Welcome to another episode of Heat Treat Radio, a periodic podcast where Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, discusses cutting-edge topics with industry-leading personalities. Below, you can either listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or you can read an edited version of the transcript. To see a complete list of other Heat Treat Radio episodes, click here.
Audio: Women in Heat Treat
In this conversation, Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, interviews the two founders of the LinkedIn group, Women in Heat Treat, Ellen Conway-Merrill, Vice President of DELTA H, and Roseanne Brunello, owner of manufacturing rep firm Mountain Rep. They will discuss their new group and plans for the future.
Click the play button below to listen.
Transcript: Women in Heat Treat
The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.
On March 8 of this year, the world celebrated International Women’s Day. At roughly the same time, two women from the heat treat industry gave birth to a new LinkedIn group called Women in Heat Treat. Today, we’re going to talk to these two trailblazing women about their new group and their plans for the future. Who are these two women? Let’s meet them now briefly, and then come back and talk with them about their plans.
Ellen Conway-Merrill (EC): My name is Ellen. I am the Vice President of DELTA H.
Doug Glenn (DG): That’s Ellen Conway-Merrill, and her company, DELTA H, is located in Carroll, OH, which is close to Columbus, OH.
Next we’ll meet–
Roseanne Brunello (RB): This is Roseanne Brunello, and I have been in manufacturing for 37 years working as the owner of a manufacturing rep firm by the name of Mountain Rep.
DG: Roseanne Brunello is also from Ohio, near Cleveland. So we’re here today with Ellen Conway-Merrill from DELTA H. Ellen, if you don’t mind, spend a minute telling us about who you are, and also a bit about DELTA H.
EC: I am the Vice President of DELTA H, and it is a family business. My dad, Richard Conway, is the chief technology officer, and he started DELTA H 30 years ago. It started out as a service company, mostly doing consulting and service work, and it has grown from there. My twin brother and I joined forces with him, which was kind of serendipitous as it wasn’t planned on happening and it just did. We joined him in 2009 and never looked back. We’ve been with him for about 11 years and it’s been an incredible ride. Over those past 10 years, we’ve been getting more and more interested in manufacturing our own brand and it’s been a huge success. DELTA H really focuses on specific niches and certain industries. We’ve done really well in the aerospace industry designing heat treat furnaces that are specifically meant towards certain applications such as aluminum heat treating, titanium steels, and what we see in aircraft MRO or an OEM or parts manufacturer. We really cater to those companies. We are also in automotive plastics composites, which is a huge industry for us with our walk-in ovens. That’s what we mostly focus on.
DG: Here again is Roseanne Brunello, telling us a little more about her and her company, Mountain Rep.
RB: This is Roseanne Brunello, and I have been in manufacturing for 37 years, working as the owner of a manufacturing rep firm by the name of Mountain Rep. For many of those years, I was in the component and sub-assembly industry, leaning more toward the aerospace industry, which of course let me learn plenty about heat treat along the way. In the meantime, I moved home to Cleveland about 6 years ago to help take care of my mom and wound up kind of refocusing the company to lend myself toward the heat treat world, which has been kind of fun. I thought I was more specialized when I was in manufacturing with parts; well, boy, heat treat is even more specialized. I’m proud to be in the industry–there are not very many women, which is why we decided to start this little association.
DG: Good! That’s exactly what I wanted to ask you about. That’s what caught my eye. You and Ellen Conway-Merrill from DELTA H started a group on LinkedIn. First off, give us the name of the group and then how the two of you came about to create it.
RB: She is a great gal. She called me actually and said that she was doing some research on women in heat treat and didn’t find anything and invited me down to her facility in Columbus to show me what they do and to see if we wanted to start some kind of group- see if the activity was there, then maybe we could turn it into an association. It’s called Women in Heat Treat. It doesn’t have to be women only, but our focus is to educate women and help promote women within this industry.
DG: Ellen explains a little more deeply what motivated her to think about starting a women in heat treat group.
EC: It’s kind of funny how it happened. Roseanne and I connected a while back. I think she actually posted something on LinkedIn about the stem work that she does, which is one of my original passions with my background actually being in education, of all things. I didn’t go to school for heat treating or anything like that; it was education. She posted something about one of her programs and I reached out to her and that’s how we connected. We finally met at the heat treat show this past October in Detroit, and we stayed connected. Some time passed. I’m actually the membership chair of the association of women in the metals industry. I was doing some organizing with them and I had thought, “Is there a women in heat treat group out there?” I did some searching on Google and nothing came up. I figured if anyone new about it, it would be Roseanne as she’s been in the industry for a long time and knows a lot of people. We got to talking and she thought it was a great idea too. So we decided to at least start with LinkedIn and just see where it went and we seemed to get a lot of interest right away.
DG: So that’s how the group got started. The next question was forward-looking. Where is this group going?
