Dr. Soroor Soltani is a service delivery manager at General Motors and nominee for the 2018 Women of Color Technical Innovation in Industry Award.

"Over the past 18 months working with this amazing woman, Dr. Soroor Soltani has shown a strength of character and capability through her technical leadership role in GM’s Global Telecommunication, Core Network Service team," said Ben Marasco. "She led the delivery of volumes of critical engineering workload while driving technical and service improvements."

Marasco is the IT Manager for Video, Dealer, Broadcast and Immersive Technologies at GM IT Global Telecommunications. He is responsible for video collaboration, broadcast technologies, display innovation and virtual reality.

Alicia Boler Davis, executive vice president for global manufacturing at General Motors and the 2014 Women of Color Technologist of the Year, said Dr. Soltani has helped General Motors gain continued recognition in technical innovation, quality, and success.

"Soroor conceptualized a solution and led an effort to automate our data center engineering function, which resulted in 100% change success with over 30,000 changes and a reduction of 14,000 engineering hours of work in 2017 alone," Boler Davis said.

Going back to her roots, Soltani said her country of origin was "governed by ignorance and bigotry where women’s qualifications are measured by the length of their scarf."

Her family fled the oppression and faced cultural challenges as she earned an Electrical Engineering degree and won a scholarship from Michigan State where graduated with a Ph.D.

"I have been continuously judged by where I come from rather than who I am. However, I am here today because of who I am. I believe everyone has the potential to be a diamond. When encountering adversity, we can choose to let it burn us, or allow that heat and pressure to turn us into a diamond," she said.