Thrive In Construction with Darren Evans
'Thrive in Construction' is the only podcast that delves into the personal journeys of sustainability leaders and innovators in the construction industry across the UK. Our show differentiates by offering unscripted, passion-fueled conversations that go beyond the buzzwords to the heart of what's driving the industry forward. It's tailored for aspiring professionals, seasoned experts, and anyone with a keen interest in the sustainable evolution of construction. We're here at a time when the call for sustainable development is not just a trend, but a societal imperative, empowering listeners to build a career that contributes to a greener future.
Thrive In Construction with Darren Evans
Ep. 73 Only 16 Percent of Engineers Are Women, It’s Time to Shift the Balance in STEM
In this powerful episode of Thrive in Construction, Darren is joined by Alexandra Knight, Founder of Stemazing, engineer, and advocate for diversity in STEM, to explore the reality of gender bias in engineering and the urgent need for change.
Alex shares her journey from wallflower to purpose-driven leader, and reveals why, even today, many young girls still don’t know engineering is an option for them.
Key topics include:
• Why only 16% of engineers in the UK are women — and what we can do about it
• The myths that still stop girls from considering STEM careers
• The difference diverse design makes in the real world
• How engineering can offer girls a purpose-driven, first-class life
• What companies, schools, and parents need to do — today
• The ripple effect of empowered female role models
• The long-term talent pipeline problem (and the urgent fix)
Whether you’re a leader in construction, a teacher, a parent, or someone who wants to leave a legacy, this episode is a rallying cry to do better, together.
If you want to see our other insightful podcasts, click here:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOHI_yaqB2U8KWbsfJDPCoYEfOh-TTnip
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Links:
Alex's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-knight-stemazing/
Stemazing Website: https://www.stemazing.co.uk/
Everything we use in our lives has got some connection to engineering, technology, construction, and if it's been designed for only a small proportion, a narrow proportion of society, just purely because of everybody's unconscious bias. So I alone, as a woman engineer, couldn't design something that would serve everyone in the population. Couldn't design something that would serve everyone in the population. I'd want to have somebody who had lived experience around disability, ethnic minority. You know different things that mean yes, I've considered their perspectives, or their perspectives we considered in the design.
Speaker 1:So that is the fundamental reason why where, when we look at the percentages in engineering construction, gender diversity is the biggest disparity compared to the average in those gender kind of norms in society. So we really are missing a trick across a number of reasons, but particularly innovation and inclusive design, let alone the fact that we just don't have enough people working in those fields. So we need to reach a wider pool of talent anyway, and if we're not appealing to women, we're missing out on half the potential talent pool. So there's lots of very good reasons and I think it's something that people are aware that it's important. But maybe you know, in recent times there has been a bit of a backlash, I think around edi. You know edi, equality, diversity, inclusion, and are we, are we done with that now? Like we? Can we stop banging on about it now, because we've been banging on about it for years, but the fact of the matter is we still have to because we're still not where we need to be.
Speaker 2:So you're talking about backlashes and people are saying like I'm tired of hearing the same message. Do you feel that as well? Do you feel that people are tired of hearing the same message, or that you are talking about the same thing? I know you've got children and you get tired of I at least do. I'm sure you're the same. Tidy this up, please. Can you stop arguing, just please. Just do as I say. I don't want to enter into a debate with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you get bored of the sound of your own voice after a while repeating, repeating.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I do get a bit like that sometimes, I have to say, and I do feel like, oh, you know, I've been talking about this probably since I started my engineering journey, you know, 20, more than 20 years ago, and we've still hardly moved the dial. So it does feel a bit like a broken record sometimes. But then you'll go into a school and you'll talk to a class of I don't know eight year olds about engineering and you'll get girls saying all right, so so girls can be engineers. Yes, so we can't stop talking about it because a young people need to know it's an option for them. People be.
Speaker 1:The whole of society still considers engineering and other gender stereotyped careers to be those gender stereotypes. Like a man doing engineering, two-thirds of people associate engineering just with men, and also companies need to recognize that. Yes, we still have got a problem. You've got a problem with your talent pipeline. You know diversity matters. So, yeah, it still is an important issue to bang on about and it's not something that we can ever allow ourselves to get tired of until we reach much better gender balance I'm wondering here do you think that this is just um something that someone wants to do, but they just don't know how to do it?
Speaker 1:yeah, and so I suppose you you can look at the motivations behind people. Everybody's got their own intrinsic motivations. If you say, look at a leader of an engineering company, their motivations are to ensure their company is sustainable in terms of like, not just you know environmentally sustainable.
Speaker 1:I mean sustainable as in it's gonna last which means you've got to think about the future of your talent pipeline coming in, because all businesses need people. So there's that. There's also the fact that you've got to report to your shareholders or your investors about where you know your business performance and we know diverse teams have better business performance is just, you know, across the board, better business outcomes. So there is intrinsic motivation, but I'm not sure. But I think there it's difficult. You know it's not an easy fix and there's lots of facets to it. It's not simple. So then it's kind of easier to say well, actually let's focus on some other things that are going to meet my motivations and give me the results that I need.
Speaker 1:And this is a hard nut to crack, but there are things that we know do work and make a difference. But you've got to be consistent with them and you've got to actually invest in them rather than hoping that the goodwill of a few enthusiastic individuals volunteering their time on top of their day job will make this happen so that's a really good point.
Speaker 2:So what I've got a picture in my mind of now is we've got a jungle and there's a well-worn path that's easy to walk down, and then we've got someone that says you need to go over here, but the path is not sure and it's not. It's not clear and I don't know that I've got the right equipment to try and hack back and forge a path through. So what things can you say that an organization needs to consistently do in order to forge that path?
Speaker 1:It's a good question because I think it's not just one path that's the problem to get you where you need to go. One path that's the problem to get you where you need to go. There's probably a few different things that, depending on the type of your organization, would give you the results that you need, or at least progress you towards that result that you're looking for. There's some really really obvious things that some companies do well. Other companies are probably completely sort of in blissful ignorance about, um, things like you know.
