In this special SWE Diverse Episode for Black History Month, Joanne I. Hill, the secretary for the African-American Affinity Group for the Society of Women Engineers, sits down with Tarolyn Buckles, President and CEO of Onyx Enterprises Inc. Tarolyn talks about her leadership style, the ways she gives back to her community, and advice she has for other young women who want to start their own business.
Guest: Tarolyn Buckles
Tarolyn Buckles is President and CEO of Onyx Enterprises, Inc. Onyx is a certified woman and minority owned engineering consulting firm headquartered in Detroit, Michigan. Tarolyn is a graduate of the University of Michigan Civil Engineering Structures. She has worked 33 years in the civil engineering, construction and real estate industry.
As a Civil Engineer and Project Manager Ms. Buckles worked for MDOT, Waste Management, ARCADIS,and METCO. Onyx Enterprise, Inc. was established in 2007 and launched full-time in 2011. Onyx has experienced consistent growth each year with an increase in staff from 4 to 10 employees with increase in revenues each year. Ms. Buckles is alumni of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business prestigious program. Ms. Buckles is also a graduate of the SBA Emerging Leaders, the Turner Construction Management program, and Barton Marlow MentorMe MMSDC, and Inforum Masters Class programs in Detroit.
Tarolyn serves on four (4) Boards: Michigan Virtual Charter School Board Treasurer, University of Michigan College of Civil Engineering Board President, University of Michigan Engineering Alumni Board (MEAB) Board member, and University of Michigan Engineer Magazine. She is the Co-Founder and Chair of National Association of Minority Consulting Engineers (NAMCE) – Detroit Chapter and also active in many organizations American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC)-Small Business Committee, National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) Detroit Professionals Past Chair; National Association of Black Women in Construction Past Board member (NABWIC); Co- Founder of Coalition of Minority Professional Engineering Societies (NSBE, SWE, SHPE), COMPES – Detroit, MI; and Co-Founder of COBO Coalition of Black Organization snow known as Black Affinity Group; and COMTO Coalition of Minority Transportation Officials.
Host: Joanne Hill
Joanne I. Hill is a Product Marketing Manager at Intel Corporation on the Cities and Transportation Road Infrastructure team, within the Network and Edge Internet of Things (NEX IOTG) Autonomous Transportation and Infrastructure (ATI) Group. Her responsibilities include understanding the customers’ needs and translating them into software/hardware product solutions for the go to market business strategy in the Road Infrastructure Segment. Prior to her arrival at Intel, she has over 20 years in the Automotive, Construction, and Transportation industries in the Product Development and Manufacturing functional areas.
Joanne holds a BS Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University in Ithaca New York, and MBA from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
Joanne’s depth of organizational participation within the Society of Women Engineers in the professional section as well as the National Society of Black Engineers on the collegiate and professional level, has ranged from being a local conference volunteer to professional development, conference planning, and chapter president leadership roles. These activities have allowed an easy segue to share her professional and technical skillset to positively enhance and impact her community. Joanne is originally from the south side of Chicago and now lives in Portland Oregon region.
