Engineering Empowerment

Heather Endre (from left), Julianna VenDouern, Jameka Sims, Shawn Lamb, Karisa Ely, Amber Paige, Kendall Wood, and Katie Bailey are shown above 

SHAWN LAMB knew from a young age that she loved science, and that early awareness propelled her to a career as a nuclear engineer.  

As a major in physics and chemistry at the University of Michigan, she found her niche in nuclear engineering and radiological sciences. “I took my first class, Nuclear Engineering 101, and was hooked,” Lamb says, who graduated as one of two women in her class. She furthered her education there with a master’s degree. 

Now, as both a scientist and mother, Lamb, along with other women in the STEM field, has  been working for the past sixteen years to plant the seeds of possibility for other young women. 

“We recognized that the pipeline of women in STEM career fields was heavily influenced in high school and college,” she says. “We wanted to influence girls sooner. If girls started taking math and science classes in middle school and continued to develop those skills in high school and college, they would have access to a variety of STEM career fields.” 

Lamb’s path to encouraging other women to join the field began through her work at GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GVH), where she is the general manager for fuels and digital engineering. Lamb leads her team in designing nuclear fuel, safety analysis, and digital solutions for operating advanced nuclear reactors. Joining GVH in 2004, Lamb held various positions while moving through areas of increasing responsibility on the team she now leads. She is also a member of the GE Vernova Hitachi Women’s Network, an all-inclusive group of nearly 300 women and men from engineering, finance, and commercial divisions.  

In 2009, Lamb and three of her coworkers started Girls in Technology (GIT), an annual summit targeting middle school girls in New Hanover County.  

“Our first year was a challenge on a roller coaster,” Lamb says. “We had a small budget and fifty girls.” Since then, the program has grown from cardstock and poster board supplies to commercially available Lego robotics. Attendance has doubled, expanding to Pender and Brunswick counties and several private schools, and the summit relocated from the Burney Center at the University of North Carolina Wilmington to The Harrelson Center. 

The 2025 GIT Summit, headlined SuperPowered, was organized by GVH Women’s Network members JULIANNA VENDOUERN, KARISA ELY, and AMBER PAIGE. Lamb, who led the initiative for the first six years, now serves as cheerleader and sponsor. While still chasing the original mission, the summits also aim to facilitate interactions between engineering career role models and students.  

“GIT enabled me to pay it forward by showing young girls that they can be creative and technical,” says Paige, a lead engineer in the mechanical analysis team. “I was always good at math and science when I was younger but wanted to do something creative. Technical careers seemed boring. A college outreach event opened my eyes to how interesting and creative engineering could be. I would never have considered a technical career path even though I was naturally talented at and enjoyed doing the skills needed for the job.” 

This year’s summit challenged girls to program robots to generate energy in a simulated nuclear power plant. Lamb’s eleven-year-old daughter, PHILIPPA “PIPPA” LAMB, was eligible to attend for the first time. “I got to work with people I’ve never met, and we learned how to code robots,” says Pippa. Inspired by her older brother, who has Down syndrome, she says she wants to become a geneticist, so “I could do cool chemistry and biology.” Pippa will join her school’s robotics team in January. 

“Hosting an event full of girl power brings me so much joy for what the future holds for these exceptional young women,” says VenDouern, a lead engineer for advanced applications engineering. 

For Ely, a field services supply planner, the biggest reward is watching the transformation that happens throughout the day. “When students first arrive, they’re quiet and a little unsure. But as the day unfolds, we hear laughter, cheering and see real teamwork,” she says. “This summit might be the moment a young girl realizes she belongs in STEM, that she’s capable, and there’s a whole world of possibilities waiting for her.” 

Paige says girls who attend GIT gain confidence with robotics and coding, public speaking, and the iterative process of failing and trying something new until they succeed. “It’s fun watching the switch click for girls as they tackle challenges in ways they may not have realized they could,” she says. 

Lamb says she is proud of the number of girls they’ve reached through GIT. “It makes me believe we are doing our part to show girls they can be anything they want to be,” she says. “It means a lot to me to share my love of engineering. It’s been a fulfilling journey.” 

To view more of photographer Aris Harding’s work, go to arisharding.com.

Want more WILMA? Click here to sign up for our WILMA newsletters and announcements.