To celebrate International Women’s Science Day, we’re sharing of the stories of female employees who do amazing work at our Paper Excellence mills. Our interview with Emily Sweeney.  

Emily Sweeney is a Process Engineer at our Meadow Lake Pulp Mill. She graduated from the University of New Brunswick with an Engineering degree in 2023.  Seven months ago, she moved to Saskatchewan to pursue the opportunity at Paper Excellence in Meadow Lake.

What is your workday like?

“Every day is different. It ranges from taking samples at the mill, testing in-process samples, analyzing data, and handling customer claims for the mill. I am currently working towards my green belt for Lean Six Sigma. It is a 10-month certificate program that teaches a process improvement strategy that seeks to eliminate inefficiencies in a company’s process flow by identifying the causes of waste or redundancy and developing solutions to address them.”

What do you love about your job?

“I love the variety of different things I get to do within this role. Since I am faced with different challenges, it allows me to learn new things all the time. I also get to interact with a lot of different people at the mills.”

What challenges do you face in your work because you’re a woman?

“When I was going into my engineering program in university, I was a little intimated by the stereotype of only males being engineers, and that women cannot be engineers. Turns out, there were a lot of other girls in the program, and they are all supportive of one another. Then, when I got my position here, I also was afraid coming into the Meadow Lake mill knowing it is a male dominant workplace.  This makes me push myself harder to prove that I can do what men can do. It betters me at the end of the day.”

What would you tell girls who are thinking about studying science?

“If that’s what you want to do, do it. Don’t let people tell you what you can or can’t do. You can be as good as any guy!”