By Laura Harcourt
Cathy Tilton is Chief Technologist for Biometrics at
CSRA. She has over 30 yearsof technology
development and management experience including systems architecture/engineering,
system integration & test, and project management in both government and
commercial environments covering a broad range of applications. Professionally, she is best known as a
subject matter expert on biometrics and biometric standards, having served as
the US head of delegation to ISO on this topic and industry advisor to Purdue’s
biometrics program. Personally, she is
active in her church and community. She
is a former Army officer with degrees in Systems and Nuclear Engineering.
Today, Cathy speaks with us about:
The project
she’s most proud of:
I’ve been blessed to have a lot of interesting
projects…right now, I’m working on applying technology to child sexual
exploitation. Being able to make a difference in that area, I think, is really
rewarding.
The best
manager she’s known:
I had a manager early in my career that made a
difference for me. On the outside, he was very gruff, and, you know, not your
warm, fuzzy kind of manager, but he really gave me a lot of opportunities. I
remember I was working on my Masters degree, down to writing the thesis, and I
was really having trouble finding the time to do it. I thought I’d have to take
a leave of absence to finish it – I was working sixty hours a week or more –
and I went in to tell him I was going to take a month or two off to do this,
and – like I said, he was kind of a gruff guy – he came back and told me that
because my thesis was related to work, he’d put me on a special project which
would allow me to work on my thesis as my job. It just blew me away, the last
thing I expected him to say when I walked in his office was “we’re gonna
support you on that.” It took me six years to finish my Masters, working
full-time, with kids, and I didn’t want to stumble at the finish line.
Her favorite
travel adventures:
I was really fortunate that for years I got to head
the U.S. delegation to ISO (International Organization for Standardization).
They have a subcommittee on biometrics, and I headed the U.S. delegation to
that subcommittee for, oh, gosh, twelve years. They would meet every six months
in a different country. Some places were more interesting than others, you
know, you went with whatever country offered to host the meeting, but it not
only gave me the opportunity to see those countries, but to interact over the
years with people from the different countries, and get their perspectives and
get to know them. I have friends now in Korea, and the U.K., and Germany, who I
still keep in touch with from doing that.
It was funny, at the first meeting where I came in
as head of the U.S. delegation – I didn’t find this out until a couple years
later – one of the guys on the U.S. delegation came to me and told me about how
one of other heads said to him: “Why does the U.S. have a woman head of
delegation?” He was surprised they asked that question and said, “Well, I think
it’s because she’s the most qualified!”
Cultural
differences:
I think having so much international travel broadens
me, and helps me to be a lot more accepting of other people, the way they think
and where they’re coming from. It doesn’t mean you have to agree with
everything, but you can at least understand better, and sometimes you just
agree to disagree about certain things.
On challenges
for women in the workplace:
I never saw myself that way…I came into the
workplace from the Army, and engineering school, where there wasn’t a lot of
women, so I came into my career with those previous steps. I saw myself just
like everybody else…I think if you have confidence in yourself, you can
overcome a lot of the challenges that you have.
