Statistics reflect what leaders like Yogini Parkhi know from experience. At a key moment in many girls’ lives, they’re nudged away from interests like math and science. “I know it happened to me growing up in India,” says Parkhi, the engineering leader for GE Vernova’s Grid OS Data Fabric and Connect business. She saw the same thing happen with her daughter years later in the States. “When she was 10 she could solve a Rubik’s Cube in 50 seconds,” Parkhi recalls.

This past May, 12 U.S. military veterans joined forces to carry an American flag 3,000 miles from San Diego to Washington, D.C. Team Red, White & Blue completed the Old Glory Ultra Relay in a record time of less than 17 days, raising more than $1 million for the cause of veterans’ health and wellness. One of those dozen men and women was Jordan Buck, an Army vet and steelworker in lean operations at GE Vernova’s manufacturing facility in Schenectady, New York.

Give Jackie Chimiak an unprecedented challenge and she’ll find a way to meet it.

Veena P. has learned in her 14 years at GE Vernova that earning patent recognition for her inventions isn’t a matter of waiting for lightning to strike. Instead, the technology manager in electrical systems at GE Vernova’s Advanced Research Center in Bengaluru, India, has developed a systematic process that has helped her successfully register 30 patent applications so far, with more in the works all the time. Her innovations support GE Vernova’s mission to accelerate the energy transition, making power systems more efficient and reliable.

When Kassy Hart was a teenager, she thought the life of an engineer was a bit like a newspaper cartoon she used to read. “You’re just sitting at a desk not talking to anyone, and this boss will yell at you for no reason,” says Hart, who is now a data center and hydrogen commercialization manager at GE Vernova. “That was before I got to design something.”

Growing up near the shores of Lake Michigan in the 1990s, Lisa Berry didn’t harbor engineering ambitions. But everything changed when she joined her high school’s robotics group. “My brother had been a member, and it looked pretty cool,” remembers Berry, who is now GE Vernova’s decarbonization and data center technology director for the Americas. One of the coolest things was the chance to learn from one of the program’s founders, Natalie Lowell, a local manufacturing engineer who mentored the budding roboticists.

How does a rock climber from Chile wind up working in America’s intellectual capital, Cambridge, Massachusetts? For Matias Opazo, a pivotal meeting last year with GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik sparked the beginning of a new career chapter.

The scene: northwest Germany. A quiet farm. Enter a university student with a question that would shape her future. “Hey, when are you getting a wind turbine?”

It was a casual moment, but for Julia Vey, then an apprentice at GE Vernova in nearby Salzbergen, it planted a seed. Back in the early 2000s, wind power was still small-scale, and large turbines were rare. But Julia was fascinated — and determined to be part of what she sensed was coming.