Speaker 1:If you think about who you're actually trying to attract to come into your company, are you making them feel welcome through images that are on your website, the people that you have represented on your board, your senior leadership team? You know activities that you do, the type of work that you do. Are you giving out the right kind of messages to attract the right demographic of people that you want? So there's some, you know. You look on some engineering company websites, for example, and you still see pictures of white men in hard hats, and if you just see a sea of that, are you going to feel like you belong as a woman coming up and looking at that company to apply to?
Speaker 2:Not appealing.
Speaker 1:No. So that's just something very simple that you could do and a lot of people are really aware of that. Now. Representation matters, image matters.
Speaker 1:You know how you, how your company, looks to people you're trying to recruit matters.
Speaker 1:Then it's like connecting with the right people and showing them that there's a path into your industry is trying to reach people young, like really young, like primary school age, to sow the seeds of stem right at that point, before they start to have those sort of uh, self-limiting beliefs that come from societal stereotypes that can then mean they deselect themselves from those kind of career options. So there's that. But also actually think about how you retain your talent in your company. Now, your diverse talent is super important. So things like mentoring, we know, makes a big difference. 77 of companies who do mentoring say that it is a key part of retention of diverse talent in their organizations, and we know that people who have a mentor of five times as likely to get a promotion. So, in terms of women being able to progress in their career, getting to those senior leadership positions and stay in the industry rather than dropping out because they're frustrated, glass ceiling, et cetera, that is something they can do and that is not a completely untrodden path.
Speaker 2:Everybody, lots of people, are doing that, but we just need to combine these things together so we get the maximum impact of everything pulling in the right direction so it sounds like from what you're saying that there's lots of tools and proven methods out there, but it's not all in the same kind of kit bag, as it were, that people are knowing what to use and how to get through yeah, and, like I said, is it really prioritised and invested in correctly?
Speaker 1:Because, for example, with things like STEM outreach going into schools, a lot of companies expect people just to do that in their own time or it's not coordinated and structured so it's a bit ad hoc and disorganised.
Speaker 1:They're just depending on a few people being really enthusiastic and going and organising it themselves, whereas actually in my view, it's such a critical piece of the puzzle that companies should be doing that in a coordinated, structured way, supporting their employees with training and actually investing by paying them their day rate to go into schools and do it. And I think now companies like are cottoning on to the idea that volunteering matters, meaning and purpose for employees matters. So giving people volunteer days is great. Two days a year is probably like what good looks like at the moment, which is better than nothing, for sure. But even that two days a year, some companies don't give any support financially for people to go into inspiring the next generation, and then the senior leadership team is like wondering where their future pipeline is when they're not doing anything. Support financially for people to go into inspiring the next generation, and then the senior leadership team like wondering where their future pipeline is when they're not doing anything to make it happen.
Speaker 2:I'm wondering here and this is a really radical idea and feel free to reach across the table and strangle me if you want to but should we not just bypass schools and just go straight to the children? And the reason I say that is because my children are influenced by school, yes, but they are, have got more. They have been influenced more by social media than they have by their teachers, and I've got two teachers in my family and they are so caught up with delivering a curriculum that thinking anything outside of that is is not a stretch to them because they don't want to or because they're incompetent or because of anything negative, but it's just so all-encompassing, just trying to deliver the things that's contained within that curriculum. And if they don't do that, then they are not graded in an acceptable way. That will lead to them losing their job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I don't think we should put any more on the teachers, absolutely not. Teachers have got more than a full-time job as it is. What I see the vision is that industry and educate. The education system is much more aligned, where industry is actually supporting career awareness for young people right down to primary school, even beyond, even before that if possible, so that right from the start they can see that what they're learning in schools, delivered by their teachers which is the teacher's job, aligned to the curriculum, how that relates to the real world and careers and meaningful jobs where they can do what they care about, you know, make a difference to what they care about.
Speaker 1:So I think it's people in industry going into schools to take the load off the teacher with regard to career awareness. Take the load off the teacher with regard to having to think of, say, practical science experiments to link the curriculum to some real world problem solving. Actually, we can do that in industry. Yes, we need to fit it into the timetable and that's easier in primary school than it is in secondary school. So why not take advantage of that and go and do stem sessions delivered by industry in primary schools as a absolute, something that should be completely standard across every primary school and it's not for the teacher to sort out. Ok, it's just something that we as industry offer, deliver, take the load of.
Speaker 1:I do also think you've got a really good point there around other forms of influence and the media social media, books, literature, literature all of that matters, and you're seeing now some like influencers on social media who have a positive influence around careers and role modeling and things. I think is absolutely fantastic and, yeah, we absolutely need more of that. But I think, again, it can't be just one solution. I think it has to be a holistic view of all the different ways that young people are influenced.
Speaker 2:I think you're doing something similar with Stamazing. Aren't you around someone that is talking about their role and how they got into the role? Can you just go into that and then what you're, what you're, what you found the good outcomes have come from, from taking that approach yeah.
Speaker 1:So our whole aim in Stamazing is to get diverse role models in front of young children. So around the age of seven to nine, we try and target that age group where we will get female role models or non-binary role models from industry who are in STEM roles, going into classrooms and delivering a series so not just one a series of Stamazing kids workshops which are all hands-on, interactive, where the kids make and test something themselves using simple materials and they get to take it home so they talk to their families about it. And that's another kind of thing of influencing the influencers, because you show parents and carers these opportunities for kids. Then they can start to see how that might work for their child rather than having no awareness as well. So it's all about diverse role models, opening the eyes of young children to stem as a. You know, not just this ethereal thing they don't know what it even means or stands for and not just standalone science and maths lessons, but the combination of all of that and how that comes together in the real world with real and relatable role models, not not role models that are, like you know, got a whole list of phds and won loads and loads of prizes and awards.
