A Deeper "Why" In the Work of an Engineer
Interview with Brigitte Pinsonneault
Photo by Sean Foster
“My work is just another area of my life where God is maturing me in Him.”
Brigitte reflects on the essential role of femininity in a male-dominated industry, work as a vocation, and setting professional boundaries all as a means of Christian maturation and wholeness.
About Brigitte
Brigitte is an aerospace engineer by day and a missionary all the time. Her heart’s burning desire is to see God’s Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven and the name of Jesus praised and adored. She grew up in the northern tundra of the middle of nowhere Minnesota and has since migrated to the warmer climate of Kansas City where she is a discerning member of the Heart of the Redeemer Covenant Community and where she helps to lead the SPO MissionKC community for young adults.
The Interview:
What do you do for work? What do your typical responsibilities include?
I work as a Reliability Engineer for Collins Aerospace. My job involves analyzing and assessing the safety and reliability of oxygen systems that are installed and used on aircraft. Oxygen makes things more flammable, and part of my job is to assess the oxygen wetted path of a system (the materials used and the pressure and temperature a material will be exposed) to make sure the system is safe.
What drew you to your current profession?
I love the Navy Blue Angels, and I’ve always loved math. When I got to college, I knew I wanted to pursue a degree / a profession that allowed me to use math to solve everyday problems. Because of my love for the Navy Blue Angels, I also really wanted to be able to work with aircraft or aircraft systems. I graduated with degrees in both Aerospace Engineering and Mathematics, and as a Reliability Engineer for Collins Aerospace, I get to use the tools I learned in my math and engineering courses to analyze systems that will be installed on airplanes. Math plus aircraft. It’s a perfect fit.
**The Navy Blue Angels is a demonstration squadron that represents the United States Navy and Marine Corps, performing around the world to showcase naval aviation.
How has your faith influenced your work?
My job involves ensuring the safety and reliability of systems that give people supplemental oxygen on aircraft. Oxygen is there in case of a depressurization event, or another event that requires supplemental oxygen use on aircraft. My faith and value for human life gives me the deeper “why” of what I’m doing: helping to keep people safe by delivering reliable equipment that provides supplemental oxygen for crew and passengers on board aircraft.
How has your work influenced your faith?
Before working as an engineer, I worked for five years in full-time ministry. I was a missionary on a college campus, and I was an urban missionary in Kansas City helping young adults to grow in their faith. Something I learned during my time as a missionary, and something that the Lord is continuing to grow in me today, is the ability to see my whole life as a process of maturation to wholeness, healing, and integration of the human person. Through this viewpoint, I’m seeing everything as a step on my journey to wholeness in God and union and intimacy with Him. My work is just another area of my life where God is maturing me in Him.
Describe a challenge that your professional career posed/poses to your faith life and how you have come to face it.
Something I’m leaning into currently is to better understand how women can continue to live out the essence of femininity and womanhood in workplaces where men are the majority.
I’m a big fan of the distinct and unique gifts that men and women bring to the environments that we do life in. My desire is to see these gifts magnified and lived out to their potential: men living fully into their masculinity with women living fully into their femininity. I’ve seen women in male-dominated work environments inadvertently take on the characteristics and behaviors [that are more typical] of men because it’s the dominating force of the environment. In extreme cases, it can be a means of survival, but I think in most cases, it simply happens because we want to fit in and do well. What happens, though, is that a team or a company might lose out on the God-given gifts that women possess and have been created to bring to the table. The woman also loses out on her ability to live fully into her strengths and feminine genius.
I believe something God is calling me to in my own work environment is to retain and grow the gifts he has given me in my femininity - gifts of building relationships, gifts of nurturing and gifts of calling out greatness in those around me. The way that I do this is inherently female, and as I live more fully into my womanhood, I give permission to those around me––both men and women––to live into their God-given gifts and calling.
In what ways is your profession a vocation?
In a conversation about vocation, I once had a priest friend ask me, “Brigitte, what’s the purpose of your life on this earth?” And with a little bit of a cheeky response, I tried quoting the Baltimore Catechism back to him, saying something to the effect of, “I’m meant to know, love, and serve God in this world so I can be happy with him in the next.” He replied, “Good. And can you do that now?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Great, so do that now.”
He was getting to that point that in order to pursue my ultimate Vocation, that is being a friend and follower of Jesus Christ, all I need is the Presence of God and my present moment.
Now I realize there’s a difference between “big V” Vocation and “little v” vocation, and to be honest, I’m still a little confused by it all. What I do know is that my life’s purpose is Jesus, and my desire is to know and love Him and to make Him known and loved. I also believe the Lord has given me a particular mission on this earth that only I can fulfill and that all He is doing in my life right now is developing me to fulfill that purpose.
For me, my vocation (little v) is to live fully into whatever season God has me in, to actively engage it, to wrestle with Him in it, and to come out on the other side having learned more about who He has made me to be and to know more deeply His own character and nature, and to trust Him with the rest.
Photo by Chelsey Shortman
How have you balanced your career ambitions and reliance on God’s providence?
Something I know to be true is the importance of trusting God’s timing. I have a little plaque in my bedroom that reads:
“God’s 3 Answers to Your Prayers:
Yes
Not Yet
I Have Something Better In Mind,”
and I need to remind myself of this so much.
I am a woman with many, many desires! And over the years, Jesus has taught me how to come to Him with these desires in whatever way these they may look or feel. Sometimes He invites me to surrender certain desires to Him, and I trust in His goodness without knowing the outcome. Other times, Jesus invites me to contend for something in my life. He is a God of partnership, and there are times when He is inviting me to be a warrior and fight for something in my life. He’ll say, “Go after it,” and “I am with you.” Either way, His longing is for me to be open and exposed before Him, hiding none of my desires from Him.
What words of encouragement or advice would you offer to women struggling to find a balance of work and personal life?
I was at a conference a few years ago for Christian young professionals, and a man who had been incredibly successful in the professional world was sharing with the group a few of the lessons he had learned throughout his career. One of the things he said was to “keep the tiger in its cage.” The professional world can be like a wild animal, and once you let it out of its cage, it’s difficult to impossible to get it back in. The good news is that we create the cage. We get to create the boundaries for the things that are a part of our life. For the man sharing this at the conference, keeping the tiger in its cage meant setting a boundary of no more than 50 hours of work per week, with the understanding that at times, there are urgent matters where exceptions need to be made. He was an executive at a large company, and I’m sure that sticking to this boundary for him was challenging, but it was essential for the health of his family life and personal life.
The best advice I can offer is to be intentional and keep the tiger in its cage. The boundaries we set will determine the kind of life we live. They will also change along with the changing seasons of our career and personal life. As an unmarried woman, the boundaries I set on my work life are different than the boundaries I would set as a married woman with children.
One boundary I’m currently working on is being intentional about taking lunch breaks. I often see people in the professional world work straight through lunch. It can come out of necessity or sometimes it can be worn as a badge of honor. There are times when I need to work through my lunch break to meet a deadline, but the majority of the time, I find it important for me to take a full lunch break away from work––either by myself or with a friend––so that I can come back energized and ready to give my best during the second half of the day.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.