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:01] Now, getting back to SELECT Power Systems for a second, you have an interesting kind of – I don’t know what you would call this – a business model that you call Archway, can you talk a little bit about that?

Heather Eason: [00:12:17] Yeah. So, you know, when I first started SELECT Power Systems before, I hadn’t really done anything outside of incorporating. I wanted to lay down our values. I wanted to say what it’s important to the company. And one of the things, if you go to selectpowersystems.com, the landing page is Power to Make a Difference. The second page is the Archway. You have to go beyond that to even find out what we do and what our capabilities are. And I wanted it that way because I wanted to represent our values and our principles first.

Heather Eason: [00:12:51] But the Archway, it really represents every segment of what we are as a company, what our values are, what we can do, not just from a company perspective, but also to help our partners and to help our clients. The Archway is one of the most stable and durable structures that can be built. So, what’s the foundation? It’s our employees. They’re the most important thing we have. Quality and customer service are our columns. Then, we get into the the arch itself, and we have sustainability and safety.

Heather Eason: [00:13:29] But the keystone, the thing that really locks it all in together, is our reputation. You know, we want to make sure that we’re known as a company for always doing the right thing and putting relationships first. And, you know, we want our clients to give us business, but we want to be true partners. We want them to trust us and we want to be their go-to.

Heather Eason: [00:13:52] And another thing you’ll notice is the archway is multicolored. The reason why we did that is to show that diversity is important. We take diversity seriously. Of course, we are a certified DBE. And so, with that, we also want to represent diversity within our company, which we do. We have diverse recruiting practices. And then, also, to promote it to our subcontractors, making sure that they take diversity seriously.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:25] Now, let’s talk a little bit about GWBC. What does it mean to you to be involved with that group?

Heather Eason: [00:14:34] I’ll be honest, it has been absolutely amazing. When I first heard about GWBC, it was truly for me to have the tools, and have the knowledge, and have the education on how to get certified, initially. And I thought, “Okay. Once I’m certified, you know, it’s probably not going to be that big of a part of my life.” But it actually is. You know, I have people that I met within the community that we keep up with each other separately. And we’re each other’s cheerleaders. We give each other guidance. We give each other recommendations.

Heather Eason: [00:15:15] I recently was looking for a new CPA and I went to that network and I said, “Hey, who’s your CPA? Who do you like? Who does a good job?” And I got a great referral. And the programs, you know, I highly recommend anybody to look at some of the programs that they promote. They’re phenomenal. I participated in several of them. I look forward to participating in the Women in Energy Program next year when it’s kicked back up — this year. They took the year off because of COVID. But the education, the support, and the community that you get is just invaluable to me.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:00] And especially during a crisis like that, it’s great to have that type of a resource available to help you kind of wade through what’s real and what’s not with a lot of the information that comes out.

Heather Eason: [00:16:13] Oh, absolutely. Navigating the PPP loan. There was a program just recently – Gino Wickmann wrote a book called Traction, and entrepreneur operating system is the basis of the book. And I went through a class with GWBC and a bunch of other women business owners, it was just phenomenal and it was eye opening. So, yeah, they really give you actionable items that you can incorporate into your business that help you to pivot and to be able to sustain through the pandemic.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:56] Now, if you weren’t busy enough with leading this company, your blog, you’re also writing a book. Can you talk about the genesis of that idea?

Heather Eason: [00:17:07] I am. So, with writing a book, somebody told me that people are more interested in reading a book which is a compilation of your blogs than reading your blog itself. And I found that interesting and I started talking to people about that. And, you know, the consensus is, a lot of times with blogs, you’re busy. You might take the time to read a five minute blog or seven minute blog. But it’s easy to, I guess, forget to read it when it comes out. But when you’ve got a book, and you’ve got something there, and you’ve kind of taken all of that information and compress it into one location, well, then, it’s one spot that you can go to.

Heather Eason: [00:17:58] ,And there’s just something I love about an actual physical book and turning the pages. And then, some people prefer to listen to audiobooks. I actually like the hard copy. I like having a book. Especially because we are so busy and life is so stressful, there’s so much uncertainty and there’s so much fear, at the end of the day, go to the bedroom, no electronics, pick up a book, read it. And get great ideas that I can incorporate into my life and also get that connection point and to have that cheerleader there. It’s nice. And so, that’s what the goal of the book is.