Speaker 1:And you know, you know famous, literally people, everyday people that they might come across on the street that they had no idea they were an engineer before and now they can see oh, that person kind of looks like me, I can relate to them and they're an engineer and they're doing cool stuff. So that's exactly what we do. So it's it's like giving kids the opportunity for hands-on stem, which they don't get to do very often at any age. Unfortunately, like practical science, experiments have really diminished in terms of what teachers can offer because, like you say, they're they're maxed out and it takes time and effort to give kids that opportunity and confidence on the part of the teacher as well. So it's easier to do something on worksheets than it is to go and actually run a proper experiment. So we give them that opportunity and it's opening their eyes to those kind of maybe challenging those gender stereotypes at the same time especially when you've got a class of 13.
Speaker 2:You've got one teacher there it's um, I do, I remember. It reminds me now when I was at school. I was a nightmare at school. We were in imagine that we were in. I was terrible when, when we were in science, I was told that if you put magnesium on a gauze and put the Bunsen burner underneath that, it made some really kind of bright lights and little popping aways.
Speaker 2:And I was like I wonder how big that can go. So I waited until the teacher had left the room and I put the full kind of beaker on this. It was piled up high. It was like Mont Bl, uh, for honor goals. Underneath the underneath went the uh, the bunsen burner. The thing lit up, um, like worse than a firework, really bad. But I didn't realize that I had it right next to the curtain and so the curtain went up as well.
Speaker 1:Wow, without a teacher in the room that is unbelievable.
Speaker 2:I was I was in trouble.
Speaker 1:I bet you were when that came I don't know.
Speaker 2:But my um, but I was. But I had loads of questions as a child and I didn't find that school answered those questions because I wasn't able to just experiment and try, with the guidance of a responsible adult, to say hey, darren, you know, while you're doing that there, you're going to get an unintended consequence, because I didn't want to set the school on fire.
Speaker 1:No, but you were curious and actually we want to encourage curiosity, for sure, but obviously without causing damage or harm. But actually that's exactly what we want to encourage is that curiosity, approach, experimentation, scientific thinking, and that testing, trial and error, having a theory or just like wanting to see what happens when you do that is a brilliant thing that kids are so good at. But we almost like hammer that out of them because we expect them to conform to the standards.
Speaker 1:That's just easier to manage when you've got big groups of kids, like, say, but what we try and do in all of our experiments with amazing kids is amplify that opportunity for curiosity. So we do a lot of things where we're testing simple things to destruction and we say like you know, what's the? What max load can you apply to this tower to make it collapse, like let's actually make it fail and see what happens, and talk about the importance of testing things to failure and experimenting and explaining. We do that in the real world within the bounds of safety and we use a lot of computational modeling to do it now so we don't have to actually cause this level of destruction. But we need to know where the limits are and as humans we want to know where the limits are.
Speaker 1:That's like part of where the limits are. That's like part of our nature and that's in all of us. We're all natural engineers and scientists at heart. We just need to keep nurturing and fostering that in a manageable, safe way, because, yeah, I don't think our curriculum does, unfortunately. And then you and then that the whole creativity element of it as well, like it's not just science and maths, it's a, it's creativity, it's, it's all art in action, and that is, you know, can be what appeals to girls, and if we make those connections, we're going to get more girls thinking this could be something I could do I've got three girls and all three of them test the limits love it which is effectively what science is all about.
Speaker 2:Where are my limits? And we do it all the time, especially when we go to fun parks. When we get on the fairground ride and the thing comes over our shoulders to hold us in place, the first thing we do is we test it, don't we? Is it? Is it going to hold us? Yeah, because there's security and safety in testing the limits, and I think that that's's really what we're looking to do when we do these experiments is we're wanting to find out how far can we go with this and we're still safe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and actually relating STEM to fairground rides. You know, roller coasters is such a cool, awesome thing to do and we should all be thinking like that when we go to a theme park. We should be in awe of the engineering that's allowed that thrill to be possible. So I was doing a talk recently at Disneyland Paris as part of a science festival and the guy who spoke after me this amazing guy called Brendan, who is a thrill engineer and his job is to design roller coasters why don't we learn about that in school? Why don't we have a day out to a theme park and learn about the engineering, the construction of the theme park rides that would catch kids.
Speaker 2:You know that would catch their imagination. What? Um, as you've been going into schools and if you've been speaking to people, what has been your biggest surprise?
Speaker 1:that's. There's been a few over the last five years since I've been doing just amazing full-time. I have to say hearing girls still be surprised that there are women doing engineering is one, because I'm in this world, I'm I know so many incredible female engineers. You just think surely everyone now knows it's a career for everyone, but no, there's still so much stereotype bias. So that surprises me when I hear it and it's both disappointing but also it's kind of gives that opportunity to change that person's perception there and then, which will stay with them hopefully for life. So it's equally disappointing and an which will stay with them, hopefully for life.
Speaker 1:So it's, you know, it's equally disappointing and an opportunity at the same time.
Speaker 1:I also find it very surprising that some young people are not as passionate about climate change in the environment as we assume all young people are, and that's that's surprising to me in a also a disappointing but seeing the opportunity kind of there, because you think, well again, it's because engineering is not in the curriculum, climate change is not in the curriculum.
Speaker 1:So everything that we are so passionate about in industry, young people are not aware that these challenges and these opportunities exist for them and we can't expect teachers to be the one to tell them, because teachers might not know either. So it just shows the importance of connecting industry to education even more, because the stuff that we need these young people to come and help us solve they don't even see as a problem, despite everything in the news, everything around them. I'm really surprised by sometimes in some schools, in some areas and I have to say there probably is this is anecdotally, but probably is a link to areas of deprivation, where there is a real sense of apathy about their, their options to do anything that makes a difference, and that is, yeah, shockingly sad to me how does that manifest itself then, when you're actually with the children and these things are made apparent?
