The Women in Missile Defense Luncheon kicked off the Space and Missile Defense Symposium at 11:30 on August 7, highlighting the achievements of and hurdles faced by women working in the male-dominated industry.

The panelists were Lynn Troy, Troy 7 President; Angela Rittenbach, CEO and President of Riverstone Solutions; and Janice Chen, Associate Director for U.S. Requirements and Capabilities, Huntsville Redstone Arsenal for Land and Air Defense Systems, Raytheon.

The panel discussed diversity as an asset to industry to be strived for, expanding the experiences and knowledge base that creates missile defense technology.

“Diversity is important all the time in every field out there, and I think that has to be with its best friends: competence, efficiency, grit. … We need diversity to be on the table of all the things that make this country great,” Chen said.

The panel also discussed the future of missile defense as they saw it.

“We have a very beautiful integrated layered missile defense with a very complex battle management and control system, but they [adversarial nations] got smart on us,” Troy said. “They’re using hypersonic weapons now; they’re using in-game maneuvering vehicles that the Keplerian physics that we built our ballistic missile defenses on don’t work on. So now we are having to evolve again. … We’ve got to figure out how to evolve those technologies to respond to the current threat.”

In terms of how women who have made their way in missile defense can “hold the door open” for women behind them that face the same struggles breaking into the field, Chen said that the current generation will not be able to see every advancement come to fruition, “But who will be? It’s that young kid that’s looking up going, ‘Oh, that’s, that could be me.’ It’s that young person that was just hired on. That’s not kind of an engineer, but that hasn’t really grown into her seat yet. Those are the people we need to be looking out for actively to go, ‘You’re the next one or could be. So let me pull you into the meeting.’”

The panel emphasized the importance of showing young girls that careers in missile defense are an option for them, whether that comes in the form of engineering, accounting, business, or jobs requiring a plethora of other skill sets.

Troy cited education work done by the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce that focuses on exposing high school freshmen to career opportunities as a local resource, “because if you don’t start until they’re ready to start college, they haven’t built the resume to qualify for the programs that they may want.”

HThe panel ended with Vicki Morris, Co-chair of the Women’s Business Council, challenging every attendee to network with one another and learn something new about five people, opening more career opportunities.

The presenting sponsor for the event was Bryant Bank and was supported by the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber. For more information, please visit hsvchamber.org/departments/small-business-events/wbc.