As part of the 2022 International Women’s Day, COMSA Corporación has launched a campaign to raise awareness of the women in the company who play a strategic role in the group among all its employees and collaborators:
Marta Tomasa
Marta Tomasa Itarte is head of the Prevention, Quality and Environment department at COMSA. Throughout her years in the company, Marta has learned that site teams are small families, and she has felt this way in each of the positions she has held. In her early days, at the age of 22 and with little experience, she landed in Mallorca, on a project worth more than 40 million euros and with a team made up of only men. Marta has faced several adversities for being a woman in a leadership role. At times, giving guidelines on how things should be done was a challenge, especially when she clashed with traditional methods, among other difficulties. However, for the most part, she felt supported by the site teams. During her career, she has had the pleasure of knowing almost all the businesses of the group and collaborating with most departments, which has given her a global vision of the company, as well as understanding the needs and expectations of each of them and the importance of having empathy with people. What motivates her most in her job is the constant challenge of learning things, every day she finds new challenges that help her to grow professionally. That is why, as she came to the sector unintentionally, she stresses the need for female role models in engineering to inspire new generations to discover the opportunities and fun they can find in engineering jobs.
Andrea García
Andrea García is a technician in the Mechanical Installations Unit of COMSA Industrial’s Technical Department. Throughout her years at the company, Andrea has learned the importance of listening to and collaborating with her colleagues, whom she thanks for the help she has received over the years. She recognises the value of knowledge gained through experience and the importance of humility in the work environment. Although Andrea has not faced serious problems as a woman, she has experienced the loneliness of being one of the few women in a male-dominated sector. In this sense, she has had to constantly prove herself and face practical challenges, such as the lack of adequate on-site facilities during her pregnancies and the difficulty of reconciling work and family life. Andrea therefore stresses the need for female role models in engineering to inspire new generations. She herself serves as an example for her children and colleagues, demonstrating that women can and should participate in technical areas. Andrea advocates equal opportunities for women at all levels of the company and strongly believes in the importance of diversity of perspectives in engineering.
Paloma Ortiz
Paloma Ortiz is the Country Manager of COMSA in Mexico. Throughout these years, she has learned that commitment and perseverance at work together with a positive attitude and continuous learning help both personal and professional growth. In her family, Paloma is part of the third generation dedicated to the construction of infrastructures, and she has been in contact with construction sites and their world since she was a child. “My father always told me that this is a profession that has a surprise in store for you every day. You don’t know where it will take you and what challenges it will bring, and that’s exactly what I like and what motivates me most about my work: getting to know new cultures, new countries, different people, different ways of doing the work, different technologies, etc.”, says Paloma. For her, engineering and construction are exciting, multiple and diverse sectors in which every day there is a greater participation of women willing to create and build a better world.
Lorena Tella
Lorena Tella is a member of the Management Control team at GMF, the group company specialised in the management and maintenance of railway machinery. For her, the recognition of people and teamwork are key to the development of any company. Lorena recognises that it is a challenge to work in a masculinised sector such as the railway sector and that, although the presence of women is increasing, there is still a long way to go, especially in terms of technical or managerial positions. In this sense, she explains that there are more and more women willing to fight to change things and that it is important that they support each other. “Knowing that we are in the same situation always helps”, she says.
Ana Navarro
Ana Navarro Ezquerra is the Director of Corporate Finance at COMSA Corporación. For her, it is very important to enjoy her profession “with effort, enthusiasm, intensity and passion. Always with a positive attitude, flexibility and adapting to changes”. Ana believes that it is important for institutions and companies to encourage, promote and promote the value of engineering careers for young women. “An effort must be made to eliminate the existing barriers that prevent women from growing in this sector, we must continue to break stereotypes,” she says.
Begoña Martín
Begoña Martín is the head of the Infrastructures Unit and Head of the BIM Department of the Technical and Innovation Area of COMSA Corporación. She claims that what she likes most about her job is solving adverse situations for the company, that is, turning a problem into an opportunity. Since she was a child, she has had a passion for mathematics, physics, and technical drawing, which led her to decide to work in the civil works sector, “a sector with an impact, where you have the opportunity to create and with repercussions on people’s lives”, she explains. During her professional development, she has encountered several challenges as a woman: making herself respected by customers, and not giving up her job as a mother, in other words, staying active from the very beginning while still being present for her children.
Mouloundou Stonellie Faurelle
Mouloundou Stonellie Faurelle is an energy engineer and for the last year and a half she has been working as a production manager at COMSA Industrial supervising the low voltage work on the electrical installation contract the company is executing at CERN. One of the things she enjoys most about her job is sharing her day-to-day work with people from all over the world. Moreover, she comments that diversity is always a beneficial element for the organisation as it allows learning about new practices and also about other cultures, which brings a great richness to the day-to-day. In addition to the challenge of her integration, there is the challenge of being a woman in a predominantly male working environment: “sometimes it is difficult to be taken into account and respected”, she explains.
Loli Casanova
Loli Casanova is the responsible for People and Administration at COMSA Service. In her day-to-day work, she finds herself faced with a great distinction, as most of the people she works with are men, but her team is made up of more than 90% women. In this situation, Loli justifies that women are able to perform several tasks at the same time, as well as empathise, and “this is essential in a Human Resources department to be able to provide a good service”, she says. ” As women, we are the first who must stop seeing engineering and construction as men’s sectors. For this reason, “we must continue working to attract more female talent to our sector”, she concludes.
Elisabet Fernández
Elisabet Fernández is the Director of the Technology Area at COMSA Corporación. She recognises that, during her professional development as a woman, the challenge has been twofold as she has dedicated herself to an area such as Information Technologies, traditionally occupied by men, and in a sector with little female presence. Even so, she believes that what is important for a team is that there is a diversity of profiles, men, women, younger people, older people, different cultures, nationalities, etc. Elisabet concludes by stating that “we women are the first ones who have to eliminate these sectorial barriers and, if there is something we are passionate about, then go for it whatever it takes”.
Ana Idáñez
Ana Idáñez is a catenary manager on the Alicante tramway catenary maintenance project. Although she says that most of the time she has felt very well treated, one of the biggest challenges she has faced in this sector has been having to prove a lot of things because she is a woman and has had to work harder than many of her colleagues. However, this fact has never been an obstacle for her, as she is proud to be a pioneer in this profession and to have opened a door for other female colleagues, so that “they can see that in this sector there is also a place for us, and that we are capable of anything”.
Marga Bello
Marga Bello is the Director of Administration and Control of the Infrastructures, Engineering, Services and Concessions businesses. In the more than 25 years that Marga has been with the company, her greatest learning experience has been working in groups, accompanying, training and managing multidisciplinary and multicultural teams. One of the challenges she has faced as a woman in the company has been to create a team without gender distinction. “I am proud to be part of this growth of women in the world of construction, although I am aware that there is still a long way to go,” she explains.
Marta Vélez
Marta Vélez is responsible for COMSA’s Railway Department in the north-east, which includes the regions of Catalonia, Aragon and the Balearic Islands. Marta explains that the construction sector has changed a lot since she started working in the sector and that the role of women is now completely normalised. She also encourages women to consider their professional development in the infrastructure sector: “Although male engineers are still in the majority, women are on the rise, and nowadays there is no different treatment for being a woman”, she says.