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Source: Lohud
YORKTOWN - Jessica DuLong used to watch her dad fix cars when she was a little girl, fascinated by the magic he could work under a hood.
Maybe if she had worked at it, she figures, she might have followed in his footsteps. But auto mechanics were for boys, she thought. Such ingrained attitudes can stifle a girl's potential, but DuLong has since made a career defying such assumptions.
"My path was definitely not a straight line," she said. "But I made a million little choices that took me to this point."
DuLong is now a U.S. Coast Guard-licensed Merchant Marine officer and engineer aboard the John J. Harvey fireboat on the Hudson River. She was the keynote speaker for "Women Helping Girls With Choices" last week at Putnam-Northern Westchester Board of Cooperative Educational Services.
The program hosted 108 female students from 11 school districts, including Port Chester, Bedford , Croton-Harmon and Haldane.
Following DuLong's talk, the girls took part in leadership exercises and worked with accomplished women in fields from law and banking to theater.
They planned to present what they learned when they returned to their home schools.
"The purpose of the conference is to really inspire young girls to be all who they can be," said Dr. Marla Gardner, director of curriculum and instructional services.
So how better to kick things off than with a 36-year-old Stanford graduate and former dot-com executive who heads the controls of a 268-ton Hudson River fireboat?
"What we always heard, and I think we still hear it today, is that some jobs are for boys and some jobs are for girls," said DuLong, who lives in Brooklyn . "And that is not true."
In 2001, while working at the Empire State Building, she volunteered on the Harvey for a day.
When the tech boom busted, she turned to a career on the water.
YORKTOWN - Jessica DuLong used to watch her dad fix cars when she was a little girl, fascinated by the magic he could work under a hood.
Maybe if she had worked at it, she figures, she might have followed in his footsteps. But auto mechanics were for boys, she thought. Such ingrained attitudes can stifle a girl's potential, but DuLong has since made a career defying such assumptions.
"My path was definitely not a straight line," she said. "But I made a million little choices that took me to this point."
DuLong is now a U.S. Coast Guard-licensed Merchant Marine officer and engineer aboard the John J. Harvey fireboat on the Hudson River. She was the keynote speaker for "Women Helping Girls With Choices" last week at Putnam-Northern Westchester Board of Cooperative Educational Services.
The program hosted 108 female students from 11 school districts, including Port Chester, Bedford , Croton-Harmon and Haldane.
Following DuLong's talk, the girls took part in leadership exercises and worked with accomplished women in fields from law and banking to theater.
They planned to present what they learned when they returned to their home schools.
"The purpose of the conference is to really inspire young girls to be all who they can be," said Dr. Marla Gardner, director of curriculum and instructional services.
So how better to kick things off than with a 36-year-old Stanford graduate and former dot-com executive who heads the controls of a 268-ton Hudson River fireboat?
"What we always heard, and I think we still hear it today, is that some jobs are for boys and some jobs are for girls," said DuLong, who lives in Brooklyn . "And that is not true."
In 2001, while working at the Empire State Building, she volunteered on the Harvey for a day.
When the tech boom busted, she turned to a career on the water.
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