Changes that Work: Effective Workforce Practices

Engineering the Future

So often when we hear about DEI initiatives, we hear about the ones that fail. This episode, it’s time to focus on what works.

In this episode, host Wanda Sigur will speak with Dr. Wanda Austin, the CEO of Makingspace, Inc, and Dr. Ivuoma Onyeador, assistant professor in the Management and Organizations Department at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, about the research around workplace diversity and what works, from increased advocacy to having authentic conversation about race, gender and more.

For more information about the National Academy of Engineering, please see our website.

Guest Bios

Dr. Ivuoma Onyeador is an Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern Univeristy. Her research examines how people judge and respond to group-based discrimination and disparities. She has been named a "Rising Star" by the Association for Psychological Science, selected for the SAGE Early Career Trajectory award by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and for a Mission Award from the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science. In 2022, she was named one of the best 40 under 40 MBA professors by Poets & Quants. Professor Onyeador earned her B.S. in Psychology, with distinction, from Yale University, her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from UCLA, and was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Wanda M. Austin is co-founder of MakingSpace, Inc., a systems engineering and leadership development consultant and motivational speaker. She is the author of Making Space: Strategic Leadership for a Complex World, which explores the leadership principles she learned during her decades-long journey as an engineer, space industry executive, daughter, wife and mother. She is the former president and CEO of The Aerospace Corporation, an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to the application of science and technology toward critical issues affecting the nation’s space program. Austin served on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology until January 2017. She is a member of the Defense Science Board and the NASA Advisory Council, an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), a counselor of the National Academy of Engineering, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a trustee for the University of Southern California and on the Board of Directors for the Chevron Corporation and Amgen.