True Grit – Catriona Schmolke on breaking boundaries in engineering
As the first woman engineer to become Global Senior Vice President at Jacobs, UK, Catriona Schmolke FREng FIMMM has spent her career breaking boundaries and persevering in the face of a hard ‘no’. Andrea Gaini sits down for a chat to learn about the determination and tenacity that has shaped her career.
‘When I was 16, my mother and I were called up to the headmaster’s office. He sat us down and told my mum, ‘I’m sorry to say that Catriona is not university material’’, recalls Catriona Schmolke of the moment her hopes of going to university seemed to crumble in front of her eyes.
‘My mum always had a strong authority towards the things she believed in, so she came out of that meeting and told me, ‘Catriona, you are a smart, tenacious redhead, don’t you ever let anyone tell you you can’t do something.’’
Born and raised in Seamill, a small village on the west coast of Scotland, Catriona reflects on a ‘fabulous upbringing’. Her mum worked at the Glasgow Tourist Board, while her dad was a Mechanical Engineer, a career he had entered after studying at night school and a good example of what perseverance can achieve.
Catriona now speaks with a strong sense of self and confidence, like her mum’s words that day after meeting with the headteacher, but as we delve deeper into her story, she explains that she had to work hard to find her own way.
Buckling down
Despite her headmaster’s discouragement and initially not getting the grades for some of the universities she had applied for, Catriona decided to look at other routes to get a place in higher education.
‘My boyfriend at the time was studying at Strathclyde University so he suggested we go up to Glasgow and see if there were any clearing opportunities to get a place,’ she says. She recalls showing her grades to the ‘nice lady at reception’ and being told she could either apply for a general science degree with a lot of maths – a subject she had grown to despise – or a degree in Applied Geology.
‘I remember thinking, ‘well, my brother is a geologist, how hard can it be?’,’ she says, chuckling to herself. She was offered a place that same afternoon after an impromptu interview with the course director, but the offer came with words of caution, ‘The director basically told me I would not pass the first year.’
On her first day of class, Catriona had some trepidation when she saw that she was only one of two women in the whole class. ‘I never felt intimidated by all the men in my class, but I did have this feeling, what we now call imposter syndrome, believing I didn’t deserve to belong.’
Not one to let that dissuade her, the ‘tenacious redhead’, as her mother called her, put in the hard graft and passed all her exams, graduating four years later with an Upper Second-Class Honours degree – a result that ‘many of those guys who had got into university with better grades than me did not achieve’.
Catriona tells me she also holds an MPhil research degree in Mine Water Pollution from Newcastle University, UK. And in 2021, she was appointed Visiting Professor in Sustainability, Risk and Resilience. Quite an achievement for someone that was told they were not university material.
Making connections
The experience at Strathclyde sowed the seeds of her career. While at university, Catriona was the student representative on the West of Scotland Geological Society, and later appointed Secretary, building a network of contacts that recognised her abilities and would play an important role in her career.
She got her first job as a Geologist at Johnson Poole & Bloomer (JPB), Scotland, UK, through a contact from the Society. At JPB ‘we focused on land that had been impacted by former mining and also the design of new opencast mines.
‘I was there for three years, and I learnt a hell of a lot and understood a lot more about putting the theory of mining that I’d learned at university into practice.’
After three years at JPB, Catriona moved onto an infrastructure consultancy, known at the time as Babtie Group (later incorporated into the engineering company, Jacobs) – once again through one of her contacts from the West of Scotland Geological Society.
‘I was the first woman in the Geotechnical team, and I think that helped, because if you’re good at your job, it doesn’t do any harm to have a slightly different opinion or bring a new perspective to the table.’
By 1992, she became a Chartered Engineer. ‘It was a really important milestone for me because I wanted to start a family. And in my head, I was worried that if I wasn’t chartered, once I’d had a baby, I wouldn’t be able to get a job again.’
After having her first child a year later, she almost immediately had her second. She ‘started working part-time with one baby, and one on the way. And it was tough. I had five years where I had them under the age of five. But I had my mum and my dad at the time, and we worked through it.
‘And interestingly enough, I grew in my career. I was promoted faster once I had two babies because I think I became super efficient, I became really focused and was soon made a Technical Director – the first female Technical Director at the company.’
In her new role she was hiring and running the department and, by 1996, was in charge of a 200-person environmental consultancy within the Babtie Group.
‘My environmental consultancy was almost 50% women, 50% men, and I had the opportunity to develop female leaders, as well as male leaders. This was possible because I worked hard to make the business unit as attractive to women as I could.
‘Building on my own experience of maternity leave at work, I developed a number of areas including a maternity mentoring network, as it was very important to create an inclusive workplace for our working mothers, and around that time we began lobbying the company for enhanced maternity pay and also paternity leave.
‘But I would look at other parallel businesses inside the same company who were still predominantly men. So, I definitely think female leadership attracts females.’
