Alumni spotlight
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Josee Tremblay, BSc (Mechanical Engineering)
Problem solving skills fuel long career in energy
Trailblazing from Alberta to Asia and back again
Schulich grad building a career, libraries across the world and inclusion everywhere
As a young woman, Josee Tremblay moved from Quebec to attend the University of Calgary, drawn by the university’s recognized mechanical engineering program as well as Alberta’s plentiful job opportunities that would let her work while going to school.
While the energy sector wasn’t on her radar initially—she thought she’d work in manufacturing back in Quebec—Tremblay spent the better part of three decades in progressively more senior roles in the industry in Calgary, Houston, Jakarta and St. John’s. “I definitely leveraged the foundation I had at the University of Calgary in all of these roles,” she says.
Even now in directorship roles, it’s key to approach new technical challenges in research and development, and clean energy ventures with a continuous learning mindset.
Josee Tremblay, BSc (Mechanical Engineering)
Launching her career in Alberta also immersed her in business, entrepreneurship and the art of taking a risk. “You see it, you live it and then you see what's possible,” she says. “Then you start thinking globally, and then the next thing you know, you go to Asia for four years.” As a senior asset manager for ConocoPhillips in Indonesia, Tremblay was responsible for large international delivery of energy with Singapore and Malaysia.
When not working, she and her family traveled extensively around Asia and were struck by the lack of access to books for children. The family helped build a library in Vietnam and fundraised for two libraries in Nepal after that country was hit by an earthquake. “It was phenomenal,” says Tremblay. “There's nothing like your five-year old singing ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes’ with 400 students in Vietnam. It was awesome.”
Tremblay’s commitment to building better communities is in full force back in Canada as well, chairing the Schulich Industry Advisory Council—providing advice and support on the faculty’s programs—as well as taking every chance she gets to identify and dismantle barriers for women and others to encourage diversity. “It’s a complex puzzle,” says Tremblay. “I think it's changing, but it's changing very slowly. We're taking two steps forward and one step back. We're missing so much of the intellectual/brain capacity if women aren’t at the table.”
A couple of years ago, Tremblay brought her wealth of experience to an international business consultancy, Strategic Decisions Group (SDG). She’s enjoying helping clients identify and employ best practices for making tough decisions amidst deep uncertainty. “I work with people with PhDs and masters, basically subject matter experts in the decision quality world,” she says. “It's both business and mathematically oriented subject matter.”
Regardless of the situation—from managing multinational energy supply, building libraries for kids in Asia, helping a company navigate a precarious situation or being a role model for diversity, Tremblay has always asked: “Who else do we need on the team to make the best possible pathway to success possible?” That crucial team member may not always be so easy to spot. “It's a societal project. It will take everyone to be aware and it will take education and awareness of where the biases are,” she says.
“We're going to succeed as a society by applying our best brains and developing them,” she says. "And that's what the Schulich School of Engineering is doing. It gave me the opportunity to go to places that I never imagined.”