 Paula M. Taupier
Account Rep./
Engineer in Training
Northeast Utilities Service Company
Hartford, CT
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 B.S. -
Electrical Engineering, Western New England College
M.S. -
Electrical Engineering, University of Hartford |
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Account
Representative involved in wholesale marketing, working with
municipal utility companies to provide a wholesale power supply.
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"Being a woman
engineer in a predominantly male work environment offers unique
challenges and opportunities." |
 
"How I got into marketing is a complicated story. I started off in the
distribution side of the company working on getting electricity to our
customers' homes then I moved into the transmission engineering department
working on the issue of electric and magnetic fields for our transmission
facilities and decided that I had spent a long time in engineering and
wanted to try something different. Given the communications and
interpersonal skills that I had, I thought I might be well suited for
marketing and sales."
Paula Taupier works in wholesale marketing for Northeast Utilities. She
began her career as a field engineer for Massachusetts Electric Company,
making sure electricity reached the individual customers' homes. "I was
the one who got called in the middle of the night to try and figure out
what the problems were." When she changed companies, she took a staff
engineering position, dealing with "the reliability of our systems to
serve electricity our customers' homes and the reliability of our
equipment. Taupier's purview also included concerns with electric and
magnetic fields, which led to her taking a position in "the transmission
engineering group, responsible for designing our transmission facilities
and also predicting what the electric and magnetic field exposure would be
from those facilities."
Using her technical skills and the communications skills she has developed
on the job, Taupier has made a dramatic switch to wholesale marketing, the
part of the company that markets bulk power to other utilities in New
England. Taupier describes what she does: "I deal with customers on a
daily basis, helping them solve their power supply problems and helping
them address their long-term power supply needs. I interact with people on
a daily basis as well as work with technical issues that they bring to my
attention as their representative."
Taupier anticipates that deregulation of the electrical industry will
create job opportunities for engineers. "New companies and new jobs will
open up for them. I think having an engineering degree opens up many
doors, given the fundamental thinking skills we have and the ability to
problem solve." She adds, "Certainly, if you have the customer skills and
the interpersonal skills, marketing might be something you might want to
think about."
Taupier cautions female engineers not to expect things to be too easy. "I
think being a woman engineer in a predominantly male work environment
offers unique challenges and opportunities. I think that you have to
continuously establish your credibility, and I think you have to
continually work very hard to keep up the credibility that you have. And I
think that it's probably a lot more work for female engineers to succeed,
but it's possible."
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