Women at CNA experience history-making careers

CNA's flexible, collaborative and energizing work environment enables creative teamwork at every step of the problem-solving process.

CNA looks for innovative and highly motivated individuals to carry out its mission.

At CNA employees have the opportunity to use their skills on the greatest challenges facing the United States.

For over 75 years CNA has provided data-driven, evidence-based analysis to help decision-makers solve their toughest problems. And, the organization employs many outstanding women.

Impactful work at CNA

Kara Mandell is a Principal Research Scientist for Health Research & Policy. "Honestly our work here is so rewarding. The navy listens to what we say and when we do good analysis they act on it really quickly. An example is that I recently completed a study on how to increase the resilience of medical logistics in support of a small naval command," comments Kara.

"I briefed the results to the commander of that command, an Admiral, and while we were sitting there he started brainstorming with me about how they could implement some of my recommendations. Now they're moving forward with several of the recommendations, and we have a follow-on study specifically looking at one of those recommendations. So it's really exciting to me, and a little surprising, to watch the results of our analysis in action and to understand that we're really building something greater than just the analysis."

Many possibilities in the workplace

Kara couldn't have imagined doing this work five years ago or ten years ago. I think that's been really exciting rewarding, and a little surprising, to me," she explains. "I thought that I would join CNA and I would do the kinds of projects I had been working on in graduate school, which was true but there have been so many more possibilities that I could not have imagined."

Kara explains that CNA hosts a program called The Analyst Development Group, which hosts with the new analysts across the company who have joined in the last two years, which she found really helpful.

"I learned about what everyone who was new was doing, whether they were working on manpower and resources healthcare like me, or more operational stuff like weapons, ballistics, and submarines. It really gave me a great understanding about what we do here at CNA, but it also gave me a great cohort feeling. So those folks that I started with, those are often the people who when I have a question that's outside my area of expertise today, those are the folks who I call first."

Pursuing an interesting career path

Elizabeth Clelan is a Principal Research Scientist / Economist for CNA. Elizabeth appreciates how much CNA cares about its people, both employees professional development and their whole families.

"I also appreciate how much CNA cares about the people we work for, the military sponsors. There's never been anything I've wanted to try or do at CNA where I've been told no. I've always been able to kind of pursue my interests, pursue the career path I want to take, and also I've been able to put my family first," explains Elizabeth.

"I went into the job market a little more open-minded and was able to cast my net pretty widely and when I prioritize things like very interesting research that had impact, where I would be working in a team environment, where I could put my family first as well outside of work, and also the fact that there were a lot of strong female leaders in the organization, I thought that it would be a place where I could be successful."

History-making moments

One of the most rewarding experiences that Elizabeth had as an analyst was when she got to do research related to the combat jobs opening up to women in the marine corps.

"A few years ago women could not serve in the combat arms occupations in the marine corps and congress asked them to integrate their combat arms units. The marine corps got an opportunity to do some research and say what the impact of that was going to be, and if it was going to affect operational effectiveness," explains Elizabeth. "We did a lot of that frontline research to say what the impact on these units were going to be as these units were further gender combined. It was just a very rewarding opportunity - a history-making moment in the life of our military service. Just interacting and hearing people's thoughts and opinions and experiences made me really have a greater appreciation for the people we work with that are in uniform."