Perspective from a Society Past President

I recently attended the joint Student Activities Committee (SAC), Young Professionals (YP), Women in Engineering (WIE), Life Members (LM) meeting, which was held in Panama City, March 14^th – 16^th, 2025.

This meeting brings together four IEEE affinity groups (AG) in a common meeting setting. While  each group spends most of the time in its own meeting, the conference format allows for scheduled formal interactions and information sharing via selected common sessions and for informal interactions during breaks and social events. These four AG fall under the purview of the  Member and Geographic Activities (MGA), an IEEE branch parallel to the Technical Activity Board (TAB), where the Societies and Councils (S/C), including NPSS, have their home.

The opening session, common to all four AGs, presented an overview of  MGA, including its structure and committees, of TAB, and each of the four AGs. I appreciated this informative introductory session which provided a framework to the entire meeting: unlike in the more to-us- familiar TAB environment, where we tend to associate our identity with our home society, at this meeting the association was first with a region, then main committee, and ultimately society. A Strategic Roadmap common to AGs was focused on Improved Member Satisfaction, Improved Volunteer Satisfaction and IEEE membership. Such a consistent  approach may facilitate a natural focus on the needs of particular member populations, which may differ primarily in terms of regional belongings, culture and career stage, rather than technical expertise, possibly providing a natural base on which to build inter-society collaborations and initiatives.

I attended primarily the YP and WIE sessions and was impressed by the energy and commitment of both AGs. Key themes of the YP meeting were Networking and Leadership development, YP Operations and Training, and Engagement and Outreach. YP leaders presented a comprehensive description of their strategic directions ‘Advancing Young Professionals towards Professional Excellence and Beyond’ grouped under four pillars:

• Innovate: develop products and services to support early career professionals. This includes  programs such as Climate and Sustainability, Digital Transformations and Innovation Hub Ecosystem, Industry-meet Program, Mentor-meet Program, Career Portal, and Supporting Professional Licensing Programs.
• Educate: outreach and awareness, including website and social media enhancement.
• Engage: expand and enrich the volunteer community and ecosystem to support volunteers, including IEEE Volunteering Platform, Awards & Recognition, Volunteer Resources & Training, YP Funding, Regional-Society-Council Support and Collaboration Program and others.
• Empower facilitate the transition from student to young professional including, Career Portal and Job Fair and others.

They established eleven task force groups to drive the Roadmap, a set of priority initiatives within their program with project deliverables and milestones. Interestingly,  one of the programs is focused on expanding the young professional awareness of existing IEEE resources, a topic that is found of consistent relevance across most of IEEE, including our own society.

While presenting a progress report on their activities and achievements, they also listed a series of successful workshops series such as  IEEE Rising Stars (https://ieee-risingstars.org/2025/) and  IEEE WIE International Leaders Conference (https://ieee-wie-ilc.org/) and solicited participation.

A  very interesting part of the YP meeting was an interactive session where the YPs themselves were asked by their own leadership to identify areas where IEEE could be more helpful and to propose action items. A personal story of how involvement in student chapters and then regional activities ultimately lead to multiple job offers was particularly powerful in exemplifying the benefits of being an active member.

The themes addressed within the WIE sessions were similar, with greater focus on issues more often encountered by women in their professional engineering career. Here, focus areas were identified as Enhancing Networking Opportunities  including access to a global network of professionals, industry leaders and mentors, and how to best help members advance their careers; Professional Development including development of exclusive events & webinars, career growth and leadership training to build personal brand and professional success, Visibility and Recognition centered around defining awards to enhance professional credibility, scholarship and travel grants to provide financial support for members to attend conferences and  Community Building trough advocacy and outreach. Description of the progress already achieved, such as launching of the Global Tech Marathon (https://educationweek.ieee.org/event/ieee-wie-global-tech-marathon/) or the distinguished lecturer program and others, was followed by more brainstorming discussion, including how to facilitate parental return to work.

An important part of the meeting was dedicated to promoting WIE in Industry & Entrepreneurship, with specific goals being defined as:

• Enhanced industry engagement by events including mentoring programs and programs in industry venue.
• Development of industry pool, industry portal, industry WIE membership, Industry Experts Network.
• Entrepreneurship training to encourage more women entrepreneurs.
• Disseminating knowledge and skills of standards development and market adoption promotion by inviting standards experts to give presentations / speeches in WIE events.

There was also discussion on how IEEE WIE and societies can best collaborate to create joint events and programs that support women in technology; what resources do societies need from IEEE WIE to enhance their efforts in supporting women in technology, and how societies can best reciprocate to support IEEE WIE’s goal. A report describing the summary of the discussions will be made available to WIE liaisons – collective suggestions and ideas will further strengthen our WIE activities and provide further benefits to our members and opportunities for active involvement. For example, there was a new call for WIE ambassadors (responsibilities: to provide mentorship and career advice to students and early career professionals; to organize and support professional development events within the IEEE WIE community, to actively engage with the IEEE WIE community through various platforms and events, to promote the values and mission of IEEE WIE), mirroring the need expresses in the YP section of the meeting. Likewise the importance of local activities as a seed toward organization of larger meeting and gatherings was stressed in both groups.

The above is only a very short and limited snapshot of the entire meeting, which was much broader and addressed more topics, such as funding for activities and events, identification of  new audiences and ways of communicating,  presentation of exciting emerging new initiatives and projects and mentoring opportunities. The energy of the young professionals, regardless of their affinity group was impressive; the importance and value of listening to them and including them in our leadership was very clear. We are planning to enrich the WIE and YP activities in our society;  building on such experiences can be of value to all S/C, and can provide a strong platform for increased and synergistic interaction between different IEEE OUs, including Education Activities Board (EAB) and Standards Association (SA) thus further enhancing IEEE’s technical and human impact.

Vesna Sossi, Past President, can be reached at [email protected]