Erin Cech

When Erin Cech was an undergraduate studying electrical engineering, she was sometimes only one of two or three women out of a class of 50. “Sexual identity,” she tells GO, “was virtually off the table as a topic of conversation inside or outside of classrooms.” The experience made her curious to know more about how sexual identity affected a person’s role in professional and academic communities. Today, she’s a sociologist at the University of Michigan and is known for her groundbreaking examinations into the systematic biases that LGBTQ individuals face in STEM fields. Her research was the first to document how implicit beliefs and cultural systems create a cycle of discrimination in professional settings, leaving many LGBTQ employees marginalized and often suffering both professionally and personally. Her decision to move away from engineering and into sociology was a result of her undergraduate experience, and the realization that, in order to both acknowledge and fix discrimination, empirical evidence was needed to prove such discrimination existed. “Researchers are only beginning to understand the myriad ways these disadvantages can manifest, and understanding them is the first step toward taking action to undermine them.” For Cech, the most rewarding part of her work is that it “allows me to give voice to the experiences of LGBTQ persons who might not be in a position to be able to stand up to supervisors, co-workers, or professions, and provides clear data to start conversations within organizations and institutions.” —RK