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Kidest Mimi Hailegiorghis |
Climbing a Ladder to the Stars
Kidest Mimi Hailegiorghis
March 2006
She who does not yet know how to walk, cannot climb a ladder.
—Ethiopian proverb
The lobby of the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel in Atlanta, Ga.,
teemed with Kidest Mimi Hailegiorghis' peers—women whose career
arcs, like hers, had brought them to one of the highest places of
honor in their profession, the Women of Color in Technology awards.
Describing the occasion some three months later, Hailegiorghis remembers
talking to a few of the other award winners and being impressed
by how far they had come.
"To listen to them describe what they have overcome to achieve
what they have was unbelievable," she says of the experience.
Those who heard Hailegiorghis' story almost certainly felt the
same way.
Without the 1974 coup that ended the four-decade rule of Haile
Selassie and installed a Marxist regime in her native Ethiopia,
Hailegiorghis (pronounced Hi-le-GOR-ghis) would probably still be
there. And it's unlikely that she would have chosen information
technology as a career; in the Addis Ababa of her youth, women were
generally expected to stay at home, leaving men as the providers.
Instead, Hailegiorghis made a fresh start in the U.S., overcame
formidable language and cultural barriers, embarked on an IT career
after having her interest whetted by an early-'80s IBM computer
her sister owned, and remade herself beyond anything she could have
imagined. Today, as a lead information systems engineer for the
Advanced Architecture Technologies and Solutions department in the
Center for Innovative Computing and Informatics at MITRE, she has
won widespread praise for her work ethic, technical mastery, and
skill at getting disparate groups to work together toward a common
goal.
"Mimi embraces values that are important to MITRE—knowledge
sharing, initiative, and continuous improvement," wrote Martha L.
Farinacci, manager of the Advanced Architecture Technologies and
Solutions department, in a letter nominating Hailegiorghis for the
Women of Color award. "She demonstrates the application of those
values in her daily work."
Hailegiorghis has put her experience in data warehousing and advanced
architecture technologies to work for a variety of customers since
she joined MITRE in 1999. One of her first major jobs was the Internal
Revenue Service (IRS) modernization project. She served as technical
lead on the IRS Customer Accounts Data Engine (CADE) project, which
was the cornerstone of the IRS modernization effort. She provided
technical analysis and oversight for the CADE project and made practical,
actionable suggestions in the areas of data transformation, configuration
management, and requirements tracing activities. For her IRS work,
Hailegiorghis received multiple awards for her work, including two
Center for Enterprise Modernization (CEM) Eagle Awards of Excellence
and awards of recognition and appreciation from the IRS.
Her MITRE horizons have steadily expanded since then. Early last
year, she became manager of the Architecture Sciences group in Advanced
Architecture Technologies and Solutions department in the company's
Washington Command, Control and Communications Center (WC3). She
manages a team of engineers working on combat simulation, data integration
for the Department of Defense and the intelligence community, and
biological threat surveillance. Hailegiorghis has also worked on
the U.S. Census Bureau's Integrated Disseminations System (IDS)
project, which is aimed at giving the public online access to Census
Bureau information and products. She served as the technical lead
in the development of the detailed design of the IDS "To-Be" technical
architecture.
Currently, Hailegiorghis is providing support for MITRE's Center
for Advanced Aviation Systems Development. She has taken on the
challenge of the Joint Planning & Development Office's effort
to create and carry out the design of an air transportation system
to meet the nation's needs in 2025.
"MITRE allows you to be diversified, and I think having this flexibility
and having the opportunity to work in various dimensions is key
for my growth," she says. "And the fact that you have knowledge
throughout the company that you can tap into, that's a value added
in being at MITRE. It's unbelievable, the amount of knowledge the
engineers here have."
Helping Colleagues Make a Good Start
But Hailegiorghis never forgot what it was like to get used to
a new environment. Drawing on her own experience, she developed
a mentoring program for new employees in her division to let them
know about corporate resources so they can better adapt to the company.
The program also reinforces the importance of knowledge sharing.
She has held focus group meetings with employees to get their suggestions
for improving the program and has helped implement mentoring programs
in other departments. In recognition of her achievements on this
program, she received MITRE's 2004 Knowledge Management and Trendsetter
Award.
"After being at MITRE for three months, I realized that there was
a need for a process to be in place for new hires," Hailegiorghis
says. "The mentoring program helps new hires so they have information
handy, and they know who to talk to, to help them get acclimated
into the MITRE environment."
While she's determined to help her coworkers get off on the right
foot, she's also become motivated to progress even further in her
own career. Noting that it was "an honor" to be nominated for and
receive the Women of Color Award for her work at MITRE, she says
that the award stoked her ambition.
Although she's come so far—crossing distances measured in
both miles and professional achievements—she says the stories
she heard from her fellow winners have inspired her to pursue her
doctorate when her children are older.
"Sitting there listening to their stories made me think, 'I want
to reach the highest levels,'" she says.
—by Russell Woolard
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