Career and life have been a catalogue of firsts for Shell’s senior vice president of shipping and maritime, Karrie Trauth.
Growing up in Ohio in the Midwest of the US, Trauth was accepted to study at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology and embarked on a Navy scholarship programme. She stayed on to take a master’s so she could hit the year for the first class of female US Navy Officers to serve in combat vessels.
Trauth saw action in the Bosnian conflict in the early to mid-1990s — one of just 12 women on a vessel with 1,000 crew and 2,000 marines, and got her first glimpse of what she now describes as “the spotlight of leadership”.
“When you look different, seem different, are different from others, then you stand out,” she said. “I describe it as a yellow car in a car park full of black cars. Everyone sees the yellow car.”
She was the first woman at Northrop Grumman in the US to lead one of the shipbuilding manufacturing sites and is now a fresh female face in the shipping hot seat at Shell.
Trauth has also been open about being a gay woman.
She features on Shell’s website along with a photo of her with her wife, Angela, who also works for the company.
Trauth speaks movingly about being on a panel of “out gay leaders” at a Workplace Pride International Conference in Amsterdam in 2015 and realising she was about to become one of the most senior leaders at Shell to go public on her sexuality.
While she had always been an advocate for women in engineering, Trauth hits home when she said: “You can’t not see me as a woman engineer. I could choose that you not see me as a gay leader.
“I thought about the importance of role models in engineering and for women and recognised that there’s that same point for LGBT role models,” she said. “That was the moment I took the decision.”
Moderating a Shell TEDx event on choices less than a month later, Trauth told her audience she was taking a path that was making her uncomfortable but was empowered by employees who later told her they had needed to hear that.
“That’s where I think about this role,” she said. “I look different, I sound different, I stand out. You can take that two ways. You can try to hide that, minimise the differences, recognising that everybody sees what you do — you’re just visible. Or you can acknowledge that there’s a power to that visibility and use it.”
Trauth acknowledged that she is more comfortable with speaking out today.
She is encouraged that the maritime industry is now having broader conversations around diversity and inclusion, and taking conscious decisions around hiring.
‘Ambitious, bold, determined’
Trauth busted the three-words-to-describe-yourself question by coming back with five — “ambitious, bold, determined, driven and optimistic”.
Those who have worked with her describe her as “disciplined”, “organised” and “open for discussion”.
They appreciate her non-career Shell attitude, along with the insight on equality that her LGBT+ background brings.
One peer described Trauth as “very on message regarding Shell’s aims and goals”, although also someone who freely admits that the shipping team does not have all the answers in the current maritime space.
But he warned: “Marketing guys beware; she knows her stuff technically.”
In her spare time, Trauth enjoys cycling, hiking and travelling.
She spoke to TradeWinds fresh from an action-packed cycling holiday in the South of France. And yes — to all industry bike fans — she did make it up the legendary Mont Ventoux.
