Meet Corlis Murray, the Senior Vice President of Quality, Regulatory, and Engineering Services at Abbott Labs. Throughout her almost 30-year career she has been an advocate for increasing diversity in STEM and bridging the gender gap. Seven years ago, she founded a high school STEM internship at her company for underrepresented students to expose them to engineering. Mentoring students at a young age is critical and she encourages other companies to do the same.
Above she is pictured with her 7-year old granddaughter after answering a few of her career questions. In reflection, Corlis said, “We still have far to go to bring women and minorities into STEM professions, but I find it comforting to know that my granddaughter’s example of an engineer is a Black woman.”
“I’m one of the only African American women I know of who is a top engineer at a Fortune 500 company. I oversee engineering and a $400 million budget at a company with 99,000 employees in more than 150 countries.”
“Still, the lack of representation of women and minorities in STEM is stubbornly persistent. With the world’s population made up of half men and half women, just 15 to 25 percent of people working in STEM are women, and only 1 in 7 engineers is a woman. And just 1 in 50 is an African American woman.”
“The issue is not a lack of interest or desire. The problem is that many young women and minorities with an aptitude for math and science never explore related fields and never convert to working in them, because they are not exposed or encouraged in a way that helps them see what could be possible.”
Corlis Murray
During my college summer internship at Abbott, I remember being so excited to meet Corlis at the Abbott House. The fact that she was a Black woman AND a Mechanical Engineer, who raised in the ranks to the highest executive level, was so inspiring. We don’t always get a chance to see the great things women of color are achieving, so it’s important for us to highlight those that are STEMpowered.