Speaker 2:how does how does it, how does it manifest?
Speaker 1:I sort of I feel it like physically in my body, like it's almost like a physical wound, that I think this is so important that we do something about this and and we're like as adults, we're like blissfully, kind of like going on through our lives thinking that what we know is important, that young people will know is important, that they'll somehow come and find all the solutions to the mess that we've created, and actually that is not always the case, and so we have to do a lot more to support the education of young people about what the opportunities are for them.
Speaker 1:And it really feels like for me that I put so much of my personal energy into this and I feel like it's so obvious to me that we all need to be doing more of this. But you know, at the end of the day, companies profits and bottom line is the main focus, and there is maybe a kind of um, a feeling of we've got time still to sort this out, but I don't think we have. This is absolutely urgent now and you know, if we'd have started doing this 10 years ago and going into every single primary school in the UK to educate them more about opportunities and engineering in the environment. Those people would now be getting jobs in those careers and we might have solved the problem. But we're not doing that. We're still not taking a long enough vision and view and strategic approach to solving the problem. We're still having, like in most businesses, like a couple of years horizon.
Speaker 2:I'm interested now just in understanding what your plea is for school teachers or school heads and what your plea would be to parents. I'm assuming that they would be different yeah.
Speaker 1:So for teachers, I say, first of all, thank you for doing an amazing job and I know you are absolutely maxed out and super busy, but if you can create an opportunity for STEM ambassadors to come in and volunteer to run STEM sessions for your young people, it will have such a positive impact on them and you as the teacher. So, even though it can be overwhelming and hard to think, how can we create like an extra hour in the day to be able to have this extra session? Actually, what we hope is that it compliments and supplements what they're learning already in the curriculum, because it's linked to the curriculum, and that it will give those kids, you know, extra things that will inspire them and make them even more engaged learners. So it's beneficial for the teachers. But we have to work together on that collaboratively to make the time and space for it, because I know school days are busy. So for heads of schools, it's really like, with your leadership and vision, can you integrate that into your plan for young people's education so that you do encourage all staff to make the space for it? And of course, that involves communication with companies that are providing this support and very often completely fully funded and doesn't require any cost from the school. So it's such a great opportunity, but they need to be proactive about getting involved with it.
Speaker 1:And for parents, you know, again, I think parents are overwhelmed. There's parents have got difficult jobs earning the money, you know, keeping their bills paid and the roof over the head, and you know I really get it, especially in deprived areas in the country where we still have so many in the UK. And, again, if you're not in one of those areas, sometimes you can be completely oblivious of what situation a lot of people are going through in this country. So you know to then be thinking how can I open the eyes of my kids to different careers that I don't even know exists? You don't know what you don't know. It's impossible. So, finding opportunities where kids can stretch their curiosity and learn something new and there are loads of opportunities out there, like science fairs, different things that are going on around the country that are free to attend but need time and effort to get the children there or even encouraging like, like you said, like with social media follow someone who's an engineer on instagram, on tiktok, see what they're doing and just chat to your kids about it.
Speaker 1:We always try and encourage families to carry on experimenting at home. So where we've had a young person say, for example, make their mini wind turbine in one of our sessions, and it's really simple. All it needs is paper, blue tack, a straw and some wooden skewers. So you could get those materials again at home. Make more, make them bigger, make them smaller, like you know different designs, and just experiment with it. Why not do that with your kids, or at least sit there and watch your kids do it and ask them questions about what they've learned?
Speaker 1:I think really, time and attention is something that I know I'm a parent it's at an absolute premium. It's very hard to just give your kids unlimited time and attention, but with certain things, like encouraging them to have that curious spirit and experiment and give them a bit of freedom and yes, it might make a mess, okay, but that's good for them, you know maybe get them to do it outside in the summer. You know we've got lots of amazing kids resources, um, and sort of inspiration on our website, on a page called stemspiration, and they're all really simple things. Just using household resources you can make magnetic slime, you could make energy poppers, you can make catapults and all of it just from really simple stuff, but we talk about the science and engineering behind those connected to real life jobs, and so just let your kids have fun with it and get messy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, just don't burn the curtains. Yeah, so, um, how can schools go about getting involved or getting other organisations involved in STEM led? Is there a simple and easy way for them to do that?
Speaker 1:Yes, because there's lots of organisations offering these solutions. So STEM learning is the main national body for connecting STEM ambassadors from industry into schools in the UK. So you can anyone can become a STEM ambassador completely for free, and that will include getting your DBS check done to prove to schools that you're safe to work with vulnerable people. And organizations can encourage their employees to do that and give them the time and support to do that. Companies can also partner with stem learning and support funding them.
Speaker 1:Um, then there's companies like um it's amazing, the company that I run which actually provides more in-depth training for female and non-binary stem role models, and we call everyone a role model because we think they are. Regardless of whether you know, you think you are or not, everyone is a role model. So we provide specific training for that twice a year, and then schools can apply to take part in our inspiration academy program. That's completely free of charge to schools and we'll match up one of our trained role models into your school who will deliver forced, amazing kid sessions, and we'll match up one of our trained role models into your school who will deliver forced, amazing kid sessions, and we provide all the resources to the schools for that for them to do it. And there's many others as well, like organizations like primary engineer, who do amazing work inspiring young people and like really getting into that curiosity and innovation spirit for young people.
Speaker 1:Tech she can stemettes like. There's just so many organizations out there, which I think is maybe part of the challenge, is that almost like it's overwhelming. Who do I go to for this? But start somewhere. Maybe just start local, start with something that someone in your organization is already doing and then build on that so I'm gonna narrow this down.
Speaker 2:so if someone is listening to this or watching this and they think you know what, I think Alex is great. How do I get Stamazing involved? Just talk me through what a teacher or a head would want to do. My sister-in-law is a deputy head for a primary school, so I'm speaking to her now what is it? Or you're speaking to her now. Should I say what is it that she needs to do?
