CREDIT HEIDI EIFFERT, STUDIOU
Women represent 23 percent of new engineering graduates, a number Jessica Horaney is seeking to grow.
“It’s an improvement,” Ms. Horaney said recently. “When I graduated from college, I was one of two women in my class. I was the only female engineer in my department.”
That was in 2002, when Ms. Horaney joined what was then Rockwell Collins – now Collins Aerospace – right after receiving her BA in electrical engineering from the University of Iowa. She started working in the spring, developing navigation systems for commercial airliners. She recalls the day an employee group invited some of the company’s first female engineers, hired in the 1970s, to speak.
“Talk about an eye-opening experience,” Ms. Horaney said. “They encountered, ‘Oh you’re going to go and have children,’ and there was pressure to prove themselves because they were the first. They talked about little biases like, ‘Oh, you’re the note taker.’ I really appreciate them. A lot of positive things have changed since then.”
Ms. Horaney started thinking about engineering while attending North Scott High School in Eldridge.
“I had a math teacher who encouraged me to consider engineering,” she said. “He introduced me to his daughter, who was studying engineering.”
That course eventually led to a 2001 junior-year internship at Rockwell Collins.
“I shadowed professionals to see what their day-to-day was like, to see where my strengths and passions lie,” Ms. Horaney said.
Which in turn led her to lead teams designing and developing new avionics.
“I really like that big-picture systems integration piece,” she said. “I was more of a technical engineer before I started pursuing more leadership roles.”
That prompted a return to school. Ms. Horaney earned her MBA from Iowa’s Tippie School of Business in 2009.
Through her career, Ms. Horaney has worked to ensure the next generation has the opportunities she did, starting a few years before high school.
“We really target eighth grade girls,” Ms. Horaney said. “That’s the point when girls are considering whether to pursue a career path.”
Her own path led to her current assignment as value stream leader of the space datalinks portfolio at Collins Aerospace. Ms. Horaney became involved with Leading Inspired Females in Technology (LIFT), an internal committee formed shortly after the company’s 2018 acquisition by Raytheon, which now goes by RTX.
“During the beginning I led a committee that was really focused on looking at our data and understanding the representation of women,” she said. “We looked at where dropout was starting to happen, and said ‘Why is that?’”
That engineering approach led to policies and practices to keep women in the company as they navigated their own lives.
“It’s things the company can do to keep those women on the path, and (management) helped us implement those things,” Ms. Horaney said. “I really appreciate our leadership team at Collins, and RTX now. They put their money behind what they say.”
Her employers’ local presence plays a role, Ms. Horaney believes.
“It’s that Iowa and Cedar Rapids work ethic of people being really supportive and friendly,” she said. “You put all that together and it means a lot.”
The effort also recognizes the value of having women helping solve engineering problems.
“There’s the science to it, of course, but there’s a lot of art to it,” Ms. Horaney said. “A lot of girls tend to be perfectionist – we think if it doesn’t work it’s no good. No, you learn from it. Just because it doesn’t work the first time doesn’t mean you’re not talented. And a lot of times women are looking for that more altruistic type of career. We try to connect how engineers are helping people.”
That applied when Ms. Horaney got involved with the United Way of East Central Iowa. She joined UWEC’s board in 2001 and has chaired its Women United program.
“During the COVID years it was a really interesting time to be leading a group,” she said. An engineering approach helped address a pandemic problem with a virtual diaper drive.
“We had online links where people could order diapers and have them sent,” Ms. Horaney said. “They got 100,000 free diapers. That was such a huge thing for our community at the time. They weren’t in the stores at a time, and a lot of people couldn’t afford them.”
Ms. Horaney, her husband Joe Horaney and their three children live in Marion.
“I feel like I’m supported in my career, and it’s not just me,” she said.
This profile was originally published in the CBJ’s 2024 Women of Influence publication. The 2024 Women of Influence are an inspiring group of community leaders who have each overcome adversity, taken chances and challenged themselves to make a positive impact in their community, despite demanding schedules in their personal and professional lives.
The CBJ will host the 2024 Women of Influence 20 Year Gala from 5-8:30 p.m. Thursday, May 2, at The Hotel at Kirkwood Center in Cedar Rapids. Tickets are still available to this event, which includes networking, dinner and remarks from the winners.
