Adele Glaser: Puzzle Master

Adele Glaser is a Services Sales Leader in Pine Brook, New Jersey, and loves that Trane is so focused on great engineering. It’s a series of increasingly complex puzzles for her. She knows the answers are out there, she just has to dig deep to find them.

Adele Glaser loves puzzles – crosswords, Sudoku, whatever – so engineering was right in her wheelhouse. “I love that engineering is complex, and that it's solving complex problems,” she said. “Basically, it gives me a framework to solve challenging issues. Engineering allows me to work for this great company and has given me a great foundation for problem-solving and continuous learning.”

Glaser inherited her love of STEM from her parents. Her father was a chemical engineer and her mother a computer scientist. She earned her degree at Virginia Tech and always wants to learn more. She points to Trane’s Graduate Training Program (GTP) as a big reason for her success at the company.

“This is one of Trane’s major strengths,” said Glaser. “The company makes a lot of investments in education and those opportunities are priceless. The education I've received from college and GTP have helped me succeed in my path.”

During her 11 years at Trane, Glaser has enrolled in other leadership and training opportunities, and the education has paid off for her and the company. She was recently promoted from Controls Sales Leader to Service and Contracting Sales Leader, where she has 14 direct reports.

Trained as an industrial engineer, Glaser works closely with mechanical, electrical, and chemical engineers, and she finds there’s a lot of transferable knowledge between disciplines. “You can always explore,” she says. “You can always expand.”

Glaser loves to find new ways of doing things and appreciates working in a culture that encourages that kind of autonomy. She feels that comes from great leadership and equally strong company principles. For her, Trane has the same innovative ethos as many of the most  forward-thinking tech companies. Equally important, she loves working in an optimistic atmosphere – where the main driving goal is to find ways to say yes.

“I love making things more efficient, and everything is fair game when we're trying to get better,” said Glaser. “The cool thing about working at Trane is that I’m empowered to do that. It’s like I’ve been given the keys to the car. Not every company will let you come in and say: ‘Why are we doing things this way?’”

Glaser was initially a little intimidated by her HVAC learning curve – the functions, the equipment, the refrigeration cycle; all of the intricacies of cooling air and rejecting heat – but now all that is second nature. The technology is essentially grafted on her thinking.

“I'm constantly looking at roofs, looking at zone sensors and thermostats in commercial buildings, and wondering who installed it and how it works,” she says. “I almost can't turn it off.”

Glaser acknowledges she works in a male-dominated field, and at times, that can require extra diligence. Men will rarely treat her differently because she’s a woman, but it is typically still on her to do the heavy lifting to find common ground. However, as an industry we’re progressing – when she attended a Society of Women Engineers recruiting conference, she noticed the difference.

“I walked into a big room at the symposium, and it was mostly women,” she said. “All female candidates, all women recruiters. It was incredible!”

She believes the world needs more engineers to solve the big problems, as well as more diverse engineers to bring added innovation to the table.

“The types of problem solvers we have are key,” said Glaser. “Not just women, but people with different backgrounds and experiences, no matter what the industry is. So, diversity of people, but also diversity of thought and experience. I believe that’s going to be crucial to solving some of the really complex problems the world faces.”

Trane is a strategic business of Trane Technologies, a global climate innovator. Trane Technologies brings bold thinking to our customers to advance the conversation on sustainability and achieve more through sustainable climate solutions for buildings, homes, and transportation. We're leading the way to a better future, and we boldly go.