Speaker 1:so on our website, what's amazingcouk, we have a page that literally says schools and you can click on that and it will tell you the different ways you can get involved with us. There's, our main program is the inspiration academy that runs twice a year and your school, so you know, for a primary school, say you've got, uh, two classes in year three, two classes in year four, so four classes in total. We could deliver St Amazing Kids sessions, run by four different St Amazing role models, into your school and we would provide you all the resources to do. We'd literally post them to your school and you apply by filling out a registration form on our website. Registration opens in January every year and in July every year, and then the programs start in March and September and then run through until the summer and Christmas. So basically in that time we'll liaise with you exactly when the sessions are going to happen, exactly who your role model will be, exactly how many kids will take part, and it's simple as that.
Speaker 1:We do as much as we can for them because we know it's. You know, life is tough being a teacher. I absolutely get it. I'm on a board of trustees as well and a governor to a local school to mine, to mine, and I really empathize with just how tough it is being in education at any stage in education, even further education, higher education. It's a challenge, so we have to do as much as we can to support them and that's what we try and do.
Speaker 2:That's why we exist do you cover the whole country?
Speaker 1:we do, yes, yeah, so we.
Speaker 1:We train role models all over the whole of the UK, from, you know, right down in, say, like Cornwall, up to the Outer Hebrides.
Speaker 1:We've even delivered school sessions in the Outer Hebrides, remote parts of Wales, central London, all over the place. We try to match up our role models geographically close to the schools so they can go in in person. But we also have the option of delivering online sessions when the schools are in really hard to reach areas, which we know works well, because I started Stamazing in COVID lockdown time and I was doing that online. But because the sessions are so interactive and practical and hands on for the kids, they're all making and testing something in the classroom, led by the role model on the big screen, so the kids still engage and get a lot out of it. Model on the big screen, so the kids still engage and and get a lot out of it. So it's possible to do it that way, even if you're in some very remote part of the country that there's no, no, most amazing role models very near I think this is great and my hope is that people watching and listening will be on the website.
Speaker 2:It's just saying let me just try and find something out. On the other side of things, if someone listening to this is saying you know, I've never heard of this before, but I want to be a role model, what's their path?
Speaker 1:Very similar.
Speaker 1:So on our website there's a web page for role models.
Speaker 1:They also take part in the Inspiration Academy program, but they get two months of training before the delivery into schools and our training supports confidence and skills and toolbox with public engagement.
Speaker 1:Because we want our role models to feel confident, we want them to be really effective in the way that they engage young people, and that takes practice and skills and knowledge to do that. So we first of all train them to be effective with public engagement, public speaking. We then train them to deliver our specifics to amazing kids activities. We then match them up with the primary school and then they go and do the delivery. And again, it's it's free for any role models who want to take part. We do guarantee places for our partner organizations who fund us, but we also keep a number of places completely free and open for any woman in stem across the country, even internationally, because the training's all online, they they can apply to take part so even if someone's listening to this, saying I would really love to do this, but I'm not really that confident and I don't even have children or that confident around children, yeah, you're providing them with a pathway that's our ideal person to take part.
Speaker 1:Because really I want to reach the people that have some kind of will to do it like they want to do it but there's something holding them back, be that confidence or experience. And that's our ideal person that we want involved. Because I want this program to be the springboard for them to go and just do loads more afterwards. And we always say everyone can continue. Who's been through our programs continue using Asked Amazing Kids resources afterwards and just do as much delivery as you can. And we see that happening Like over 85 percent of our role models want to go and just carry on doing as much as they can afterwards. It is the springboard into them doing lots more. So that the ideal person we want. Because I know from my own experience, like having being an introverted person, being shy about public engagement, um, lacking the confidence, having imposter syndrome all of those things can hold you back. But when you have the right tools and support to get over that, you benefit massively as an individual and it has that ripple effect of benefiting your community and society.
Speaker 2:Alex, I can see and feel your passion, but every passion has an origin story. What would you say? Where do you, where do you think or where would you say that your origin story began?
Speaker 1:I've done a lot of soul searching about this. I've even had counseling and therapy about it, because I went through a patch of my life where I just felt like I didn't have the answers about myself, and talking to a trained counselor helped me dig into my story to work out how to connect the dots, and I think that's so helpful for anyone, because I felt a bit lost. I felt too pulled in the direction of other people's expectations, other people's agenda, and actually getting to the core of why you exist and what's been your drivers throughout your lifetime then allows you to have crystal clarity on your passion and your purpose. So for me, talking to a therapist allowed me to look back and realize that an incident I had when I was only four years old, being in a car accident with my sister and my mum, really was the kind of sort of point at which my my life changed, because I no longer went from just like a normal family with a normal, you know, growing up with a normal sister I had. I then had a sister with multiple disabilities and I saw the impact of that on my parents and on my sister, and so I became much more aware of my sister's needs and how the world didn't fulfill those needs.
Speaker 1:Everything was hard for her, still is hard for her, and I also saw my parents both of them working, both of them trying to support a child who's got brain damage, who needs lots of different therapy appointments, medication etc. Doing exercises every single day to try and support her physical development. They had to focus on her and I wasn't important in a way like I wasn't the one who needed the attention. So it kind of shaped my personality into being that wallflower, that invisible person, the good little girl who doesn't need any attention, and then keeping that sort of like identity that I had created for myself into adulthood. You know, at some point you have to go. Is this serving me still? Is this even who I really want to be? Is it even who I really am? But circumstances have created it and then it took me a long time to kind of break free from it or even give myself permission to be a different person. But it is possible and I think that's why I'm so passionate about women being empowered, women finding like, really connecting to their passion and purpose, because it's something that's available to everyone but based on circumstances. Sometimes we feel something that's available to everyone but based on circumstances, sometimes we feel like that's not a possibility for us.