Heather Eason: [00:18:44] Of course, really, I’m kind of taking Leaned On and formulating that into chapters and then adding new sections and modifying it. And it’s really just a way for me to kind of take it all and put it into one place and make it easily digestible for people.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:04] Now, getting back to SELECT Power Systems, what does the ideal customer for you look like? What is the pain they’re having where they’re like, “We’ve got to call the folks at SELECT.”

Heather Eason: [00:19:18] So, part of me deciding to start SELECT Power Systems is, I was in a corporate job and we had diversity spend initiative on a project. The diversity spend was actually 40 percent, which was very high. The company that I worked for, and most large companies like this, look at projects as product pull through. So, they want to sell their product. They don’t really care about how the project gets executed. And they’ve got really creative with subcontracting out all of the work. Basically, they went to a DBE transportation logistics company and had them subcontract out all the engineering, concrete, welding, site management, you name it, everything. And a trucking company really didn’t know anything about engineering, and unfortunately, they went to the lowest cost company. And the company didn’t have the capabilities and skills to do the actual design.

Heather Eason: [00:20:20] And so, you know, it was one of those things where it was a frustration moment for me to be hands off and not to be able to get my team engaged until the last minute to get the project back on track. And I started talking to other people and they were having the same frustrations that I was having. And I was like, “Hm?” And I thought about it and I talked to some people and they’re like, “Hey, why don’t you open your own company?” Because, at least, within engineering and the utility field, there’s a lack of technical diverse companies that have the capabilities and focus on quality and focus on customer service. So, that was the niche. That was the need in the industry that I looked at filling.

Heather Eason: [00:21:11] And so, as diversity spend initiatives become more and more in place and, you know, they become more than just a paragraph on a website, but they become actual programs and they actually have metrics tied to them. And this increases within the industry. We really want to come in at SELECT and we want to say, “Well, yes, we are certified diverse. And we can help you meet that diversity spend initiative and help you to achieve and even go beyond that particular metric. We want to give you a great product. We want to be a good partner. We want to be your go-to, not just because we’re a woman-owned business, but because we do a great job. We’ll full-service but we’re a la carte. So, we can be flexible and we can help you.”

Heather Eason: [00:22:11] And, you know, as we do that, I think that’s where our growth is coming from. We’ve had tremendous growth. I feel so blessed. We’re coming up on three years in November and we’re already 18 employees. And that, to me, is just something I’m so proud of. We have a phenomenal team. And, you know, I think we’re doing the right thing. And as long as we continue to meet or exceed all expectations, I’m sure that we’ll be able to help the utility market to meet these diversity goals and to really make a positive impact in all of the areas within the industry.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:59] Well, Heather, congratulations on all the success. If somebody wanted to learn more about your organization, like, first give us SELECT Power Systems’ website and then let’s get the blog’s website out there as well.

Heather Eason: [00:23:11] Oh, thank you. Okay. So, SELECT Power Systems is at selectpowersystems.com. The blog is leanedon.com. And you can find both of those if you go to my LinkedIn profile. I have the company. I have the blog. I also have my email address and my cell phone number. So, there’s lots of ways to get in touch with me. So, please connect with me on LinkedIn. And, again, my name is Heather Eason and I look forward to helping clients, but also helping other women in engineering and other female business owners.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:49] Good stuff. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. And you’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Heather Eason: [00:23:55] Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:58] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We will see you all next time on GWBC Open for Business.

About GWBC

The Greater Women’s Business Council (GWBC®) is at the forefront of redefining women business enterprises (WBEs). An increasing focus on supplier diversity means major corporations are viewing our WBEs as innovative, flexible and competitive solutions. The number of women-owned businesses is rising to reflect an increasingly diverse consumer base of women making a majority of buying decision for herself, her family and her business. 

GWBC^® has partnered with dozens of major companies who are committed to providing a sustainable foundation through our guiding principles to bring education, training and the standardization of national certification to women businesses in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.