“NEWIEE has been a Source of Mentorship and Community”

Call for Interest: Seeking women in energy and the environment for an interview study on the ways that people have experienced virtual work since the changes wrought by COVID-19, and how this experience has impacted their visions for the future. (Contact: julia.coff@stern.nyu.edu)

With writing, as with moving to a new city, beginnings are hard. And so, in service of the former, I thought it best to re-situate myself in the latter. I flipped back through my calendar, to fall of 2016, to pinpoint precisely when my path brought me to NEWIEE. I recalled a crisp, damp evening; a stately, wood-paneled club in an intimidatingly posh Back Bay neighborhood; and entering a warmly-lit room abuzz with conversation. The Fall Fete!

I was surrounded by women-in-energy, close enough that we might both reach for the same cube of cheese or cocktail napkin, but I felt apart. I was in my 20s. I had zero female role models in the energy space—every one of the managers, VPs, and company founders I had reported to during my career had been a man. I also knew no one in Boston, or even all of New England, aside from a few coworkers; I had just moved to the city to start a new job. I was, in so many ways, a newcomer.

NEWIEE took me in. Members of the leadership team—senior career women with long to-do lists and proverbial Rolodexes thick with the names of people far more instrumental to them than I—welcomed me. When I asked the leadership team if I might serve as a volunteer, they helped me find a place in the organization. When I brought them ideas, they thoughtfully took them into consideration. When I left Boston for Colorado, they graciously allowed me to continue my involvement from outside of New England. And when I moved on from the industry to attend graduate school for my PhD in Management, they continued to support me, providing invaluable guidance and support on my journey in academia.

NEWIEE has been a source of mentorship and community, even as my geography and my career have changed over the course of the past five years. It’s a rare and special thing to be part of an organization that supports my growth, even when—on the surface, at least—that growth takes me in a different direction. But it was, in fact, my experiences of that year in Boston and with NEWIEE that attuned me to the calling of the PhD. Indeed, those experiences drive my research.

With the generous financial support of Microsoft and the NYU Stern Future of Work group, I have launched an interview study on the ways that people have experienced virtual work since the changes wrought by COVID-19, and how this experience has impacted their visions for the future. Researchers have theorized—and offered some early evidence—that women have experienced virtual work and the pandemic differently from men, and that accounting for this will prove crucial in understanding the impact of recent events on women’s opportunities, careers, and lives. As such, I want to include in the sample as many women as I can, especially women in energy—a unique industry that has long straddled the virtual and the material.

Call for Interest:

I asked the leadership team if I might ask NEWIEE members for their participation. As they have done so many times before, the women of the leadership team have graciously allowed me to pursue this opportunity, here, with this little dispatch-from-an-aspiring-academic. And so I put out the call, for those who would be open to sharing their experiences of work and life these past months, in one-hour, confidential Zoom conversations. I would be grateful to hear your stories; to learn from your experiences; and to document your triumphs, your hardships, and everything in between. NEWIEE has shown me the ways that women can forge deep and enduring bonds that span time and distance. Now, with your help, I aspire to manifest this in my scholarship. If you or anyone you know is working virtually; previously worked from the office; has had the same employer since before the pandemic; and would be interested in sharing your/their experiences, please reach out at julia.coff@stern.nyu.edu. It would be my honor to serve as a guardian of your stories, as it has been to be part of NEWIEE these past five years.

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