March/April 2006
For ISRI’s new Women’s Council, the best measure of success, its leaders say, will be when it can go out of business.
By Rachel H. Pollack
For years, Kim Wallace worked as a quality manager on the manufacturing side of Wise Alloys LLC, an aluminum recycler and can sheet producer in Muscle Shoals, Ala. Recently, the company promoted her to scrap buyer, a position that requires much more interaction with other people in the industry. She soon realized that few other women are in her line of work.
“When I first got into [the commercial] side of the business, I was really reluctant,” Wallace says. “I thought, do I really want to do this?” She looked for women mentors to find out “how they survived working in such a male-dominated industry.” At ReMA meetings, the women she met gave her “the insight that women can do this, that we can be good at it.”
One goal of ISRI’s new Women’s Council is to make it easier for women to reach that conclusion.
“Women are entering into the waste and recycling industries in growing numbers,” Wallace says. By bringing them together to network, share ideas, and discuss common issues, she hopes the council will “help women learn the industry, learn the association, and learn the opportunities that are out there.”
Overcoming Adversity
Women say they’re more accepted in the scrap industry now than in the past, when men often assumed they were secretaries or wives of the “real” professionals. In the past few decades, women have made huge strides, establishing themselves as managers, owners, and ReMA leaders. Women’s Council Chair Karen Strelitz, executive vice president and treasurer of California Metal-X (Los Angeles), says when she started in the business 30 years ago, few women headed their own recycling companies. “Now there are more of us,” she notes, “and we’re notably represented in high-powered positions—CEOs, presidents—in a diverse group of metals and products.”
Women say they have more of a voice in their companies and in the industry as well. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had anybody not take me seriously or not at least listen to what I have to say,” says Lois Young, who’s responsible for recycling services for Skagit River Steel & Recycling Inc. (Burlington, Wash.) and president of ISRI’s Pacific Northwest Chapter.
Even with such progress, “these industries aren’t easy to be in, being a woman,” says Ellen Harvey, executive vice president of corporate education and public relations for E.L. Harvey & Sons Inc. (Westborough, Mass.). “I don’t know how to put it any more bluntly than that.” Young says people often don’t understand the struggles many women have faced to achieve success. “It takes really strong women to be in the industry right now,” she says. “I’d like to see it open more to all women, whether they’re really strong or not.”
First Steps
In 2003, several male and female ReMA members approached President Robin Wiener and other staff members seeking a forum to discuss women’s interests and continuing challenges. In response, the ReMA board approved the establishment of a women’s council at its winter 2003 meeting. The council’s first meeting, at the 2004 convention, attracted about 60 women. “Talking around the room, we realized, ‘Look at all the talent we have here. We can make this work because each individual has so much to offer,’” Strelitz says.
Through a series of calls and meetings, the council formulated a mission statement: “to represent the diversity of all members of ReMA and provide opportunities for networking, education, and discussion of issues of interest and concern to those engaged in all aspects of the recycling industry.” Note that there’s nothing in the mission statement specifically about women. That was intentional, Strelitz says. “Our members don’t want to be segregated from ISRI.” The council’s meetings and discussions are open to everyone, she emphasizes.
One of the council’s first tasks was to survey the ReMA membership to gauge interest in the council and find out what else the association could do for women. The September 2004 survey garnered some new interest—most of the more than 90 respondents were not previous Women’s Council participants—and it generated several ideas for industry training and professional development topics that might interest both men and women.
The council implemented one such idea at the 2005 convention when it hosted a two-part workshop on generational differences in the workplace. “Feedback on that was wonderful,” Strelitz says. In addition, despite little publicity, the council’s reception at the convention drew about 30 people.
Last fall, the Women’s Council established a listserv for the online discussion of scrap recycling issues. (To join, go to www.isri2.org/womenslist.) The listserv can benefit both men and women, notes Nini Krever, president of Traders International Corp. (Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.) and an ReMA director-at-large. “Many members of the association can’t travel because of the size of their businesses, for financial reasons, or because no one lets them out of the office,” she says. “Meeting other people online who do the same thing is a way to share information and communicate.” Recently council leaders began posting a new question or topic each month to stimulate discussion.