Speaker 1:So definitely like one of the drivers for me creating Stamazing was my awareness of the lack of diversity and inclusion in our society as a whole. Not just disability, but in every aspect gender, gender, ethnicity, sexuality. You know, once you, I think you become, your mind is more attuned to one area of lack of diversity and inclusion you use kind of open your mind to all the other areas. So there was that.
Speaker 1:And then also from my own experience of being a woman in engineering in the minority, seeing how all that connected together and the gap of really supporting women to be more empowered, role models and then go and inspire the next generation, that all came together in my vision, first amazing, which I didn't have the confidence to create until five years ago, even though I've been having the idea for probably 10 years before that. But it took me to a point where I had to kind of build enough self-confidence to almost let go of all the labels and all of the kind of external validation that I needed by being given a job title and a salary by someone else that made me feel important and made me feel worthy and valued. I had to let all that go, so I could just go. I'm free to do my own thing, what thing? What I feel really, really matters.
Speaker 2:And then it's just kind of blossomed from there this for me is going back to this original question, which is why does there need to be a focus on, or even need to be more females in in stem? Why? Why is that even a thing? And I think that the response and the experience that you've had for me answers the question in a different way than I've heard from anyone else, which is it's not about other people needing more representation so that they can serve other people. It's about other people out there that I've got a talent, or that I've got a light, or that I have got an ability, or I've got a calling, or call it what you will, but at the moment is covered and is hidden, and what they need to do is they need to reveal themselves and come and make a difference, because without that, they remain that wallflower, they remain that person that's hidden. And actually it's not about trying to get every single female to come into engineering. It's about getting the females that will benefit engineering and will come alive through engineering, and it's having them having the courage and having the ability to come into engineering.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. And I think I love this phrase of, like our big challenge in life is to become all that we have the possibility of becoming. And we can't do that if we don't truly know ourselves. We can't do that if we don't truly know what we really care about. And until you get some experience of being involved in something really meaningful, purposeful, that ignites your passion, then it's almost you're just like fumbling around in the dark. For that, that kind of clarity of purpose of what even is that potential that I have the possibility of becoming. And I think one of the things you said there like actually it's a two-way thing Going into engineering could be that young girl's calling that she is completely blocked off to at the moment, and then by her going into engineering she'll massively benefit the engineering field itself. So it's definitely a two-way benefit. It benefits individuals, it benefits our industry. Yeah, I mean, I think it's. I love the way that you put that. That's very powerful.
Speaker 2:I think also the other thing, just as I'm considering this, is that when it comes to someone living a life, they can have the opportunity to live a second class life or they can live a first class life where at the end of their life, everyone goes out the same. I don't want to sound morbid, but everyone goes out the same, but some people go out different and that's because they've left it all in the way that they've lived, they've given and they've risen to every opportunity or everything that really is inside of them and that passion and everyone is so different in the world. Every passion is is covered, but it's about living, I think that, and going out with that first class life as opposed to the second class life totally.
Speaker 1:And that takes courage, because you have to have a certain amount of vulnerability in that to kind of put yourself out there as the authentic person that you really are and that is. You know, I feel like I've had a lot of courage in my life, even from growing up, you know, even from the fallout of the car accident that we were in, you know, seeing how it affected my family and how it affected me, but not being able to really, you know, feel like that it was okay to say that it affected me. That took courage in itself, but the real courage came from going. Actually, this is who I am and this is who I'm meant to be, and that's why, out of our Stamazing Three C's, we have our values, our curiosity, creativity and courage, and we enforce that in Stamazing Kids activities. We do, and we enforce that in this amazing kids activities. We do, and we enforce it for our, reinforce it for us amazing women in their own personal journey, and it is a personal journey that you go on when you level up as a role model, because as a role model, that's exactly what you're aiming to do.
Speaker 1:You're aiming to live a first class life, look back at the end of your life and say, yeah, that mattered. I left a legacy. You know all of those different lives that I have impacted. You know you'll never know the ripple effect of that. It will be bigger than you could possibly imagine. And it's simple things you can do. It doesn't cost money. It takes a bit of time and it takes courage and you can make more of an impact than you'd realize.
Speaker 2:I love that. The other thing that's kind of connecting in my in my mind now is just as I'm listening to you is that, um, that discovery comes through play and experimentation, and so you're never going to discover what your first class life looks like unless you have the courage to play or experiment. So at some point in time you would have had to decide to look more about yourself and what that looked like. You had to experiment with that and you can say that that's play, and I'm sure, in the true sense of the word play, it gets messy, right, yeah it does.
Speaker 2:Things get messy. It does get messy, but being messy is okay.
Speaker 1:It's okay to get messy it's okay and we have to give ourselves permission to do that in every sense of the word I think, when you're discovering the person that you really are, versus what everyone expects you to be or what you've been up until now, that can get messy in ways involving people, people around you, people that you love um, that you can be hard going through that because you're essentially like recreating the version of you that you know is true, but maybe they don't expect that, and so that can be hard in itself and letting go of things that you feel are things that are important to you but actually are shackles. You have to let go of that and then you can really focus on, actually, what do I really want? I mean, before we started this, I was saying how I moved up to Northumberland three and a half years ago. One of the reasons we did that was because it's significantly cheaper to own a house in Northumberland than it is in Surrey, where we were living before, and one of the things I had to let go of was a salary initially that took and I couldn't start Stamazing and just like create a salary for myself from nothing. So I had to say and it was a joint decision with my husband but how are we going to make this work? This is now something I've realized I have to do. I won't be happy unless I'm fulfilled, unless I try this. But we have to make significant changes to our life. So together we decided, decided yeah, let's halve our mortgage by buying a house up there. And it's turned out brilliantly. We love it.
Speaker 1:That could have gone the other way. That and a lot of people in my life and my family even thought I was completely mental doing that. I thought I was mad. And so you have to just be real like, have real courage of conviction and just go like I'm gonna do this and it is an experiment. But take it as an experiment. I'm gonna try it for a year, two years, three years. If it doesn't work out, I'll find another plan. You know, have faith in yourself that you will find another plan. But if you don't experiment, if you don't play with options in life, you're going to be playing small.
