Pioneer Award

When Dr. Susana F. Lizcano Gonzalez was growing up in the Cauca region of Colombia, she asked her mother what she needed to do to travel the world. Her mother’s response was to “study hard and stay committed to your dreams.”

That advice led the young Ms. Gonzalez to the National University of Colombia, where she earned a degree in environmental engineering and the opportunity to travel to the United States to pursue her master’s degree at Clemson University.

Before she left, her English skills were honed by a Martin Luther King scholarship sponsored by the U.S. Embassy and the Panamerican Development Foundation and granted to top college students with demonstrated records of leadership in their Afro-Colombian communities

An influential professor at Clemson invited her to follow him to the University of Missouri after she competed her master’s program – which she did, earning her Ph.D. from Missouri in just two years.

Her journey was not without its challenges.  Susana ran a small business selling candies and pastries to support herself through high school and college, applying the skills she and her sisters learned helping her mom and grandmother make and sell pottery to supplement her father’s income. During her high school years, a long lull in Colombia’s civil war came to an end and fighting flared up, gripping her hometown for a time.

But she endured, and her perseverance led her first position at Union Pacific in the operating department under the environmental site remediation team. In this role, she demonstrated outstanding management abilities by leading her program initiatives in connection to multiple departments within the organization across a team of around 80 inspectors and

Consultants.

Today, Dr. Lizcano is the Director Quality Field Operations for Union Pacific.  She leads a team of 8 direct reports and 160 contractors, and she’s on call 24/7 for emergency incidents and service interruptions for a territory that encompasses 32,000 miles of main line track in 23 states.

As a Continuous Improvement (CI-Lean) Specialist and Instructor, she has established initiatives outside her primary roles, such as the identification of the root cause of site remediation projects, and was able to save the company over $12 million dollars on incident and damage prevention initiatives.

She represents Union Pacific on the Association of American Railroads’ Damage Prevention and Freight Claim committee, which she chairs. She’s also volunteered her considerable technical, logistical, and fundraising skills to numerous organizations, including the Woman Center for Advancement, a non-profit dedicated to supporting victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking.

Dr. Lizcano is also highly active with Union Pacific’s Latino Employee Network, and she’s a dedicated member of Engineers Without Borders.