Gloria Moncada has had a lot of firsts in her career: She was the first in her family to graduate from college; she was the first female technical manager at an ExxonMobil refinery in California; the first female operations manager of the Exxon refinery in Singapore; the first female manager of the refinery in Baton Rouge; and the first female chair of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association.
“The odds were usually stacked against me from the beginning, just in terms of being able to go to college and studying in the math field,” Moncada says. “I think for me just being able to go into these uncharted territories, or waters, has been more about being able to prove to myself it can be done. It’s no longer a hurdle for the next person, or at least it’s an easier hurdle for the next person.”
Moncada is the daughter of Italian immigrants and was raised in a traditional household in Philadelphia, where the only talk of college centered around her brother.
Nevertheless, Moncada graduated from Drexel University, earning her bachelor’s of science degree in chemical engineering.
It was a struggle to follow the path that felt right for her, Moncada says, but with the success she’s earned in her career thus far, there’s a certain validation to every hard decision she’s made to get there.
Moncada calls being one of the 2020 Influential Women in Business a great honor, but one she hopes one day won’t include the word “women.” She has claimed a lot of firsts in the ExxonMobil world, but that’s a tremendously good thing, she says.
“The more (women) see that it’s possible … the easier it is to imagine it and move toward it,” Moncada says. Read the full story about Moncada from the latest edition of Business Report.