Speaker 2:And it sounds like you really have gone from a second class to a first class life from the way that you're speaking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you could look on paper like I don't have the big job title that I used to have. I don't have, you know, the same salary I used to have. I, we don't live in like you know, the successful part of everyone sees a successful part of the world. You know commuter belt to London, all that. But I am so much happier and so much more fulfilled and I have so much more freedom in my life and when I actually looked at what my values, freedom came out really high freedom to spend my time and energy on stuff that really matters to me.
Speaker 1:And money actually was way down the list. I mean you need some money and I'm privileged that I've got enough money and we'd already paid off a fair bit of our mortgage to be able to still have a house. But you know I don't need the big holidays. I like going camping and now when we go on holiday we Airbnb our house out because people like coming to stay in the countryside and that pays for our holidays. So you just have to think outside the box a bit. I love that.
Speaker 2:Alex, I'm wondering now what advice you would give to the younger version of yourself. So the younger version of yourself would be someone that is about 13, 14 years old. As a female, you're deciding what. What type of woman or girl am I going to be with my three girls? It's been different for all three of them, but it has been challenging for all three of them to find out what that looks like. What advice would you give to your previous self that you think that other people listening may be able to benefit from?
Speaker 1:if I think back to my 13 year old self, I really wasn't happy. I was very frustrated with my life but didn't feel like I could really voice what was wrong with me or what mattered to me or what my frustrations were. I felt enormous expectation of like sort of keeping my family together. I was the one who was the good little girl who could a real people pleaser, could like bring the family together when it was falling apart. I felt like that was my job and I think if I could go back and say to Alex 13-year-old Alex that you do not have to fix everything for everyone else. Things will work out better if you work out what makes you happy. Things will work out better if you work out what makes you happy and you actually voice up to people that love you what you need.
Speaker 1:Don't try and be the adult to all the adults in the situation, because actually you can be a child. It's OK to have needs and ask for those needs to be met. So I think even now, like sometimes I struggle to ask for help because I go back into that person of like I've just got to hold it all together for everyone and I have to remind myself like. That didn't serve me then. It's not serving me now.
Speaker 1:You know it's okay to ask for help, no matter what age you are, and it's really, really important that you practice using your voice to work out what you care about and what's important to you and what you need, and really you can't do that in your own head.
Speaker 1:You have to talk to people about it and ideally, people that you love and love you, so that it's a safe space to talk about it. I ended up having to get counselling therapy to help because I felt like I needed someone independent to to be able to voice those things. Now I know it's safe to voice it and I voiced it on all sorts of different platforms. Even doing my TEDx talk was being so vulnerable for me telling my story to a big audience because I realize now that matters and hopefully that will benefit other people because it will make them realize they can do the same. And it doesn't matter what age you are. You need to use your voice to tell people what you care about and also what you need so, using using this platform, then, alex, using those words, you'll need help with something right now.
Speaker 2:Someone will be listening and they will have all of the resources that you need for the help that you need. What help do you need from them?
Speaker 1:At this stage in where I'm at with Growingstamazing still, I would say like really working out what the art of the possible is for this small nonprofit that I started that now we have six people in the team. I feel like it's got incredible potential because we've already trained over 600 women who have already had over 150,000 Stamazing Kids engagements. As in we've delivered over 150,000 Stamazing Kids experiments, hands-on experiments for kids. That level of impact from such a small core team really running this just shows that if we could just scale up the team even a little bit, what incredible exponential impact we could have. So what I need is companies to support what we're doing, get behind it, not just with words and with likes on my LinkedIn posts, but actually with offering to financially support so we can grow our team, because we now know what we're doing works. We know we're not only supporting women in STEM to be more empowered, find their voice, grow their confidence, find their purpose and passion, but we're also having that long-term impact on young people recognising that STEM could be for them, both boys and girls. So I genuinely feel like, so passionately, this is a solution for our industry. But I need companies to not only support with words, but with actual cold, hard cash and like reach out to me and ask what you can do to help and be part of the solution, and it's not just just hand over your cash and have done with it. Like, we want you to be involved, we want your female role models in your company to get involved, go through our training. All that will be part of your involvement with us. So it is a proactive involvement and that's what I need.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it is hard to ask for what you need because you kind of want to just say you know, we're great, we're doing this great stuff, yeah, it's all working really well, but it won't be here in a year's time if we don't get support from organizations who, ultimately, are going to benefit from this themselves as well. None of us can do this alone. We need allies, we need community, and that is where the power comes from, the sustainable power, because actually you can have so much motivation and drive on your own but without that sort of community supporting you along the way, you just burn out. So yeah, for me definitely having male allies along the way, men that I worked with, mentors that I had through work and outside of work who helped me believe in my capability and my value and ultimately then building my confidence for me to think, okay, what is it I meant to do on this earth? Why am I here?
Speaker 1:And finding that ultimate purpose and that's why, as part of everything I'm doing with Stamazing you know the other programs that I support community and allies is a key part of it, and I think community where you know, say, if you're in your job as a woman engineer, you're in the minority all day long.
Speaker 1:You might experience microaggressions, unconscious bias, gaslighting and it's exhausting.
Speaker 1:If you then have a community outside of work, or even a network in work, where you can just get that sort of like respite of being in the minority for once and you're actually in the majority as a woman in STEM, with other people who have experienced similar challenges, who maybe, like, have a similar kind of passion to you in life that gives you energy and that gives you that kind of long-term, sustainable passion to just keep going and that support.
