Caroline Reda, president and CEO of GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, didn’t set out on the career path she has now.

With an education in computer science and industrial engineering, she spent the first phase of her work on honing her skills and building expertise. As her credibility grew, so did the leadership opportunities.

“I’ve been in GE over 30 years now. One of the things that have always helped me in GE was having people that I could look up to as role models, having folks that I could talk to … mentors or sponsors as I make decision on my career path,” said Reda, who now is in charge of leading a $1 billion nuclear business with 3,000 employees around the world – 2,000 of them locally. “I think you’ve got to be true to who you are in your style and how you operate.”

That outlook has placed her in a select group for the Wilmington-market. While many of the area’s largest employers have women counted among their top executive teams and department managers, Reda is one of a few female heads of a major local organization.

Michele Holbrook, manager of Corning’s fiber optic plant in Wilmington, is another.

Like Reda, she credited her career growth in part to the values of the company she works for.

“It invests in employees, develops women in leadership positions and lets me do the things I love  to do,” Holbrook said about Corning in a previous interview with the Greater Wilmington Business Journal.

Women’s leadership issues have received increased attention on the national level in recent years.

In 2013, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg released her book “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead” that looked at why women aren’t filling more top positions and encouraged them to grab onto opportunities for their career development.

It went on to sell 2.25 million copies and spawned a nonprofit group to extend the discussion.

It also lead to plenty of backlash and debate over whether the approach of digging in to navigate the corporate world was the best approach for women workplace equity or personal fulfillment.

The discussion also has been renewed by the advent of social media, said Katie Peel, an associate professor at University of North Carolina Wilmington and director of the school’s Women’s Studies and Resource Center.

Peel pointed out that advocacy groups such as NOW and Ms. Magazine have brought up workplace topics for decades, but the ease of sharing articles and online discussions has prompted a new wave of attention.

“There’s still the salary gap. There’s still the idea of the glass ceiling even though people say we’re past that and women can do anything,” Peel said. “If you look at the numbers, women are still attaining that leadership position less frequently than male counterparts are.”

At GE Hitachi, while Reda said she doesn’t look at herself and say, “I’m the female leader of this company,” she recognizes that the landscape has changed during her career.

“It was probably tougher in the beginning as I first came into leadership roles,” she said. “I’d say that there were fewer role models back then and [less] ability to network within the company. Today, I’d say over the last 15 years that’s just changed dramatically. You have role models whether you go inside the company or go outside the company.”

GE Hitachi’s leadership staff is 40 percent female, Reda said, with the 10 women executives coming from a broad base of roles such as chief commercial officer and chief legal counsel.

The company has a large women’s network group that meets about professional development – with men are also invited, Reda said.

The company, she said, emphasizes diversity to find talent across the board.

“It’s really about finding the best talent. When I think about diversity, I think about diversity from the standpoint of finding people who have different experiences,” Reda said.

Officials with UNC Executive Development, which offers a women’s leadership development program as well as customized versions on the topic to companies, said they have seen a noticeable uptick in signups for their Women in Business program.

“We are serving a number of organizations specifically around leadership development for women, and we’re seeing a rise in popularity for that,” said Kip Kelly, who heads up the public programs for UNC Executive Development, part of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s business school.

The center several years ago conducted a survey developed by Percept Research and UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, to ask senior business leaders about women in leadership roles and perceived barriers to their advancement.

About half of the respondents – 48 percent – said they have seen the number of women in senior leadership positions increase over the past five years, while 15 percent believed it decreased.

Just 11 percent of the survey participants described their organizations as extremely effective in recruiting women executives, and 14 percent said their companies weren’t effective at all.

Percentage of women holding C-suite executive positions was low – 16 percent – according to survey responses.

“The percentage of women in upper management is significantly higher, but still around 1 in 4,” the report stated about the survey results.
 
Brunswick County manager Ann Hardy said she’s noticed an increase in leadership development interest among the female students she interacts with as a member of UNCW’s MPA Advisory Board.

“I think that give them hope. There’s a lot of diversity in the program,” Hardy said about the school’s master of public administration track.

In 2013, Hardy became the first female county manager in Brunswick County’s history. She said she was surprised by the attention that fact garnered.

“I had never really thought about it myself,” Hardy said about being a woman leader in her 20 years working in local government.

She said many of the leadership advice she shares, particularly with the MPA students, holds true whether they are male or female: be authentic with people, realize the importance of your decisions and how they can impact other’s lives and build personal equity.

“If you build equity in yourself through knowledge, skills, trainability, then you are an asset” with skills that you can take wherever you go, Hardy said.