Cummins President: Visibility Key for Women in Leadership
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowJennifer Rumsey is making history in her hometown of Columbus at the company where she started as an intern. She is the first woman to serve as president and chief operating officer at Cummins Inc. (NYSE: CMI), a role she began just this month. Rumsey, who was also the first female chief technical officer at Cummins, says it is important for women to see other women in leadership positions, regardless of their chosen industry.
“You need to see others that look like you that give you confidence that you, too, can be in those positions and so I’m proud to have the opportunity to continue to raise that ceiling,” said Rumsey.
Rumsey talked about her time at Cummins and being a woman in a traditionally male-dominated industry in a special all women’s edition of Inside INdiana Business with Gerry Dick.
“I have had to get comfortable with the fact that I’m often in settings where there’s not necessarily someone that looks like me,” said Rumsey. “I had enough role models and strong male supporters that I really felt confident in what I was doing and was able to overcome what, at times, was bias that existed around me in situations where there were only other men.”
Rumsey earned an engineering degree from Purdue University and conducted graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before landing her first job at a startup on the east coast and later returning home to work at Cummins.
“I’d worked as an intern at Cummins while I was at Purdue and really had experienced the culture of the company, which resonated with what was important to me, and knew that I would have an opportunity to work on technologies that reduced the environmental impacts of diesel engines. So I spent much of my early career at Cummins doing just that.”
Rumsey says Cummins continues work to advance traditional combustion engines, as well as invest in technologies of the future. She says further driving technology advancement will be a key part of the future of the company.
Inside INdiana Business Reporter Wes Mills contributed to this story.