Why We Boldly Go: When a career and saving the planet join forces, good things happen

March 30, 2023

Dominique Silva is thriving in a career where she preserves the environment and leads employees in developing solutions to create a better world - while also inspiring girls to be STEM leaders of the future.

Trane Technologies

Editor

3 min read

We are passionate, pioneering people who strive daily to create a lasting, positive impact on our planet. We believe that what we do has the potential to change the world.

Dominique Silva has always loved learning how things work and solving puzzles. When she learned about climate change in high school, she quickly realized she wanted to be a part of the solution. Armed with her mechanical engineering degree, creativity, and analytical skills, she desired a job where she could make a real difference. She found that as a product manager at Trane Technologies in Galway, Ireland, designing innovative solutions to create a sustainable future.

Throughout her career journey with Trane Technologies, Dominique has launched several new product and service offerings, all of them with a focus on energy efficiency and sustainability. One of the projects she is particularly proud of happened when she was working at a manufacturing plant in Epinal, France. Tasked with launching a new product platform, she traveled across Europe to meet customers--discovering their current and future needs--and worked closely with teams in Engineering, Procurement, and Operations to determine how to meet market demands with a cost-efficient agile strategy, while helping develop a more sustainable, efficient product than its predecessor.

Within a year, she helped launch a new HVAC product platform for commercial and industrial spaces which combines heating, cooling and ventilation in a single piece of equipment. In addition to exceeding upcoming European efficiency regulations, the equipment provided significant energy savings for customers through features like heat recovery and passive ventilation, helping reduce their carbon footprint.

“Early on in my career, I learned how to keep sustainability at the heart of how we design new products. I got an opportunity to make a positive impact on the planet,” shared Dominique. “Along with the great culture, people, development opportunities, and international travel—what’s also kept me at Trane Technologies is that we’re continuously innovating to help society thrive in a less carbon-intensive way.”

“The more I travel and see of the world, the more passionate I become about not just preserving what we have – but restoring what has already been damaged. I strongly believe that a healthier environment will lead to healthier people, and healthier people will lead to a thriving planet.”

Dominique Silva

Innovations Initiatives Leader

Helping make better happen

Helping create a thriving planet also drew her to her current role in Brussels, Belgium, leading Trane Technologies innovation initiatives—including a company-wide employee-driven innovation program called Operation Possible. The program leverages the power of employees to help identify and solve big social and environmental problems that stand in the way of a sustainable future.

Dominique is proud of launching the first Operation Possible initiative, where employees tackled the co-existence of hunger and food loss.

“In our first year, we assembled a cross-functional team of employees in India, China, Vietnam, and Belgium and developed a passive-radiative cooling cart to help street vendors in India prevent food spoilage by 30%, drastically improving their net income, which in turn helps them feed their own families with healthy quality food,” shared Dominique.

Dominique with Operation Possible cooling cart

After a successful pilot in the municipality of Kolar, the team is scaling the solution to help more street vendors in Kolar and beyond.

“Leading Operation Possible has shown me that great people can use innovative strategies to build solutions that support people and our planet. I’m proud of the work we’re doing to make a difference—I’m proud of working with like-minded people.”

Leading girls in STEM

Dominique also inspires girls to be future planet-savers too. She actively volunteers with organizations, STEM Alliance EUN Schoolnet and Project Scientist, which provide education and pathways to STEM careers for girls and students. As a volunteer, she leads activities to educate young girls on green and STEM careers paths, and visits schools to share how she makes an impact through her career.

“I love using my own experience to show young girls that working in STEM can be fun, broaden their minds and equip them with skills to do many things in the future, like helping create a better world.”