Honoring International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day is Sunday, March 8th, and in celebration we want to recognize and honor all of the women who have impacted our lives and our industry, including all of the talented women at TRC and across our client organizations.

At TRC, recognizing and honoring the women we work with is not just something we talk about once a year but rather something that we actively work towards as part of the fabric of our company. In early 2019, we launched the Women’s Network with the mission of providing a forum to promote career development and advancement for women in our workforce.

At launch, we anticipated having three Women’s Network pilot chapters in the West, Central and Eastern regions.  We are thrilled to report that the Network has generated far more interest and engagement throughout the company than we anticipated and we currently have 17 chapters and over 400 members!

Each chapter of the Women’s Network meets regularly and has developed a charter and areas of interest unique to them. Chapter activities include attending local industry conferences, sponsoring events, cross-sector education and engaging in discussions about a variety of women’s issues.

Some highlights from the past year include:

• Unconscious Bias Training – rolled out to all TRC, this training aims to raise our collective awareness about unconscious bias. Bias is something we all experience and naturally have as a part of who we are and where we came from. In the workplace, our biases can, at times, interfere (often unintentionally) with constructive team dynamics and impede our goal of being the best at what we do.
• BOLD Workshop – we had 58 participants in our pilot career development workshop. The participants provided great insights for us to build upon as we create a framework to help women navigate TRC careers.
• GWIC Conference – over 20 women and men from TRC attended the Groundbreaking Women in Construction Conference in San Francisco, an annual event presented by Engineering News Record.  This conference received high marks from our TRC attendees and focused on issues and insights for women in the industry.

This year, as we celebrate its early success, our Women’s Network will adopt a new name and logo, as follows:

GROW stands for Gaining Rewarding Opportunities for Women. This new name and logo create a stronger identity for us to build upon the successes in the network’s first year, both internally and externally

We’d like to say a special thank you to everyone who has worked so hard over the last year to build GROW into a powerhouse organization. The success of this network will serve as a model for other employee resource groups that champion diversity, inclusion and equity in the workplace. Additionally, thank you to everyone, both inside TRC and out, who champions diversity, inclusion and more opportunities for women in STEM.