When performance reviews call you "too aggressive," how should a woman engineer actually respond?
Kim Porter's answer is direct: stop apologizing. Early in her career, Porter would apologize and promise to do better when confronted with that label — but she eventually concluded that was the wrong move. Her approach evolved into pushing back with facts, pointing out the double standard head-on: a male colleague who yells in meetings is not called aggressive, so why is she? The key, she says, is having documented proof of respectful, data-driven conduct so there is nothing left to argue about.
Porter goes further than just reframing the conversation. She describes telling bosses and VPs directly — and without hesitation — that she would not betray the trust she had built with her team over two years just because a manager instructed her to. Her words: "You can fire me before I will do that." That kind of clarity, she argues, is not aggression. It is integrity made visible. The distinction matters enormously in environments where women are still a small minority: in mechanical engineering, the gender ratio has held steady at roughly 1 woman for every 9 men for the past 40 years — the same ratio Porter encountered as a student in the early 1980s.
Her framework comes down to three principles: be confident, be bold, be authentic — but always back it with action and evidence. You can listen to the full episode on Listenly to hear Porter walk through exactly how she applied this in real career situations, from spacesuit design after the Challenger disaster to product development at Nike.
"No opinions, all data, no emotion. Here's the data, here are the results, this is my recommendation — and then you don't say anything. Silence is power."
— Kim Porter, Ordinary To Badass, Episode 452About Kim Porter
Porter's authority on navigating male-dominated workplaces is built on four decades of lived experience. She earned an engineering science and mechanics degree with a biomedical emphasis from Iowa State University in the early 1980s — before biomedical engineering existed as a recognized field — and immediately entered environments where she was, by her own account, the only woman in every room she walked into for nearly her entire career.
Her first position placed her at the center of one of the most consequential engineering projects of the 1980s: designing next-generation spacesuit gloves in the immediate aftermath of the Challenger disaster in January 1986. She joined that project within one month of the accident. She later moved into product design at Nike before establishing her own independent consultancy.
Porter founded HatchOne, an online engineering community that includes a dedicated Women in Engineering subgroup, with the explicit goal of teaching the next generation what no one taught her. She has recently transitioned out of full-time work while continuing to run both HatchOne and her consultancy — bringing a perspective shaped by 40 years of being the exception in rooms that rarely made space for her.
See also
Kim Porter warns that entry-level engineers who take a first job without researching whether it aligns with their interests risk being pigeonholed — for years, or potentially for their entire career. She recommends identifying what genuinely excites you before accepting any offer.
After reading a job ad in the New York Times for a biomechanics engineer, Kim Porter applied to a company that held the contract to manufacture and design next-generation spacesuit gloves — a project that launched within one month of the Challenger disaster in January 1986.
Kim Porter advises eliminating phrases like "I think" and "I believe" from professional vocabulary entirely, calling them self-undermining. Instead, she recommends leading with data, stating conclusions directly, and using silence strategically after making a recommendation.