Ella Podmore is still young but has already crammed an awful lot of professional experience into her short career. In this podcast, we track her journey from school to her current role as Materials Engineer at McLaren Automotive, a position that she convinced McLaren, needed to be created. 

Ella is involved in all material investigations, from first drawings through to the final product, Ella has worked on the McLaren 765LT, the Elva roadster and the recently revealed McLaren Artura, the first series-production, high-performance hybrid from the luxury, high-performance supercar company.

Ella joined McLaren Automotive as an intern engineer in 2016, having completed a degree in materials engineering at the University of Manchester before securing a full-time role two years later. Since then she has progressed rapidly, creating her department from the ground up and balancing her time between experiments and leading technical meetings.

As one of more than 100 McLaren STEM ambassadors, Ella is passionate about encouraging more young people of all ages to take up science, technology and maths careers. On winning IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year 2021 she said  “I am absolutely honoured to have been chosen by the IET and the judges to be this year’s winner,” says Ella. “Those who know and work with me recognise how passionate I am about my science and, being able to talk about that and the amazing supercars I get to work on at McLaren, I want to encourage the next generation of engineers and scientists to push the boundaries of what’s possible.”

As well as talking to young people around the world about her role, last year Ella was one of McLaren’s expert judges on the BBC Blue Peter ‘Supercar of the Future’ children’s design competition. Since then, Ella has participated in the global reveal of the Artura and featured in a film to mark the launch of the LEGO Technic McLaren Senna GTR model, the real version of which she worked on.

This was an amazing conversation with an engineer who clearly loves her job and is using her position recently gained with the IET to actively encourage the next generation of young women scientists, designers and engineers to pick up the mantle.  I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did!