Rachael Markinson, a network operations center manager for Charter Communications in Texas, has been named as the 2020 recipient of the Catherine Oakes Memorial Leadership Scholarship for Women, the SCTE Foundation announced on June 23.
Markinson has been awarded a grant of $3,500 to attend the Women in Cable Telecommunication (WICT) EDS: Executive Leadership Presence workshop to be held later this year. The workshop, part of WICT’s Executive Development Series, is designed to help mid-career cable professionals to develop leadership presence as a means to inspire confidence, engage and influence others, and maintain productivity while increasing visibility and career mobility.
“Training that could help improve my leadership presence and teach me new ways to approach issues would be a tremendous help not only for me but for my entire department,” said Markinson. “I look forward to participating in the workshop and sharing what I learn with my peers.”
Markinson’s application was among those that were reviewed by past recipients of the Women in Technology Award that is presented annually by the Society of Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) and its global arm, the International Society of Broadband Experts (ISBE), Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT) and Cablefax.
Markinson has worked in cable her entire career, rising from a billing representative in 2005 to customer care supervisor before making the shift to network operations technician and later network operations supervisor in 2014. She was promoted to her current position in 2017 and has oversight of the network and critical infrastructure servicing Charter’s residential and small-to-medium business customers nationally.
She is a WICT Ambassador Committee member and has been a part of the WICT Inspire Mentorship Program as a mentee in 2019 and currently as a mentor. In 2019 she was awarded WICT’s Dru Strance Scholarship to attend the EDS: Leading with Power and Authenticity workshop.
“Rachael has displayed unparalleled drive in the areas of self-improvement and professional development," said Wayne Nitzke, director of Charter’s Austin, TX network operations center. “She has consistently taken it upon herself to seek out and complete a variety of development and leadership programs. Not only has she completed the programs, but she also has been able to put the lessons and concepts learned to practical use in her daily roles.”
The Oakes Scholarship was created to honor the senior vice president, operations for SCTE•ISBE who passed away suddenly in 2013. The scholarship is funded entirely by donations earmarked specifically for it. Donations can be made on the Oakes Scholarship page of the SCTE Foundation website. Catherine Oakes was a leading voice for diversity and inclusion in the cable engineering and operations workforce and was instrumental in the creation of Women’s TechConnect, a mentoring program for women technologists that is a joint initiative of SCTE•ISBE and WICT. The 2019 recipient was Tia Lopez, a network operations supervisor for Comcast in Georgia.
The SCTE Foundation is intended to nurture the career skills, opportunities and alliances that build and enable a diverse workforce to positively impact the communities cable serves. Notably to increase the technical, business and leadership skills of the telecommunications engineering workforce, promote technology and engineering in the early stages of education, attract and recruit women and minorities into an engineering career, and underpin cable workforce support for essential and emergency needs.
More can be found at http://foundation.scte.org.