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Comfortable in Discomfort: ASME Leader Bolsters Global Sustainability Efforts

March 8, 2023

In her role as a sustainability engineer, Iana Aranda has the responsibility of preparing the engineering workforce for good, social entrepreneurship and cross-sector partnerships.

Rehana Begg

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There’s no better way to celebrate International Women’s Day 2023 than to raise the profile of women going about their daily business and making a huge impact along the way.

With demand for sustainability and engineering executives on the rise, Iana Aranda, director of Engineering Global Development at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), fits the profile of a woman forging change.

In an interview with Machine Design, Aranda, who leads a team that operates at the intersection of engineering and sustainable development, discussed how she leverages her mechanical engineering expertise to support global sustainable development.

“I manage a portfolio of programs and platforms that advance the Sustainable Development Goals as envisaged by the United Nations,” said Aranda. “In terms of practical application, specifically [leverage] the engineering skill set and expertise to direct a diverse global workforce towards how they can participate, how they can contribute. We are really architecting new initiatives, new programs, developing the opportunities for these engineers to participate, get skilled in and how to contribute.”

Aranda said she is proud to lean in to ASME’s climate strategy and what the association is doing to advance solutions to the climate crisis. Her career accomplishments and successes along the way are palpable:

Aranda co-founded Engineering For Change (E4C), a platform that educates and activates the international technical workforce by providing resources and access to expertise to accelerate the development of solutions and infuse engineering into sustainable development.
She established a fee-for-service model and secured clients such as World Bank’s infoDev Climate unit, U.S. Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office and National Renewable Energy Lab, Siemens USA, Conservation X Labs and USAID, demonstrating program viability.
She also developed the strategy and refined the operational framework of ASME ISHOW, an accelerator benefiting more than 180 social enterprises advancing the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.

Looking to the future, Aranda said she hopes to build on her work and “apply the force of engineering and the community globally to advance innovative solutions and a new way of engineering those solutions to ensure that we improve quality of life for every single person on this planet.”

On International Women’s Day 2023 (#EmbraceEquity), we congratulate women like Aranda, and are proud to support a movement that drives gender parity and forges inclusive work cultures.

Keep the momentum going well beyond this celebratory day by checking back to view each of the four videos based on Aranda’s complete interview with Machine Design.

Bookmark this page for the latest series of Workers in Science & Engineering (WISE) webinars and to keep pace with an initiative that builds awareness about barriers facing equity-seeking groups in the engineering industry.