By Emma Lutjen, Associate Editor, EE World
Eugina Jordan is on a mission to bring women to the telecom stage, figuratively and literally.
One of the most valuable skills is the capacity to be inspired or to inspire others — Eugina Jordan, currently chief marketing officer at Telecom Infra Project (TIP), has the unique ability to do both. Eugina was born in Russia, where she earned a master’s degree in teaching before moving to Canada to receive her undergraduate in computers. After earning this degree, she moved to America with her ex-husband who refused to let her learn how to drive. By the time she threatened to leave him unless he taught her to drive, it was the 2001 telecom crash, meaning despite her newfound mobility there were few jobs available. This made it exceedingly difficult to find a job where she wasn’t significantly overqualified. She applied for positions such as receptionist, secretary, and data analyst. Add to that she was also financially responsible for her mother back in Canada, and times were surely stressful, but this did not stop her.
The first company to see Eugina’s potential was Starent Networks, a leading telecom company at the time. Although Eugina was overqualified for the position, the Starent CEO saw what Eugina called “fire in [her] belly” pushing her to make her career. As she relayed to us, he was “looking for people to help him build the company and he knew I would be able to do it. I became his receptionist, I became his chief of staff, and then I moved into marketing.” This was what Eugina called “falling into Telecom,” but she also considered this her “shot at telecom, and like Hamilton said ‘I’m not throwing away my shot.’”
To prove this, she began learning. Staying with Starent through its acquisition by Cisco in 2009, Eugina learned about virtual network cores, later working on optical Wi-Fi before beginning Tomorrow Starts Here for Cisco, a managed cross-functional team of about fifty remote workers. As time passed and she moved companies, she created one last startup focused on building the market for Open RAN my style before it was lost in a company sale. With all of this in mind — her love of learning, her graciousness for the opportunities afforded her, her determination — it makes complete sense that at some point in her career, Eugina looked around to see that she was one of few women given their shot, and desired to change that.
To use her words, “Once you’re in telecom, you don’t realize it, that you’re the only one at the table, the only one on the stage, the only one on the webinar.” She shared one particularly poignant example of this realization, nearly losing her job. Under a LinkedIn post showing all-male speakers standing together on stage at a recent conference, Eugina left a comment stating, “Though it was a great conference, we need to do better. If you see them, you can be them.” While another instance of Eugina’s fighting spirit, she was told to remove the comment, or she would be fired.
The silver lining came from her current husband, who told her if she became a martyr for her cause, she could not continue her mission to put more women on stage. As a result, Eugina relented, instead compiling the contact information of her female colleagues who would be interested in speaking or interviewing. Eugina resolved to, whenever possible, give them those opportunities.
Eugina Jordan speaks at Mobile World Congress 2023 in Barcelona.
To further this endeavor, she wrote a book. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Eugina read what she estimates were fifty leadership books, and had another realization: “I realized a majority of these books were written by men, but what do they know? They’ve never been the only person in the room.” Her response was yet again to act. She decided, “I’m gonna write the book that’s gonna resonate with people like me, underrepresented immigrants, people of color, women.” So, Eugina wrote UNLIMITED: The 17 Proven Laws to Success in a Workplace Not Designed for You — a leadership book about inspiring the underrepresented to reach for roles of leadership and positions of power, released this past in May 2023. You can find snippets of it and other inspiring, relatable content on Eugina’s LinkedIn page.
Though if you’re just looking for Eugina, you can find her working at TIP in their C-suite. Formed in 2016, TIP’s mission is to make sure that open and disaggregated solutions across ground transport access or automation get developed, tested, validated, and deployed. TIP has open RAN projects, open optical neutral posts, and open Wi-Fi project groups, with a community-based approach. Participants work within a project group, obtain requirements from mobile operators, and develop joint roadmaps that then become blueprints that get tested, validated, and go on to exchange and be deployed by operator members. There is also TIP Academy to help those who may be behind on new advancements so they can learn too. It has courses on open Wi-Fi, open optical, and telco cloud spanning from beginner to professional, so those interested can keep learning and inspiring as Eugina does.
Eugina will again be on stage on October 2023 at Fyuz, TIP’s telecom conference held in Madrid.
Filed Under: Engineering Diversity & Inclusion
