Women in Geothermal (WING) Rocks the GRC!
WING presence was strong at the Geothermal Rising Conference held live virtually from 17-24 October. Starting with a spot at the opening session on Monday morning, Kelly Blake, the WING Global Executive and GRC board member, spoke about the quest for increasing gender and other kinds of diversity in the geothermal industry, citing statistics and highlighting WING activities that support the movement. The recording of her presentation was available as an on-demand re-play to paid conference attendees for a month after the conference. Geothermal Rising (the new name of the Geothermal Resource Council) graciously invited WING to host some of the events that are normally a part of the live GRC event including a yoga class, where 70 people tuned in for a session on Tuesday morning led skillfully by Moira, a WING volunteer. US WING volunteer Amelia Letvin coordinated the wellness activities for WING at GRC. WING also offered “Take a Break” videos through the conference, aired following the technical sessions, that invited attendees to do origami, indulge in a nature video, and do a little chair stretching in between sessions. This turned out to be a really fun way to engage the attendees. Throughout the conference activities the WING pin could be spotted on many speakers’ shirts. Many also sported a hat, another WING awareness initiative. A big thanks is due to all our WING members at work who showed their support!
Annual WING Values Awards
On Thursday afternoon of the GRC, WING held its annual Core Values awards ceremony. These awards originated with the US group several years ago to honor geothermal professionals who embody the WING Core Values of Empowering, Courageous, Open and Caring. Nominations come in from all over the world each year.This year’s winners were Andy Blair who received an all-encompassing Core Value award recognizing her nurturing of the WING organization into a vital existence. The Courageous award went to Jamie Beard, the Executive Director of the Geothermal Entrepreneurship Organization at the University of Texas, Austin. The Empowering award belongs to Diana Macodawa, an engineer at Geothermal Development Corporation (GDC) in Kenya. Esther Njuguna, another GDC engineer was awarded the Open award. And the Caring award went to Malfridur Omarsdottir, an Environmental Scientist at the UNESCO GRÓ Geothermal Training Programme in Iceland. The awards ceremony was followed by a WING presentation and panel discussion and was attended by 127 people. Thanks to Geothermal Rising for allowing WING this spot in the conference program. The re-play of the ceremony will soon be available on the WING website and is currently available from the WING UK YouTube Channel here https://youtu.be/MnWK_9RFphY
Best Student Poster Award
The US WING team also solicited volunteers and completed the assessment of the Student poster submissions to select the winner of a $500 award from Cyrq Energy. Karen Christopherson did a great job leading this effort. We were pleased to announce Rita Esuru Osofur, a Reservoir Engineering student at Stanford the winner of the best student poster award. She also happens to be the current Leader of the GRC student organization.
Student Scholarships to GRC
WING also provided sponsorships to 14 male and female students to attend the conference through an application process. The US WING leadership team received some great applications for the sponsorship and it was hard to select the 14 students. Geothermal Rising was able to sponsor all the remaining student applicants, for which we were so grateful! The WING mission is to promote the education, professional development, and advancement of women in the geothermal community. We believe that giving students the opportunity to engage in the geothermal community will interest some great minds into making their careers in the industry.
