How can the standards community actively engage and recruit the next generation of professionals? That question emerged during Standards at the Speed of Innovation: A Fireside Chat with Standards CEOs, held during the recent ANSI Innovation Summit in Denver. The five SDO leaders on stage spoke about the urgent need to bring younger professionals into the standards world—not just to fill seats, but to genuinely empower them. While new talent brings skills and a native fluency with technology that long-time standards professionals can lack or fall behind on, organizations need to prepare the pipeline—often as early as high school.
That shift is already underway, according to Susan Miller, president and CEO of the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS). Companies are increasingly moving away from maintaining dedicated in-house standards departments, she observed. But the subject-matter experts still showing up to committees are, by default, more likely to be technology-native—bringing that fluency organically. “And that’s a good thing,” Miller said.
ANSI and its members are placing strong emphasis on expanding resources and encouraging broader, more diverse participation across the standardization community. Here are some highlights:
Hands-On Learning, Built into the Design Process
Through SAE International’s Collegiate Design Series, student engineers design and build everything from race cars to dune buggies to remote-controlled autonomous aircraft—learning hands-on skills like welding along the way—then compete with them. As Peter Doty, interim COO and EVP, SAE International, explained during the panel, standards use is woven directly into the design process, giving students a firsthand understanding of how standards function from concept to completion. That early exposure pays dividends downstream: Doty pointed to SpaceX’s engineering ranks, which have publicly credited Formula SAE programs like the one at Cornell as a training ground. Students who learn to design with standards, he noted, tend to bring that practice back into industry—and eventually into standards work themselves.
Mentorship as a Pipeline to Leadership
ASTM International’s Emerging Professionals Program provides opportunities for new members to receive leadership training, attend professional development workshops, participate in technical committee meetings alongside a mentor, and receive financial support for relevant travel and accommodations. According to Andrew Kireta, president of ASTM International, the program has graduated more than 400 emerging professionals over the past ten years. Some now sit on ASTM’s board of directors, and all have reached leadership committee positions. “Our goal there is to get them up to speed, active, and understanding the process as fast as possible, but become leaders as fast as possible, so that they’re empowered to change how a committee thinks, how the committee works,” he said. ASTM also hosts around a dozen summer interns and participates in the Washington Internships for Students of Engineering (WISE) program, giving students early, hands-on exposure to the standards realm.
For the International Code Council (ICC), early engagement takes shape through an online community where members across all experience levels connect and learn from one another, as well as through a dedicated Emerging Leaders Membership Council for young professionals entering the field. This group plays a role in governing the code development process and weighing in on code changes, and its members are also tapped for focus-group work on IT projects, bringing a user’s perspective to those efforts. The Council pairs emerging members with mentors in what CEO John Belcik described as an interplay between generations—conversations that matter because the work they do ultimately keeps people safe across the country. Through ICC’s mentorship initiative, emerging professionals can attend its annual business meeting to sit in on board meetings, interact with staff, and attend code hearings, giving them a firsthand view of the organization’s code development work.
New Talent from Multiple Sources
UL Standards & Engagement is applying that same rethinking within its own ranks. President and CEO Jeff Marootian pointed to the significant new talent joining the organization, and ULSE is working to channel that energy into its technical committees—not just its staff roles—by bringing newer voices into the standards development process. ULSE, together with UL Research Institutes, is also an employer partner in the GEM Fellowship program, which offers graduate students in science and engineering full tuition and paid summer research placements with participating organizations.
These are just a few of the ways the panelists’ organizations are investing in the next generation. ANSI, which convened the discussion, runs several programs of its own aimed at the same goal.
ANSI Programs for Students and Emerging Professionals
Through its Committee on Education, ANSI coordinates a Request a Speaker on Standards program, open to professors and instructors at any U.S. post-secondary institution. The program pairs faculty and their students with subject-matter experts who illustrate how standards shape a given technology, field, or sector. ANSI also hosts an annual Student Paper Competition, now in its fifteenth year, which challenges high school and college students to research and write about the impact of standards on everyday life—from technology and safety to infrastructure and communication—with cash prizes awarded to top entries.
Continue the conversation with us in person at ANSI’s Standards Education Workshop on December 9 in Washington, DC. The workshop will bring together standards-setting organizations, industry leaders, academic institutions, educators, and government stakeholders to shape university-level standards education, share models that are working, and map career pathways for students entering the field.
On the international side, the U.S. National Committee (USNC) to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), a committee of ANSI, runs a Young Professional Competition that offers emerging professionals the opportunity to attend the annual IEC Young Professionals (YP) Workshop—a career-defining experience designed to bring together emerging industry professionals to participate effectively in global standardization activities.
Is your organization empowering young talent in standards? Tell us about it. ANSI is looking to spotlight more examples in its ongoing series.
Read related links and news:
ANSI training courses and webinars
Creating a Brighter Future: Supporting the Next Generation of Standards Professionals
ANSI’s SDO Fireside Chat and Standards Lab Focus on Standards Development at the Speed of Innovation