Soo Shing Tan had removed her hard hat and was leaving the Sultan Ibrahim (Track 4A) Power Plant in Pasir Gudang, in Johor, Malaysia, in the spring of 2024 when she realized something that made her smile. Tan is tooling director for the Asia region at One Field Services (OFS), part of GE Vernova’s Gas Power business. That day, she had toured the advanced combined cycle facility, where two GE Vernova 9HA.02 gas turbines churn out 1,440 megawatts (MW) of power, and conferred with plant administrators, operators, and technicians to make sure OFS was meeting its repair and maintenance expectations. “It wasn’t until afterwards, after I’d spent six hours there, that I realized I’d been the only female in the whole environment, and yet I’d never felt strange or uncomfortable,” she says.

Tan was more amused than shocked at the realization. After some two decades in the energy industry, she knows firsthand that men make up about 80% of the workforce. It’s especially rare to see women working on the floors of power plants or other industrial facilities. Yet whether she’s at her desk in her Kuala Lumpur office, visiting a customer’s facilities, or meeting with teams in one of the OFS tooling centers — there’s one in nearby Port Klang, Malaysia; two in Australia; and one each in China, India, Singapore, and Thailand — she says she feels supported and right at home.

“Part of it is a mindset,” she says. “Because of my personality and my upbringing, even in a male-dominant society like Malaysia, I never look at myself as a stranger in these environments.”

“Of course, it’s also the company I work for that gives me confidence,” she adds. “Because at the end of the day, what’s important, whether you are male or female, is the support you receive from the whole organization — your team, your peers, and your managers.”

Lessons in Chemistry

Tan grew up in the small town of Lawas, Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. As a child, she says, visitors didn’t need an address to find the person they came to visit; they could just hold up a photo and someone on the street would be able to direct them to the right house. Her grandmother, who migrated from China to start a new life in Malaysia in the 1930s, helped raise Tan and her seven siblings.

“My granny was a very determined, very strong lady who never had fears, but she also had soft skills, and she has been my role model,” Tan says. “She encouraged me to go out and accept challenges, not to stay silent. That kind of encouragement helped build my self-esteem.”

Tan was among the first generation of women in her family to attend college, earning a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. But she found she was more interested in working with people and processes than with chemicals and compounds. She launched her professional life in sourcing, starting in telecommunications before moving into the energy sector. “I think my studies actually gave me the right preparation for my career,” she says. “I am interested in chemistry between people. And I still like experiments. Maybe we’ve been doing things one way in the past. How can we do it another way, to make it better?”

That curiosity is what led to her accepting her first position at the company in June 2020, after 13 years in sourcing and supplier management for a global gas and oil company. She hadn’t been looking for a new job, but she was intrigued by the possibilities when a recruiter contacted her about the opportunity. Starting a new role in the early days of the global pandemic presented its own challenges. Still, even while working in isolation, Tan gave the new position her all. Just after a year, she moved into her current leadership position as tooling director.

Tooling technicians are almost always men, and Tan admits to having some initial concerns about how the new teams she’d be overseeing would accept her. “But I told myself to forget those things, because I didn’t want to create a barrier for myself,” Tan says. “As a leader, I think you need to be a genuine person, so I told my team that I was new to tooling, but that I believe that with my background we can work together.”

She was pleased to find that her gender was never a focus. “I think they had already embraced the GE Vernova culture, so my being female was not an issue at all for them,” she says. The corporate culture, she says, fosters equality and provides a sense of “psychological safety” that stands out to her in the industry. “You feel like it’s safe to speak up. You are encouraged to give feedback to your direct managers and your peers — it’s very inclusive.”

Summits and Success

Tan enjoys traveling, and her career has taken her to more than 50 countries so far. She’s hiked to Machu Picchu in Peru, climbed Mount Fuji in Japan, and scaled the tallest mountain in Malaysia, Mount Kinabalu. She’s very close to her family and proud that she’s able to serve as a role model to her 13 nieces, in addition to young women throughout her country.

Meanwhile, she realizes there’s still work to be done when it comes to convincing women to pursue careers in the power industry.

That will change, she hopes, if more young people are encouraged to explore their interests and opportunities, regardless of gender expectations. “I hope my legacy is inspiring newer generations to have no fear,” she says. “I tell them, ‘Never underestimate yourself. With that mindset, the sky is the limit.’”