My railway engineer knew she wanted to go into STEM from an early age, which meant she should follow a career in medicine.  But she fell into engineering by accident instead, which was actually better suited for her.  She first realised that she was not easily accepted in engineering, when it was assumed that she was the secretary when at a conference. 

Standing up for your rights requires you to have a keen sense of who you are and my guest now enjoys challenging the stereotypes with her womanliness and big afro hair.  Having felt a lot of academic pressure.  She looks back and wishes she could have done an apprenticeship.  Pressure and bullying made her drop out of school, which made her rethink her priorities.  Onto of those anxieties, she was also caring for her disabled mother and all of this hardship taught her a lot about struggle and failure.  She now has a good relationship with this things now. The net result is that she now takes full ownership of her life and is happy that she can represent the under represented. 

She has a few mentors for the professional and emotional aspects of her life and highlights that many men have mentors too - its not just a female requirement.  She has learned to have boundaries, which she exercises when at her ‘beer appreciation group’ - which she started herself in order to bond with the guys.  Self-acceptance is at the root of her empowerment.  It took her a while to develop that.  We talk about her romantic relationship and her worry in having kids and how that will affect her career.   But, she’s lucky because her partner is very supportive of having children and being a stay at home dad. 

My guest believes that we should be empowering men to stay at home without being laughed at.  She hopes that we are getting to a point where men can just be themselves. Let men pursue what they really want when it comes to families and let men bond with their kids, is a good way to go in the future. 

My guests this week seems to take chemical engineering in her stride.  Having gone to an all girls school, she had many female friends and family that ended up in STEM and they were her inspirations and role models.  For her, it seems like the most impactful experience was doing a placement in a chemicals company.  It was here that she realised the value of working in diverse and inclusive teams as a woman of colour. 

This industrial experience allowed her to gauge what kind of career would make her happy.  Fitting motherhood into her life scares her - she literally has no clue on how to negotiate her way through that, hopefully she’ll figure it out!  Companies seems to be more supportive of parenthood these days. 

Her attitude is straightforward and she tries to keep things simple, even when things get challenging.  I guess thats why she comes across as being a truly optimistic person.    

My guest, a science writer, this week always wanted to try and understand things from their roots.  She is obsessed with understanding systems, but in order to do that successfully, one has to understand the smaller cogs - hence where her mathematical background came into good use.   

She is very values driven, needing to understanding how science fits into the greater context of politics, philosophy and generally being human.  She always had the confidence to ask questions and speak up for herself and struggled to conform or gossip.  Her strong accent allowed her to get away with being aggressive, without being alienated. She speaks her mind, but she is not controversial.  Fairness and justice is essential to her DNA.  She doesn’t shy away from seniority.

Going to a good university was shock to her system, unlike her earlier years, she found that she wasn’t the most intelligent in her class anymore.    Being made redundant was the worst thing and best thing that happened to her. We discuss the resulting humility gained from these experiences.  

She cares about being seen as being worthy of an opinion.  Being understood is the main thing for her.  Finding your voice.  In this episode we talk a lot about the differences between corporate and  freelance work and the differences in personalities that are required. She wears her freelance existence with pride.  She doesn't apologise for being the way she is.  Life depends on choice.  It depends on what you want to do - what do you want?  As always, to be fulfilled, these questions need to be faced.  

My guest this week admits the mistakes she's made and lessons learned in juggling motherhood and career.  She is now trying to get her career back on track after taking time out to raise her two boys.  She like many other women was good at the sciences, but didn’t want to do medicine and ended up in civil engineering instead - she always enjoyed being a bit different anyway.  much to her dismay, she was crossed off from senior roles because she got pregnant, despite being an ambitious Cambridge graduate.  On the plus side, motherhood taught her the soft skills that she never would have got anywhere else - although she highlights that nobody seems to value them.  She’s slightly resentful that she had to make career choices, which didn’t allow her to progress, and advises all women to never opt for part-time work - purely because part-time ends up being full-time with less pay.  She highlights that you have to be selfless for your children, which means you can’t pay yourself any attention and keys things such as networking is impossible with small kids.  On the flip side, women who have achieved a lot are currently viewed as scary in society today, but attitudes must change  Flexibility at work is the only way that women can have it all, so companies need to think beyond 9-5pm working.  Women are needed in industry - thats a fact and men need o stop treating other men badly for wanting to take a greater role in parenting.  This podcast is all about finding ways to let women have it all - it possible, but both men and women need to muck in.  

This weak on Scilence, my guest is in logistics, but more importantly struggles with the fact that she deals with three ethnicities.  She discusses not giving her energy away by caring what people think. She has the humility to understand her own shortcomings. She has been in the middle of discrimination, but dealt with it.  We discuss how some men find it threatening that women want to build their career - but we don't let that stop us.  Stay curious and keep self-reflecting with good mentors and role models. 

This week on Scilence, my guest has a very unconventional perspective on a woman’s place in society, turning what most us believe to be a woman's place, on its head.  Having been in STEM for three decades, she now considers herself to be in AI, but it’s an industry that did not exist at the start of her career.  In terms of motherhood, she wanted to get that process started young and this allowed her to follow the career she wanted later on once the kids were independent.  That's certainly one way to have it all!  She believes men and women should be equal and that women can have everything they want - they just have to have a plan and believe in their goals, not letting anyone get in the way of what you want.  Her attitude is eye-opening, simple and powerful - if I could start my life all over again, I'd do things her way.  

This week on Scilence, my guest, an aerospace engineer describes what she is going through, as a result of having recently had her first child.  Before childbirth, she was managing 25 people on a multi-million pound project.  As a result of getting pregnant, she feels like she’s desperately trying to hang onto her career and the reputuon and experience she so diligently built up over the years.  She has a very unconventional life, with a highly supportive husband that has taken far more paternity leave than she has taken maternity leave - the results will be attitude changing for all those around her, as she refines her role as a 21st century career woman.  She’s defying stereotypes and doing things differently, and what is powering her through is her self-belief.  She cares more about being her best, than what other people think of her - she's empowerment on an epic scale.  Find out how, this week, on Scilence.

This week, my woman in STEM chose engineering to avoid doing textiles!  As a result, the 3D Printing, she was exposed to in engineering class sparked her love for technology.  She was naturally good at maths and physics but she believes that it not a pre-requitse for engineering - although it helps.  We are all surrounded by engineering and she loves it - there is not one thing we interact with in our average days which has not been influenced by engineering in some way.

We discuss stigmas that still linger from from the past, on the subject of gender and a woman role in society.  Yet in her experience, there are so many aspects of engineering that are much better suited for women.  

My guest has a very healthy and inspiring attitude towards failure.  Her mother who's a lawyer was a massive inspiration because she quit her job to start her own business from scratch whilst being a single mum. 

She definitely faces discrimination and judgement a a women in engineering, but she believes you have to show people what you can do.  She owns her mistakes, taking full responsibility for them and powers through negativity by working hard.  The way she steers clears of the negativity of others is to avoid them and be mindful of her own positive aspirations - always keeping an eye on the bigger picture.  

She doesn't waste energy on trying to control what she can not control; but instead keeps a detailed plan of her future.  Her plan always keep her on track, even if things don't go the way she had envisioned.  This also applies to motherhood, which, she's no ruling out, but for my guest, her career and her own life comes first and everything else, she believes should fall into place.