Meet Our Leadership Team!
The Houston Area section is led by local members that have been elected by the local section to serve one fiscal year from July 1st to June 30th to represent the Executive Council. The Executive Council is assisted by several committees. Additionally, SWE-HA has a Board of Trustees that consists of four senior SWE-HA members who serve a 3-year term.
Executive Council FY23 Bios
July 2022 - June 2023
Leteshia Lowe - President
Leteshia Lowe is a senior test and quality assurance engineer at IBM, where she is responsible for the testing of the IBM FlashSystem product family, an all-flash enterprise storage platform, a critical piece of IBM’s hybrid multi-cloud strategy. As a technical test specialist, Leteshia provides debug and failure investigation, strategic test management and innovative Reliability, Availability and Serviceability(RAS) testing solutions, while helping to mentor new employees to the overall team. Leteshia is a past president of the Houston Black Business Resource Group at IBM and has hosted a plethora of workshops and lunch & learns for a number of her IBM peers. She serves as a role model and mentor to individuals both inside and outside of IBM, focused on growing technical skills, learning about IBM and career development. As a first-generation college student, Leteshia is passionate about encouraging and motivating women to pursue careers in engineering by sharing her journey. She continues to dedicate herself to the community by volunteering with various local Organizations. Leteshia has a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering with concentration in Computers from Tennessee State University and a Master of Education degree in Secondary Education from the University of Arizona.
Personal Statement
For the past eight years (8) years, since moving to Houston, she has been involved in the planning and execution of various activities and events for SWE-HA including FY21 & FY22 Membership Chair and past VP Outreach. She will use her past leadership experience and cross organizational relationships to help increase visibility and awareness of SWE HA, increase member engagement and help to facilitate more opportunities to collaborate with other local professional organizations. She hopes to lead with transparency, authenticity, and integrity so the members as well as the executive board feel empowered and know that they are valued within this organization.
Personal Statement
For the past eight years (8) years, since moving to Houston, she has been involved in the planning and execution of various activities and events for SWE-HA including FY21 & FY22 Membership Chair and past VP Outreach. She will use her past leadership experience and cross organizational relationships to help increase visibility and awareness of SWE HA, increase member engagement and help to facilitate more opportunities to collaborate with other local professional organizations. She hopes to lead with transparency, authenticity, and integrity so the members as well as the executive board feel empowered and know that they are valued within this organization.
Salli Cobb - VP External
Salli is a native Houstonian and earned her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University. While in Aggieland she was involved in SWE as a member/ participant. Salli spent the first seven years of her career as a Plant Engineer in various coal- and natural gas-fired power plants around Houston. After a wonderful overseas experience, she was ready to reenter the workforce and found an opportunity in the HVAC industry. She has been a Product Manager for Residential Split Systems for Daikin for the last three years. Technical marketing was never on her radar but has been a tremendously rewarding opportunity and great fit. The favorite part of her job (besides talking to customers) is being able to help out her friends and family with their HVAC/ comfort needs. Salli is a passionate advocate for mid-career reentry. She brings vast corporate experience in two industries to the table. She plans to use this to further build external relationships with SWE-HA. Salli lives in Cypress with her husband and two teenagers. Her oldest is heading off to Aggieland where she will be the newest member of SWE. Her hobbies are spending time with her family, traveling, exercise or any combination of the three.
Personal Statement
Goals and objectives: Utilize the exposure of Houston hosting the national conference to increase sponsorship of SWE-HA. Maintain and build upon the already wonderful sponsor base we have. Tech tours: who doesn’t love a tech tour? Work with SWE members and customers to plan tech tours once a quarter. It was a pleasure helping host one at the Daikin factory a couple years ago. She really enjoy seeing what other disciplines and industries do with their tours – plus meeting and networking with SWE members!
Abilities: She has 15 years of corporate experience, and has worked for two large companies (Reliant Energy/ NRG Energy and Daikin North America) as well as one very small one. All in the Houston area. She has over 20 years of project management experience including a career gap where she held numerous volunteer positions and continued to use those skills. She continues to volunteer in her community with the National Charity League (grade level advisor where she gets to teach middle school girls how to be leaders!), Young Men’s Service League and at work at Daikin. She is a chronic people organizer, and has been a social chair for numerous organizations.
Personal Statement
Goals and objectives: Utilize the exposure of Houston hosting the national conference to increase sponsorship of SWE-HA. Maintain and build upon the already wonderful sponsor base we have. Tech tours: who doesn’t love a tech tour? Work with SWE members and customers to plan tech tours once a quarter. It was a pleasure helping host one at the Daikin factory a couple years ago. She really enjoy seeing what other disciplines and industries do with their tours – plus meeting and networking with SWE members!
