Norma Clayton
"I believe that we all have a moral and ethical responsibility to be compassionate and understanding, and to share our gifts, our talents, and our time in doing things to help others."
"I feel strongly about teaching kids to live their own dreams; they have to find things in life that they are passionate about."
"She used to tell me, 'It's your little red wagon; you can either push it or pull it."
Mentors ... Norma Clayton, Boeing vice president of Lean Manufacturing and Quality at Military Aircraft and Missile Systems, talks about them a lot. She believes they are critical to helping people make positive decisions as they grow up, choose a career, raise a family, and work their way to success.
"People need strong mentors, a good support system, to get through life," she says. "We still have to live our own dreams, and we have to work hard to make our own success. But good mentors can help us find the right way."
Clayton remembers growing up in Orange, N.J., where she had mentors who were there to say just the right thing, or set just the right example to spur her on. She also remembers being a young industrial engineer at a General Motors plant in Linden, N.J., where she had no one to turn to and had to stand alone against stiff challenges.
Because she remembers these things, Clayton takes time to be a mentor today to young people who aspire to be engineers or are in the early stages of their engineering or scientific careers.
It is one of the qualities about Norma Clayton that have earned her an important national honor. On Saturday, she will be in Baltimore, Md., to accept the 2000 Black Engineer of the Year Award in the category of Professional Achievement in Industry.
Clayton, along with 31 other award recipients, will be honored at the 14th annual Black Engineer of the Year Awards Conference hosted by U.S. Black Engineer and Information Technology magazine and The Council of Engineering Deans of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The awards recognize the achievements of the country's most successful African American engineers, scientists and technology leaders.
In the St. Louis area, Clayton fulfills the role of mentor as a wife, mother of two sons, and active participant in educational and church activities. She is a member of the Board of Regents of Linn State Technical College at Linn, Mo., and the Board of Trustees of the Academy of Science of St. Louis. She belongs to the YWCA Academy of Leaders and is the director of youth ministry at the First Missionary Baptist Church of Ballwin, Mo.
It's her way, she says, of giving something back to the community. "I believe that we all have a moral and ethical responsibility to be compassionate and understanding, and to share our gifts, our talents, and our time in doing things to help others," Clayton says. "This is one way in which we can make a positive difference in people's lives."
Certainly, there were those who did that for Clayton. The mentors in her life include an eighth-grade science teacher who kindled and nurtured her interest in science, a high-school drafting teacher who impressed upon her the importance of guidelines, a college adviser who helped her pull through a tough engineering program at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and her mother, who taught her the value of setting clear goals and hard work.
She credits them with helping her channel her talents, her will, and her energies into a highly successful engineering and business career. As the first African American and the first woman to be a senior manufacturing executive at A&M, Clayton knows first-hand the difficulties that young people face as they aspire to fulfill their aspirations.
"I feel strongly about teaching kids to live their own dreams," she says. "They have to find things in life that they are passionate about. The challenge we face, as parents and mentors, is to help them find the right way that will benefit them. They have to be able to focus on one thing in life."
For Clayton, that one thing was science. And it was an eighth-grade science teacher named Mr. Barton who gave her the spark. "He was a brilliant teacher who made science come alive," Clayton recalls. "And he looked at me, not as a female or as a member of a minority group, but as a human being in the larger sense. He's the one who inspired me to pursue science as a profession. I don't think I ever would've become an engineer if not for him."
And, Clayton asserts, she might not have had a clear direction in life if not for her mother, who worked her way up to a position in international business in the banking industry on Wall Street.
"My mom was the most influential person in my life," Clayton says. "She used to tell me, 'It's your little red wagon; you can either push it or pull it' and 'You have to know when to leave the party.' What she was telling me was that my success was up to me. There were no guarantees. I could only achieve my aspirations if I chose to work hard, set clear goals and focus my activities."
Today, Norma Clayton -- at work, at home and in the community -- is following her mother's advice. And proving that a mentor's words can have lasting value.
News Release: Boeing executive Norma Clayton to receive a Black Engineer of the Year Award