Finding her feet
Fast-forward a decade and, in August 2004, the Babtie Group was sold to the American firm, Jacobs Engineering. Catriona recalls feeling shocked by this change, but also choosing to embrace it as an opportunity to expand her horizons.
Within the new company, she found a mentor in Marietta Hannigan, who worked in business development at the time.
She explains that Marietta was asked by the Jacobs leadership to move to Glasgow in 2005 to support the post-acquisition integration of the Babtie Group into Jacobs.
‘Marietta, at that time, had been with Jacobs for around 14 years and had also joined through an acquisition. She is a dynamic and inspirational leader, and she was the first woman leader I had met who was senior to me.
‘She taught me everything I knew about how Jacobs did business. More than 20 years into my career, I finally found my female role model.
‘Marietta was able, through her experiences, to offer a window into the new company – which was 10 times the size of Babtie Group – and how it operated, and through her encouragement and coaching I moved role from an operations leader into a Global Sales leader,’ Catriona explains.
‘Working alongside Marietta in Global Sales, I was part of a small group of leaders who went on to become the Global Sales Trainers of the company.
‘We travelled internationally delivering sales training and this really helped me to broaden my horizons and understand how a multi-national, multi-billion dollar company operated.
‘I also learnt how to further develop my operational leadership skills into corporate engagement skills, and as I became a Senior Vice President, that transition was essential to operate effectively at the C-Suite and use my influence with the Board and other key stakeholders.’
A wind of change
Catriona also experienced, and was part of, a big transformation to the safety culture in the company.
The firm was shaken to its core in 2005 when an explosion at BP’s Texas City refinery caused 180 injuries and 15 deaths, 11 of which were Jacobs’ employees. After the incident, it set off on a journey to transform Jacobs’ safety culture.
‘We wanted our safety culture to be so strong, that you’d learn more [at work] so that you can go and be safer in your homes too.
‘This was at the time a major shift in perspective and involved everyone in the company not just those working on sites. Everybody learnt that safety was their responsibility. It wasn’t just about standards or specifications…but to normalise and tell people that if something doesn’t look safe, then to have the courage to intervene and to feel fully supported in their decisions, we called it BeyondZero our Culture of Caring.’
In 2016, in her role as Global Senior Vice President of Safety, Security and Sustainability, Catriona was able to formalise psychological safety within BeyondZero with the Mental Health Matters programme within Jacobs.
‘There were people who wanted to do more about mental health at work, and I was honoured to be the ambassador to help them to bring forward a global mental health programme into the company.
‘I pitched that to the Executive Leadership Team and with the energy and the talents of many people, we implemented the Mental Health Matters programme at Jacobs.
‘The programme was completely voluntary, and people could come forward to be trained as Mental Health Champions.
‘By the time I was leaving in 2020, there were nearly 2,000 Positive Mental Health Champions and the psychological safety culture had become the norm.’
Catriona’s work in changing the safety culture at Jacobs was recognised by the National Safety Council of America in 2021 when they awarded her with the Marion Martin Award, an honour given to influential women in safety.
Mentoring new blood
Catriona has recently retired from her position at Jacobs and is now building a portfolio career including Non-Executive roles on Boards and has her own consultancy. She also spends her time mentoring and speaking about leadership and women in engineering.
To the future leaders, Catriona says, ‘Humility, empathy, honesty and authenticity are the essential skills for the leaders of tomorrow.
‘I think I have succeeded as a leader of people because I don’t think I have all the answers. I know I need to rely on other people. I welcome their inputs. I can empathise with them.’
She adds, ‘One of my mentors once said to me, ‘You need to think about legacy. It is not about what you do today, but what are you leaving? It’s about what do you want people to remember you for?’’
On becoming a Fellow of IOM3 in 2015, she was honoured as Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) in 2016 for her work in mine water pollution and sustainability, becoming one of only five women in Scotland to achieve Fellowship of the Academy.
‘As a new Fellow, I joined several committees and projects that the RAE was working on. It was a difficult juggling act with my full-time career at Jacobs, but I knew it was also important to use my voice and influence as one of only a handful of women Fellows,’ she explains.
‘In 2020, when I took early retirement, I was then able to devote more to the projects, such as the Engineering Leaders Scholarships (ELS) Steering Committee, which I chair.’
The ELS is a scholarship programme for undergraduate engineers to financially support them in becoming an engineering leader of the future, she explains.
Catriona adds, ‘I was also appointed a Trustee on the Board of the RAE, in November 2021, and I was asked to extend my Trustee role to become the Vice President of Fellowship Engagement.
‘I am one of two Vice Presidents who support the President, and I am also there to support the RAE Executive Leadership team with engaging the Fellowship, to deliver their mission to harness the power of engineering to build a sustainable society and an inclusive economy that works for everyone.’
To close, Catriona quotes Maya Angelou as one of her life mantras, ‘People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,’ and that in a nutshell is how she has moulded her leadership strategy.