Abilities: She has 15 years of corporate experience, and has worked for two large companies (Reliant Energy/ NRG Energy and Daikin North America) as well as one very small one. All in the Houston area. She has over 20 years of project management experience including a career gap where she held numerous volunteer positions and continued to use those skills. She continues to volunteer in her community with the National Charity League (grade level advisor where she gets to teach middle school girls how to be leaders!), Young Men’s Service League and at work at Daikin. She is a chronic people organizer, and has been a social chair for numerous organizations.
Emily Friedman - VP Internal
Emily Friedman is an experienced sustainability leader and market editor. Driven by a passion for people and our planet, she takes pride in covering US recycled plastics markets for ICIS. Prior to ICIS, Emily was a Corrosion Expert and Reliability Engineer at ExxonMobil, serving both refining and petrochemical operations in Baytown, TX. She brings to the table polymers research experience from 3M and Six Sigma manufacturing knowledge and data analytics skills from GE Aviation. Emily holds a degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Virginia Tech, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude. Emily has been an active member of SWE since 2015 and is passionate about diversity and inclusion, especially in underrepresented fields like engineering. Beginning as a collegiate member in the Virginia Tech Section, she went on to become President, establishing a Freshman Rising Leader scholarship and planning a global STEM outreach trip, by partnering with WomEng in Malawi. Since joining the Houston Area section, Emily has planned several events and served as the FY2021 Secretary. She currently holds the position of Networking Co-Chair. In her free time, Emily enjoys listening to podcasts, drinking wine, trying different yoga studios and exploring new places around town with her husband Scott.
Personal Statement
SWE has been her passion and home for the last 7 years, first as a student and now as a professional. Over those seven years, she has been able to hone several skill sets that enables her to succeed in the role of VP-Internal. She's been the past tech tour chair, FY21 SWE-HA secretary, FY22 Networking Chair, all which strengthened her time management skills & sharpened her communication skills so that they are both efficient, engaging and effective. She looks forward to contributing to leadership discussions to help our section grow and flourish and is excited for this opportunity to help the women around her succeed.
Personal Statement
SWE has been her passion and home for the last 7 years, first as a student and now as a professional. Over those seven years, she has been able to hone several skill sets that enables her to succeed in the role of VP-Internal. She's been the past tech tour chair, FY21 SWE-HA secretary, FY22 Networking Chair, all which strengthened her time management skills & sharpened her communication skills so that they are both efficient, engaging and effective. She looks forward to contributing to leadership discussions to help our section grow and flourish and is excited for this opportunity to help the women around her succeed.
Katherine Hoerner - VP Outreach
Katherine Hoerner grew up in Buffalo, NY and relocated to the Houston area after graduating from the University at Buffalo in 2014 with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering. Over the last 8 years she has worked in the Chemicals industry holding various roles in project engineering. She is currently a Process Safety Engineer for Covestro and is responsible for leading process hazard analyses at their Baytown plant. Katherine has a passion for volunteering and has been involved with planning multiple events to introduce students to engineering. Most recently she chaired SWE-HA’s Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day (FY22). She enjoys sharing her passion for engineering with students and introducing them to the many opportunities which careers in STEM offer. In her free time Katherine enjoys a good Netflix binge, but can also be found hiking around the country with her husband Brandon and fur baby Cinnamon. She also enjoys trying out the diverse food scenes which Houston has to offer.
Personal Statement Her passion for outreach emanates from her own introduction to engineering as a student participating in STEM events. Having witnessed the impact these events have, it is important to her to help provide the same opportunities to others. Her passion and dedication to this mission aligns with the goals of SWE making her a great fit for the VP Outreach position. Through her professional experiences she has developed strong leadership, organization, and communication skills. She has successfully led and participated in multiple outreach events with her company and SWE-HA. Her goal-oriented and can-do mentality allows her to execute projects and continue our mission of promoting STEM among women in the Houston Area. Her focus is on increasing volunteer engagement. She knows having ample volunteers is critical to our mission. She plans to reach out to our members, identify their outreach passions, and incorporate these themes to boost engagement. She is excited for the opportunity to help shape future women engineers. |
Kathryn Schoer - Secretary
Kathryn Schoer is a Facilities Project Engineer at Arion Blue with a background in chemical process engineering. She has spent her career working on Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) projects in the energy and chemical markets. She has loved every minute working closely on cross-functional teams and improving operational performance and client satisfaction. Kathryn graduated in 2017 from Trinity University with a B.S. in Engineering Science and a Minor in Business Administration. She is a certified Engineer-in-Training (EIT) and is currently in the process of applying for her PE license. Kathryn strongly believes in leadership mentorship, community involvement, STEM outreach, and being a good corporate citizen. In her free time, you'll find her reading, kayaking, hiking, doing puzzles, and taking her dog Mozi for a walk.
