Materials Performance is the world's most widely circulated magazine dedicated to corrosion prevention and control. MP provides information about the latest corrosion control technologies and practical applications for every industry and environment.
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56 OCTOBER 2017 MATERIALS PERFORMANCE NACE INTERNATIONAL: VOL. 56, NO. 10 VOLUNTEERS SPOTLIGHT NACE Volunteers in the Crowd L ucia Egas, an Ecuadorian chemical engineer, has more than 15 years of experience in chemical treatment for oil, water, and gas. Egas has been a NACE International member and volunteer for 12 years after helping organize her company's first NACE training course in Ecuador. She has been working with the Ecuadorian Section ever since. Volunteering with NACE has helped her with teamwork, Egas says. She believes this is a necessary skill, which she learned while volunteering with NACE, because technical, logistical, and commercial issues—although they seem to be very different—all require customer service and teamwork. Egas believes a perk of volunteering is that it's a great opportunity to meet wonderful people and gain relationships that are important for salespeople like herself. "I was a part of the first Leadership Training from NACE and I learned a lot of things related to being a more effec- tive leader during my regular tasks. A clear example is a new way to communicate with complex customers, she says." Most recently, Egas participated in a volunteer opportunity as an application reviewer for the NACE Leadership Program. Volunteer: Lucia Egas Employer: GTM Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador Professional Role in Corrosion: Designing and selling chemical treatment programs for oil production where corrosion control is one of the most important topics. At CORROSION 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, Egas volunteered to assist with NACE's very first Volunteer Day as it partnered with New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity. "It was a wonderful experience because in the morning, we (all of us vol- unteers) seemed to be so different from each other, but at the end of the day, we became a team working effectively together. The task was to do some arrangements in a house. There was live jazz music! I really enjoyed my time there." Egas is interested in working with kids and young people, specifically women, because she believes it is more difficult in Latin American countries for a female student rather than a male to study for technical careers like engineering. She says it is also difficult for women to get the same work opportunities and she would really like to talk about these problems. The impact, she notes, is that the new professional generation would include more talented women. Browse open volunteer opportunities at volunteer.nace.org.