At ISRI’s convention this April, the Women’s Council will host a joint reception with the Women’s Council of the Environmental Industry Associations, which will be in Las Vegas for WasteExpo that same week. The reception will be 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 5, at ISRI’s convention hotel, the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino. “I’m looking forward to all these women getting together to pool their energy and resources. It should be a great, innovative experience,” says Harvey, who has chaired EIA’s Women’s Council, as her company works in both waste and recycling.
Most recently the council formed a small steering committee to guide further activity.
Going Forward
Women involved in the council say they see it largely as a vehicle for networking, mentoring, and giving women a comfortable entry point into the industry and the association. “It’s very intimidating to walk into meetings and be the only woman there,” as she was for many years, says Vonna Cloninger, CEO of Biltmore Iron & Metal Co. (Asheville, N.C.). Women’s Council meetings can be “a place that’s not quite as intimidating,” she notes.
“Belonging to a women’s council can help open doors that might otherwise be difficult to open,” says Krever, who speaks from experience: She launched the National Association of Paperstock Women in 1988. She could call people in the NAPW directory, introduce herself, and use that initial contact to get access to the person she needed to reach, she says. “It could be the same with the Women’s Council.”
The council has already increased women’s visibility, Wallace says. There are more women in scrap recycling every year, “but when they’re a few small fish in a great big sea, you don’t see them as much as when you bring all of them into the same pool. When we designed the Women’s Council, it pulled us all together,” she says.
“That for me is the best thing” about the council, Cloninger says, “to walk into a room and see all these women.”
Participants also hope the council can encourage more women to enter and advance in the industry. Young says she and other women who have succeeded in the business “can help women who are a little bit traditional and soft-spoken, who have great ideas but are afraid to put them forth, to let them know they really have some support.” Similarly, Wallace says, “there are a lot of young women, the generations that are behind me, who are very interested in this industry.” A women’s council can give them “the opportunity to get educated, have mentors, and grow; to learn the skill sets of the women who have been doing this for years.
“Our goal is to help educate the women in the business and take them to executive levels,” Wallace says. “That’s where we’re all looking to go—to the next level, to executive positions, within our companies.”
All in all, Harvey says, “a women’s council needs to work for the professional advancement of women through meaningful and useful education, assistance, support, and mentoring to help women see the opportunities out there and then to help them go after those opportunities. If you touch on all those aspects, you are going to meet the needs of women.”
The Bigger Picture
The Women’s Council also can benefit the rest of ReMA and the scrap recycling industry, participants say. “In a time when the industry is facing labor shortages and the association is facing challenges of finding people available to volunteer, we need to tap every available resource,” Wiener says. “Women are a huge resource for the industry and the association.”
“Women have so many skills and talents that in the past have not been utilized to their fullest potential,” Harvey adds. “I think these councils help make that happen, and that makes them worthwhile to companies and their industries—to bring these talents, these ideas, this creativity into the businesses and into the industries in which [women] work.”
Even so, the ultimate goal is not to develop a big, strong Women’s Council, Wiener says, but to integrate women into ReMA to such an extent that the council puts itself out of business. She draws a parallel to ISRI’s former New Executives Council. “Some people are not comfortable jumping right in” to participation in the association, she says, thus the New Executives Council gave them a place to get started. She hopes the Women’s Council will do the same.
“It’s not going to be a clique and it’s not going to be a ‘women’s thing’ to separate us from the association,” Wallace says. “We’re really trying to walk side by side, men and women alike, to grow this industry as a whole.”
To join the Women’s Council, contact ReMA President Robin Wiener at robinwiener@isri.org or 202/662-8512.
Rachel H. Pollack is editor of Scrap.
For ISRI’s new Women’s Council, the best measure of success, its leaders say, will be when it can go out of business.