66. Kay Paulus - Software Engineering Manager, B.S. Mechanical Engineering

Ordinarily Extraordinary - Conversations with women in STEM

Kay Paulus is software engineering manager at a Software as a Service company in rural Minnesota. She has a Bachelor's of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame, and transitioned into software engineering early in her career.
Episode Notes

Kay shares her career journey and how life sometimes has its own path, regardless of her well designed plans that she had laid out. She shares challenges she encountered early on in her part-time military service after completing the ROTC program during college.

We discuss the challenges of working with young kids and its accompanying "mom guilt", small town lake life in Minnesota, working remotely before it became "a thing", and many pieces of great advice - including the importance of self care.

Music used in the podcast: Higher Up, Silverman Sound Studio

Acronyms, Definitions, and Fact Check

ROTC - The Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) is a college program offered at more than 1,700 colleges and universities across the United States that prepares young adults to become officers in the U.S. Military. In exchange for a paid college education and a guaranteed post-college career, participants, or cadets, commit to serve in the Military after graduation. Each Service branch has its own take on ROTC. (https://www.todaysmilitary.com/education-training/rotc-programs?gclid=Cj0KCQjwiNSLBhCPARIsAKNS4_coghgTTPqwLONnsGJlt6OsOTqMwUjE4487D69a7nE8iskV22RAxrcaAmuOEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds)

Software as a service (SaaS) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. (wikipedia)

Carlson School of Management - The Curtis L. Carlson School of Management is a business school at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The Carlson School offers undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees, as well as an executive education program. (wikipedia)

It takes an average of about 25 minutes (23 minutes and 15 seconds, to be exact) to return to the original task after an interruption, according to Gloria Mark, who studies digital distraction at the University of California, Irvine.How long does it take to get back on track when getting interrupted. (http://blog.idonethis.com/distractions-at-work/)

Society of Women Engineers: https://swe.org/
Camp Invent: https://www.invent.org/