In this episode of Freight Nation: A Trucking Podcast, host Brent Hutto is joined by Ellen Voie, Founder of the Women In Trucking Association. 

Ellen Voie is passionate about creating a more gender diverse culture in the transportation industry. In 2007, she recognized the need to support women in the sector, founding the non-profit organization, the Women In Trucking Association. Since then, she has grown the membership to over 8,000 corporate and individual members in ten countries.

[04:27] Working as Manager of Recruiting and Retention Programmes at a large Midwest carrier, Ellen was tasked with determining how to attract and retain nontraditional groups, such as ex-military, women, and seniors. The industry kept saying that they didn’t care about an individual’s demographics, they would just hire the best person for the job, but Ellen saw them completely ignoring 50% of the population, women. At the time, she was working towards her pilot’s license and was a member of a women’s aviation association and she couldn’t help wondering why there wasn’t a similar association in the trucking industry. So, she built one: the Women In Trucking Association. Mirroring the structure of the aviation association, Ellen put together a board of directors of influential women she knew and worked with her attorney to write the mission statement. The mission has never changed, it is simply to encourage the employment of women in the industry, to address obstacles that might keep them from either entering or succeeding, and to celebrate success.

[11:11] Leaders of non-profit organizations need to act as a resource of information, and when she first started, Ellen had no data to go from. Very few fleets truly knew what their percentage of female drivers was. Ellen would go to any and every conference asking the same question, “Do you have your data broken down by gender?” Every time the answer was no, and she’d ask them how to get that data. She was getting the train of thought and conversation started on the experience of women in the industry. She was in charge of getting the data out to companies, reaching out to the Association’s members and female drivers at trade shows.

[27:32] Ellen led the Women In Trucking Association for sixteen years, only recently retiring. As the leader of the brand, she has been pleased by the reception in the industry. People have listened to what she has to say and she was able to establish her credibility to be able to change the future for women in the industry. The biggest challenge, other than people not knowing how to pronounce her last name, has been extricating herself from the brand. It’s her baby, and now she has had to pass the baton on to someone else to lead the Association.  

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