EC: I feel the overall mission or goal would be to promote and develop the growth of women in the heat treat industry. I do feel like women can benefit themselves and their companies’ relationships, education, and shared knowledge. I envision with Roseanne that we can develop programs and activities very similar to what I’m already doing in the AWMI (Association of Women in Metal Industries) program and set up keynote speakers. Roseanne and I talked about a show coming up at ASM International and doing a women’s get-together there. We could have a keynote speaker that comes in and talks with us. Within that group, the goal would be to enhance skills and experience, address challenges confronting the industry, and of course always promote career growth. These are just ideas, but again, like I said, it is like-minded people in a very niche industry.
DG: Right. And these women that you’re appealing to in the heat treat industry, do they need to be technical in nature, engineering oriented, that type of thing?
EC: No, I’m not! As I said, my background is education and a big part of my role here is mostly running the business and sales side. My technical background is that I know enough to be dangerous but I’m nowhere near being an engineer or a metallurgist or anything like that. That is part of it though. This is open for anyone, whether it’s a sales background, business background, metallurgical, design, or engineering. The more the merrier. I feel like having those different backgrounds is what’s going to make the group really shine in getting all aspects of that.
DG: Roseanne also had something to say about the purpose of the group.
RB: A lot of times women are considered for jobs like the receptionist or the buyer even, but to actually be selling furnaces or be the operations manager of the heat treat company is kind of rare for women. So we’re encouraging that. Women are very good at multitasking. A lot of times having a heat treat facility, you better be pretty good at multitasking. We think women can do a good job in this industry. We’re here to mentor the younger ones and help promote them.
DG: So Roseanne, shortly after seeing the group, I wondered if men were allowed to join. I saw that a few had, so I felt safe to go ahead and join. I hope you don’t mind.
RB: Well, that’s great. We want men in it. I hate to be the one that admits that the men know a lot more than us women, but in some cases they certainly do. They’ve been around this industry a lot longer than us women, and we’re going to take it by storm though.
DG: Ellen, how about you? You’re ok with men being members of the Women in Heat Treat group?
EC: It’s open to both women and men and anyone seeking to develop all aspects of their career advancement and professional development. I think that the ultimate goal is to increase the number of women employed in the heat treat industry. I think that if we work together, both men and women, we can definitely make that mission happen.
DG: How has the response been to-date? Have you had some heat treat women joining?
RB: There have been many already. And it looks like it’s growing pretty rapidly already. To name names, there is Maryann Dickman, who has ANS. The Advanced Nitriding Solutions facility is not like an old fashioned heat treat facility, it is as clean and as pristine as you can imagine, all done in flowers and white leather and purple and it is beautiful. I think that’s where we’re going to see things going. I don’t think these old dark, lit, dirt floor heat treaters are going to be around much longer with the green affiliations that these companies are doing. They don’t want ammonia on their floors, or what have you. I think you’re going to be seeing the heat treat company of the future more and more.
There is also Christy from Stanton Industries, who is so much a woman and beautiful. She has a stocking facility right here in Columbus and she stocks vacuum pump parts right in her facility. Whatever she could do to be involved, she is so into it. We have people from Euclid Heat Treating Co., Diedra is the daughter or granddaughter, and she is very involved and is involved in the heat treat society. There are quite a few really great women that we’re going to bring all together and hopefully kick off the whole thing. I’m hoping some kind of gala at IMAT, which is in September. We’re going to have a party, that’s for sure.
DG: So what are your future plans?
RB: We hope that the interest is grand and that we turn it into an association. It could be an international association. I’m all for reaching out to students. I love mentoring the younger people. Many women go into engineering, but then it seems like they don’t stick with it for whatever reason of their own. Maybe they stop to have children, or whatever, but we want to give them some kind of platform where they can reenter the industry or not leave it at all. We’re kind of here as a support group, and women have been known to have support groups for just about everything. Now we have one for heat treat.
EC: We’re definitely going to stay focused on LinkedIn. I think it’s a really great tool for networking and expanding communication. Roseanne is very involved with ASM, and there is a show coming up in the Fall. We have talked about setting up a program there for women in heat treat or women in materials and just having a group there that gets together and again, just seeing where it goes. I don’t know if there is going to be a ton of interest. I hope there is, and I think there will be. We’re going to just keep trucking away and see what happens.
DG: Thank you ladies. I might mention that Heat Treat Today 40 under 40 classes for the last two years have had a solid representation of young women. This might be a good time to remind everyone that nominations for the 2020 class of 40 under 40 are now open at www.heattreattoday.com/40under40nominate, so please feel free to nominate any young women, or men, you feel are worthy.
To find other Heat Treat Radio episodes, go to www.heattreattoday.com/radio and look in the list of Heat Treat Radio episodes listed.
