The Magazine of IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu October 2017 - 30

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Emerging Technologies Expert Nathalie Gosset
Shares Career Highs & Lows in New WIE E-book
By Helen Horwitz
If you were to ask Nathalie Gosset what is on her career
dashboard, the first word she would use is "volunteer."
That's because this Southern Californian believes being
an IEEE volunteer has been as valuable to her career
trajectory as the jobs she has had. "The time I've spent
volunteering for technical professional societies after my
work day has ended has been the number one booster
for my professional advancement," she says.
After joining IEEE in 1989, Gosset quickly discovered
that raising her hand brought many volunteer
opportunities--with both the IEEE Buenaventura Section
and several technical societies, especially the IEEE
Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society and the
IEEE Communications Society.
Gosset's 30-year career as an engineer has centered on
emerging technologies, and her achievements built her
reputation as a highly respected technology innovator.
Most recently, she was Senior Director of Marketing and
Technology Innovation at the Alfred E. Mann Institute
for Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern
California, for the past 12 years.
How she developed her impressive career, as well as
her encounter with workplace sexual harassment, is the
subject of the newest volume in the award-winning IEEE
Women in Engineering (WIE) e-book series. Vignettes of
Discovery and Growth: The Journey of a 21st Century
Female Engineer, by Nathalie Gosset, is the 16th work
in the series.
In her e-book, Gosset recalls how, at a very early age, she
processed and learned the math lessons her engineer
father was teaching her. She writes that she actually saw
shapes driven by arrangements that mirror the logic of
mathematical principles.
"At an early age, I could solve problems in these
imaginary worlds much faster than the traditional way,"
she writes. "As a result, I was acknowledged as a solid
student in math."
The author is from the village of Danjoutin, in the Alsace
Lorraine region of France. After five years of study in Paris,
30

and receiving her BSEE engineering degree, she wanted
to study further--in the United States. But obtaining
the needed $15,000 for tuition and expenses at the
University of Colorado, where she had been accepted
to work toward a Master's in telecommunications, was
an enormous problem. Gosset visited five banks in the
Danjoutin area for a loan, but without her skeptical
parents' signatures, she was turned down. Then, during
a second round of bank visits, one officer agreed to the
loan, with no collateral. "Instead," she says, "he wanted
me to write to him once a month about my progress."
The author faithfully complied, and as soon as she
graduated and started working, she regularly wired funds
until the loan was repaid. "The banker's faith in me was
a life lesson in trust, and inspired me to pay it forward,"
she says.
Her career took off with her first supervisory position
at Alcatel and eventually included Sabeus, where she
was vice president of engineering. Along the way, she
acquired critical leadership lessons, such as not being
afraid to have individuals on her technical teams who
had more experience and expertise, and thus earned
more, than she did. "If you do not work with the best,
you will clip your own ability to learn and to help your
team to succeed," she quotes her own manager at the
time.
In a chapter titled, with some irony, "The Best Job I
Ever Had," Natalie Gosset relates how she joined the
Alfred Mann Institute (AMI) for Biomedical Engineering
at the University of Southern California. Leveraging her
technical and business knowledge, she advanced to
Senior Director of Marketing and Technology Innovation
Evaluation. In this role, she introduced many hundreds
of physicians and researchers who wanted to share their
product ideas, to AMI, then organized the studies to
determine whether a new concept was suitable for the
marketplace.
In this chapter, Gosset describes how the sexual
discrimination and harassment she experienced on the
job affected her, and the high price that she ultimately
paid when she spoke up. The author lost both her job
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Magazine of IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu October 2017