Speaker 1:But allies are a key part of that and that I think you know. That's maybe what we're still missing in all of our work with equity, diversity, inclusion is really knitting together everyone who, everyone who is part of this and not just having minority groups, but actually bringing in allies with it as well, and in our amazing community online that is open to all genders, but we still predominantly see only women joining that. We've got a few men who've joined, but we want to try and bring men into the conversation. We want men to find their voice as part of this as well and how they can provide the support that benefits everyone, but I still think we've got a long way to go with that. I don't have all the answers and now I think I see a lot more groups focused on how can we all work together as a collective community to have the positive impact that we need that benefits everyone.
Speaker 2:And I think that's got to be the way forward. I think you touched on a really good point, though, because, as a as a male, I would feel cautious about approaching st amazing, because I know what's the amazing's um goal and objective is, and I would question the relevance or the impact that I would be able to have in that group and, as I say it out loud, it sounds daft, but it almost feels like I'm not, I'm not welcome or I'm not needed, or yeah, it would, it would feel like that and that's something that I think we need to reflect on.
Speaker 1:Instamazing, like we're I'm a woman, we're a team of all women running Instamazing, and we've built this community of hundreds and hundreds of female volunteers who do our STEM outreach, but what we've then realised, probably only in the last year, is that we're missing a huge part of the puzzle, which is the support that we need to really progress this agenda with allies, and so we've, like advertised the fact that we have a community for all genders, but it's our core mission is still to get women in STEM in front of primary children, but our community is really more like how do we support women in STEM right now?
Speaker 1:The mentoring angle so the mentor programs we run mentors can be any gender, it's not just for women, but the mentees are just women. So we're trying to find how, like, our niche fits into the bigger picture where we can bring in all genders so that we're all allies to each other, whilst still solving the main crux of the problem, which is that we don't have enough women in stem. There's it's like that balance, and I think that's maybe what we're struggling with, and we probably need, actually, the viewpoint of men to say, well, actually, if you did this, if you changed how you promoted that or if you did this angle, we'd feel welcome yeah, that's a good.
Speaker 2:That's a good point, and maybe asking I think, definitely asking men about that where the barriers are, where the perception is for them, would be, I think, a great experiment to do. I think it could be a messy one because it could bring up things that may feel uncomfortable, but I think as long as you're willing to be uncomfortable and and be in the mess, then you'll order it and sort it out. The thing that keeps coming to mind for me is the abolition of slavery. So the very, very few times that that is spoken about, do people recognize the white people that were instrumental in that whole process? Because black people alone couldn't make that happen.
Speaker 2:So we're talking here about the Atlantic slave trade here specifically. But you needed white people in order for black people to be free. It couldn't just be done with black people, and so, although the the the topic is different, the principle is the same. Where you're looking for females to realize, understand, actually, the shackles of, I need to be shoehorned into this type of role. I can't do this. This is out of bounds for me. You need both males and females to be part of that solving that puzzle yeah, and I think you know when you said it's it can be messy.
Speaker 1:I think that's exactly right and why people shy away from it because people are scared of saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, but we all have to be in it together. So, white people supporting people who are any sort of ethnicity, we need to come together to support each other with that, without making it seem like it's white people, you know, solving everybody's problems and and leading the way with everything. It's that balance of like giving people in the minority the voice, the power, the influence, empowering them to, you know, fulfill their potential, leader, first class life, like we've talked about before, without like just saying it's down to you to solve this all by yourself and the same with gender.
Speaker 1:We don't want men to come on and sort of say right, you know, I'm the white knight on the horse solving all of your problems. Leave it to me, ladies, I'll, I'll sort this all out. But we need you to come in and say what can I do to help where you know what, what levers can I pull or where can I invest that will actually help you? What doors can I open for you? And then open those doors. Let the women walk through those doors, give them the empowerment, let them build the position and the influence and the voice that they deserve, but recognize that we're all benefiting from that, and I it's I.
Speaker 1:I don't have all the answers, and this is why I think it's still so messy. Even somebody who's working in this space day in, day out, it's. It's not easy to see the clear path forward. But I think, unless we work together, unless we have those difficult, challenging conversations, unless we're really honest with how do we feel about this? Where do I feel uncomfortable? Like we're not going to understand each other and therefore be able to pull completely in the same direction.
Speaker 2:I think what you said that's really powerful, that you don't have all the answers, because it's not about having the answers right now, it's about discovering them, and that's the whole premise of engineering and science and art. It's a process of discovery.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but we all have to be on board with the fact that it's not going to be straightforward and we'll have one hypothesis tested and it will fail. And we can't just walk away and throw our hands up in the air and say, well, that was a disaster. We've got to pick the pieces up and say how. And we can't just walk away and throw our hands up in the air and say, well, that was a disaster. We've got to, like, pick the pieces up and say how do we reform that into the new experiment? And, yeah, be resilient, have courage along the way and, like you say, together there is a way forward. None of us know exactly what that is at the moment, but we have no option than to try. We can't stand still where we are.
Speaker 2:I love that. And failure is not final. Failure is not bad, it's just data points. That says it's not going to work this way, but these are the reasons why.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that and I would endorse that. I think that that is a very clear and concise ask, and I really hope that there will be people listening that will come and have a conversation with you, because the conversation I've had with you is inspiring, fundamentally because what you're doing is you're taking someone to discover what their first class life is, and I know a number of female engineers one of them, actually, I don't know if we mentioned this before, but one of them works for uh, for Airbus. Um, her name's Alex, and when people see her name written down, they assume it's a male Alex, and so I'm sure you've had that a number of times, right, and so they they're speaking hey, it's Alex. They're like who, who? That Alex that you've been sending emails to for the last however many months, um, and she absolutely loves what it is that she does, and she, she makes a, she makes a huge difference, and so I would say that there are other Alex's or other females out there that just are needing to discover that their life can be first class through solving problems, through experiment, through play.
Speaker 2:But, alex, it's been great having you here on the podcast. I've loved listening to you and being part of this conversation. Thanks, darren, it's been a pleasure. Thanks, really good talking to you. Thanks for watching to the end. I think that you'll like this. But before you do that, just make sure that you've commented and liked below and also that you subscribed.