In STEM you can do everything. Whatever you are passionate about and whatever motivates you, you can find a project that is kind of will amplify that. You can grow, you can evolve. I mean you will grow, you will evolve, your life, experience will accumulate and you will find out new passions as well.
 
 VO: Elina Militello Asp. This is STEMazing.
 
When I was a kid, I loved to observe things. I loved to see how things were working, and I think that is what sparked my interest in natural sciences. I wanted to know how things were working. I loved building things like with Lego or doing dens out in the forest.  I was out and about a lot and playing around and enjoying things, and also my dad is an engineer, so he brought that in as well and he was helping me when I came to school with maths and physics and all of that kind of helped to develop my interest for STEM subjects.
 
 I grew up in a small village in Sweden called Hallstavik with my parents - my Mum and my Dad and I have two little brothers as well that are quite a bit younger than me, so I never kind of played with them, but we kind of grew up together in this rural environment, which was very nice. We literally had the forest behind the corner. So I mean, that's, that's kind of what sparked my love for nature as well I think.
 
My first thoughts about a career in STEM - I think that must have been when I've been what would be in the equivalent of lower secondary school, when we started to have physics and other STEM subjects separately and I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed doing the experiments, seeing how things were working. So I think that's what kind of sparked that interest, like this hands-on experience as well, that I really didn't have before. Another thing that happened before that, when I was in the equivalent of primary school, we went on a trip to Stockholm, and there was like this STEM day. So we were going there and these people were doing like STEM sessions with us, and that day is kind of cemented in my memory. I remember it to this day, how I loved it.
 
Nobody never told me that I couldn't do STEM because I was a girl. I was encouraged by my parents, my father, my grandfather is an engineer as well . Everybody around me encouraged me, also the teachers. I never felt like I had any pushback from that respect. What I might have gotten some pushback from was my peers, or especially people who didn't know me, who might have thought that, ‘yeah, are you really going to do that’? Or ‘why are you doing physics at university? Why don't you become a nurse? Like a neonatal unit or something similar’. To me that just absurd because I never wanted children. So just suggesting that I should go into a profession where I take care of children was like ‘why’? It was like, no, it was just so far away from who I am.
 
 I‘m not sure I had any role models in physics or in stem in particular, what I do have in my family are strong females. So my grandmother, my paternal grandmother she was one of the first women in Sweden to finish what would be like the A-levels in the UK, and she was one of the first female pharmacists as well. I never met her, but I heard stories about her and her achievements, etc. My other grandmother she was a store manager, so she was kind of in the leadership position and also my mother had a good career. She was working throughout my childhood and she had a good career. So I had all these strong female role models around me that show that it's possible to follow your path and do what you want. That's,  that's really shaped me.
 
 I enjoyed going to university. I mean we were I don't know if you were 20 percent women, 30 percent women. Yes, we were in minority, that's for sure, but it wasn't like I was the only one and that's that felt good. I felt I had a place. I mean nobody questioned why I was there, including the professors, my peers. So no, I really enjoyed being at university, working with others to complete tasks for the courses, studying, learning more, and during university as well, I mean my interests in physics changed. So I started out at university I wanted to become an astronomer and I pursued that passion for quite some time when I subscribed to this magazine on astronomy. And then after a while I realized that this magazine was kind of stacking in its plastic folder that it came in. I didn't even open them and then I kind of started thinking, maybe astronomy is not my thing after all.
 
 And then I had a course in particle physics. So then I started thinking particle physics, that sounds like a much more interesting thing, so let's pursue that for a while. And that's how I ended up doing summer student ship at CERN.
 
 However, I had some bad experience there or I didn't get the support I needed from my supervisors.  I started my master thesis for my degree and yeah, I mean at CERN, it was kind of okay because, yes, I met my supervisor, and then he went on vacation but I had a second supervisor, so during that period I was kind of taken care of, it was fine, and I was progressing. The problem was at the end of the summer I was going home and I was continuing the project, whereas my supervisor stayed at CERN. It was pure determination that made me get to the end, because it took a very, very long time. Yeah, it probably took me until Christmas or something before I had actually finished that, if not longer. So just this pure determination trying to find ways of making it work. And at that point I also realised that I need to be careful with how I choose my bosses in the future, whom I work for, and I think that that was a very important lesson. So I mean, when you're going for an interview, you want to apply for a job, you go for an interview just remember that that interview is as much you checking out them as a future employer and how you may be able to perform there and how you'll be able to fit in and feel comfortable and be able to give your best, as much as is for them to understand your capabilities.

 I was at a bit of a loss and then I took this course in fusion plasma physics, and I discovered fusion and I discovered the possibilities of fusion as a green, abundant energy source for generations to come, and that really ignited my passion. It really made me motivated. So I went to my professor in that course and I went to him and I asked ‘do you have a PhD position for me’? He hadn't advertised or anything, but I just thought I'd just give it a shot and see what he says, and he said ‘yes’. So I did get to do a PHD in fusion plasma physics which was good. It really evolved during that time as well. I started out like a theoretical pen and paper physicist and then I evolved towards more modelling. I never become an experimentalist, but I started to do more modelling, more connected with experiments, testing the models on experiments, testing the predictions and so on.
 
 What motivates me to do what I'm doing? It's really this thought about fusion helping humanity, becoming this energy source that we're really missing, the abundant baseload energy source. I'm fully for renewables. We need all kinds of green energy that we can muster, but fusion would really be a game changer in this because it would be abundant, it would be green, it would be there for a very long time. That's the core of my motivation, so to speak.
 