Personal Statement
She loves finding creative ways to communicate and highlight important events and information in an easy-to-understand format. She's goal and deadline driven and brings energy and organization to every scenario. She figures things out and change on the fly so she is excited to adapt our communication style as needed to express SWE-HA’s mission, goals, and events to both new and existing members. Her main goals are to strengthen communication between members, increase our visibility on LinkedIn and other social media platforms, and expand & streamline our website experience. She has held many leadership roles with SWE-HA section including VP Internal, Networking Chair, Social Media Chair, & Tech Tour Chair. She co-chaired SWE’s 40th Anniversary & Scholarship Fundraiser and developed our monthly Coffee Networking Series and Member Focus Groups. As secretary, she looks forward to supporting all of the executive team, chairs and committees members.
Amanda Hafemeister - Treasurer
Amanda graduated from Texas A&M University at Galveston in 2017 with a Bachelor’s in Offshore and Coastal Systems Engineering. Before graduating, she began interning as a hydraulics engineer at the Army Corps of Engineers, and after graduation was brought on full-time. As part of the hydrology and hydraulics team she helps design projects and is part of studies that work towards reducing flood risk to people and infrastructure in communities throughout Texas. As a native Houstonian, she is all too familiar with floods and has developed a passion to help manage flood risk to all communities by developing sustainable solutions to reduce risk from inland hydrology and coastal storm events. She is passionate about helping to inspire our next generation of female engineers throughout her community. In her spare time she enjoys being outdoors, usually with her camera and dog, Athena.
Personal Statement
She has been actively involved in the SWE-HA section since 2019. Her first role in SWE-HA was the Collegiate Coordinator where she worked on cultivating and building relationships with local SWE collegiate sections with SWE-HA. She was able to help create relationships with local collegiate SWE sections and introduce them to SWE-HA and provide them opportunities for learning, networking, and professional development that they may have not otherwise been able to find. After this role she was the VP-Outreach for FY22, where she provided outreach to K-12 students. SWE-HA has a broad reach and during her time as VP-Outreach she was able to provide opportunities to talk to many students all over Houston and surrounding areas. She helped establish and encourage partnerships with other organizations around Houston to provide STEM outreach wherever possible. She is familiar with our budget and how important it is for our section to function. With the experience she has for budgeting for outreach events, and with the knowledge set forth by existing and previous Treasurers, she is managing our budget successfully so that SWE-HA may continue to operate as effectively as it does. Her goal is to support the financial wellness and integrity of SWE-HA.
Personal Statement
She has been actively involved in the SWE-HA section since 2019. Her first role in SWE-HA was the Collegiate Coordinator where she worked on cultivating and building relationships with local SWE collegiate sections with SWE-HA. She was able to help create relationships with local collegiate SWE sections and introduce them to SWE-HA and provide them opportunities for learning, networking, and professional development that they may have not otherwise been able to find. After this role she was the VP-Outreach for FY22, where she provided outreach to K-12 students. SWE-HA has a broad reach and during her time as VP-Outreach she was able to provide opportunities to talk to many students all over Houston and surrounding areas. She helped establish and encourage partnerships with other organizations around Houston to provide STEM outreach wherever possible. She is familiar with our budget and how important it is for our section to function. With the experience she has for budgeting for outreach events, and with the knowledge set forth by existing and previous Treasurers, she is managing our budget successfully so that SWE-HA may continue to operate as effectively as it does. Her goal is to support the financial wellness and integrity of SWE-HA.
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Event Refund Policy
No Refunds. No refunds of prepaid amounts will be given for early termination by Client.
In the event you are unable to attend this paid event, please let us know. We will make sure your contribution to the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Houston Area Section, a 501(c)(3) organization, is documented and that you receive your tax deductible donation letter. Thank you.
In the event you are unable to attend this paid event, please let us know. We will make sure your contribution to the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Houston Area Section, a 501(c)(3) organization, is documented and that you receive your tax deductible donation letter. Thank you.