Cable Engineers Vote for Expansion

By Mavis Scanlon When Yvette Gordon-Kanouff, SVP of strategic planning at SeaChange, joined the cable industry in 1994 after a stint at Lockheed Martin, she was referred to laughingly as the "rocket scientist." Last month she was elected chair of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers—the first woman to hold that post. People aren’t laughing anymore. As she has at SeaChange, Gordon-Kanouff will focus on advanced technologies and new services. "So that means more programs and more ongoing programs for all different types of members," she says. She also expects to expand SCTE’s certification program, which now covers six areas. Although the engineering side of cable is still male dominated, as it evolves to encompass more computer science and electrical engineering Gordon-Kanouff anticipates that it will attract more women. Her ascension to the SCTE chair position and Vicki Marts of Cox being named Western vice chair—the first woman in that role as well—will bring even more visibility to women engineers. As Gordon-Kanouff points out, even before being elected chair, the SCTE members (currently 14,600) had elected her director at large. "So if we are 95% male that means all of those people believed in me for what I do and for what I will do for them as opposed to for being a man or a woman," she says.