Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 3 No. 1 Spring 2018 | Page 22

“When you’re 24 you’re not sure how to
stand up to that kind of discrimination,” Ott
said. “It’s something that if you don’t have
role-models or mentors, you have to take it
upon yourself to speak up, because it’s not
fair; and life’s not fair, but specifically gender
discrimination is not fair.”
In one of the several companies Ott worked
for in her career, travel would take her to
manufacturing facilities where it was com-
mon for shop walls to be covered with posters
or calendars of partially or almost nude wom-
en. And that was only part of the problem.
“In one of my first jobs as an engineer I was
told I had to wear a skirt every day,” Ott said.
“I eventually came back to the New River
Valley and worked for Kollmorgen for nearly
a decade and that’s where I really learned how
to be an engineer. While there I did every-
thing an engineer can do. I got a nice range
of experience from design engineer, project
MOMENTUM
SPRING 2018
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