When I started at the UK Atomic Energy Authority, I started as a physicist. I felt I wanted to progress. I wanted to do something else. I wanted to become into a leadership role and I was quite lucky because there was a position opening. So I applied for that and I got that and the transition was quite... I think it was quite smooth. My observation skills kind of helped, building personal relationships as well. I also read a lot about leadership and how to plan career progression and all these kind of things. coaching courses online, trying to build this thing that I needed to be able to guide the team or to line-manage people and yeah, it was quite smooth. The only thing that happened then was that I was kind of put to the test quite early. After about three months we had a big turnover and redundancy so I had to tell four people in my team that I had to let them go, which was quite tough. I mean, I was very new into the role of line management and having those difficult conversations. Yeah, it really shaped me and it and I learned a lot from it.   

When I'm faced with a challenge or I'm faced with something new that I have to learn to do, I always try to learn as much as possible about it. I kind of head it face on, I try to talk to people about it, I try to understand what skills I need to attain to get to that point. I mean, I always have this confidence that I can do it. That's my starting point. When I'm faced with a challenge, when I'm faced with a new task, I always feel like, ‘yes, I can do this’. I may not know how to do it. So I just need to go out and educate myself and find ways of doing it that fits me. I'm not sure where this growth mindset comes from, actually. I never reflected on that. It's always been part of who. I am trying to find out more.
 
So trying to promote gender equality in women in nuclear.  I've been putting on webinars especially when we went into lockdown it was a lot about remote working, imposter syndrome, also talked about menopause and periods, webinars around those subjects so that to create a bigger awareness about how this can affect women's performance in the workplace.  I've also been running this mentoring scheme for women in nuclear and this is a mentoring scheme especially targeted at women with imposter syndrome or with low confidence who don't think they have anything to give as a mentor. So it starts off with like basic training, like all mentoring schemes do, and then it continues with monthly support from their peers and from the trainer for 12 months while they are mentoring somebody, this was what I was missing when I became a mentor. I had this courage to just go for it anyway. I did the training and then I started mentoring, but I always felt that it would have been really good to have this extra support there for me.
 
 So that's why I started this and we ran a pilot in 2023 and I was just blown away when I saw the results of it. We were celebrating all the successes because I could really see the confidence of the mentors had grown immensely during this time, and we also had feedback during the scheme that both mentors and mentees said that they have seen the mentors' confidence grow and, in addition, of course, the mentees they had gotten promotion, they're taking new degrees, they expanded the networks. They had taken on new projects. So it was like a win-win on all sides, both for mentors and mentees, and it was just wonderful to see. So, yeah, I'm really keen to see what 2025 has to offer in this respect and to see the new women coming in and to see how they are growing and becoming confident mentors and role models.
 
 The advice I would give to future women in STEM is to find your passion. What are you passionate about? What motivates you? In STEM you can do everything. Whatever you are passionate about and whatever motivates you, you can find a project that is kind of will amplify that and will nurture that project and that career. Don't be afraid to change track. I mean, during my education, I had some setbacks and I had some second thoughts and I thought and I discovered new things, because there are always new things out there for you to discover. So just because you decided you want to become an astronomer, like I did when I started university, doesn't mean that you have to be an astronomer your whole life. You can grow, you can evolve. I mean you will grow, you will evolve, your life experience will accumulate and you will find out new passions as well and just follow them and learn new things. I mean everything you have learned so far will always. You can always build on it. It would always help you contribute with a new vantage point on whatever new project you are putting your efforts into. So just follow your passion. Whatever you learned in the past will be helpful in one way or another. You might not see it as you as you go into it, but it will be there and it will support you.
 
 
 So I think it's very important at an early age that you start doing like STEM activities and to show everybody that STEM is fun. It's teamwork, because I think a lot of people think as well that they have this stereotype of the lonely scientist or the lonely engineer that is tinkering away, but that is as far away as you can come from engineering and physics today. It's all about teamwork. You don't need to know everything about everything. You are bringing in your speciality in a team of other people that are bringing in theirs, and together you create new things. And if you are in a good team, I mean the feeling when you're working. You're learning from each other, you're building this thing together. You have a common goal. It really motivates you to do this, and especially if the common goal is something that you really believe in. It's like working magic.
 
 So I mean, the nuclear sector right now, I mean, we are about 20% -something women. We need to get more women into leadership roles. We need to make sure that women progress beyond mid-career level and can become leaders on a higher level as well. We have a few very great examples of female high-level leaders in nuclear as well. I think we are on the right path in the nuclear sector. We are getting more diverse, we are embracing diversity, we are trying to make our workplaces as culturally welcoming as possible, with staff networks as well. You can find your community within a workplace or there are like women in nuclear and similar EDI organisation that are like umbrella organisation in nuclear as well. So you can find your group there and your belonging there as well.
 
 I do not really perceive myself as a role model. I'm just doing all these things because I like it, because I enjoy it, because I think they are important, and I always get very taken aback when people say that they get inspired by me. So, yeah, I'm not really seeing myself as a role model. I'm just seeing myself as somebody who's really passionate about what they are doing and I'm really enjoying it. And I see the joy that I'm bringing, especially when I'm doing STEM sessions. I can just see the joy in the children they are really enjoying it, or from the Wynn mentoring scheme, I could see how much it had benefited all these people. That is kind of what I live for To see this enjoyment and the growth of others. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing.
 
 VO: For more information about the guest featured in this episode head to stemazing.co.uk/podcast and to join the inspiration and inclusion revolution just visit stemazing.co.uk. With thanks to Alexandra Knight and our production team at What Goes On Media. This is STEMazing.