I help companies build and manage the digital backbone of how products are designed and made. Imagine a massive jigsaw puzzle, thousands of parts, hundreds of engineers, factories across the world, all needing to work from the same up-to-date picture. My job is to design the digital system that keeps that picture accurate, so that when one piece changes, everyone knows instantly. I work in aerospace, which means the products I help manage eventually fly people — so getting it right really matters.
What advice would you give to your 15 year old self
Your curiosity about how things work is not a distraction, it is your superpower. Keep following it. Engineering might feel like it is not for people like you, but it absolutely is, and one day you will be working in aerospace, which was always the dream even when it felt out of reach. Do not wait to be invited into the room. Learn everything you can, ask questions without embarrassment, and never let anyone convince you that the technical path is too hard or too niche. The biggest opportunities in your career will come from the moments you backed yourself when no one else was watching. And one more thing: the skills you are building now, understanding systems, solving problems, connecting ideas that seem unrelated, will take you further than you can imagine right now.
Who or what inspired you to get into engineering?
It was a combination of small moments that all pointed in the same direction. As a child I was fascinated watching people work in garages, hands deep in engines with spanners, figuring out how things came apart and went back together. I used to break my own toys just to rebuild them from scratch because I needed to understand how they worked. And then there were the rockets. Watching NASA launches as a kid, seeing these enormous machines defy gravity, made me feel that engineering was something almost magical. I did not have a single person who pointed me towards it. It was the things themselves, engines, circuits, machines, the pure logic of how the physical world works, that pulled me in. That curiosity never left me. It just grew up and found a home in aerospace.
What are the best and worst things about the job?
“The best thing is the moment when something clicks. When you have spent weeks working with engineers, mapping out a complex process, and then you see the digital system actually reflect how the real world works and people start using it naturally, that feeling is hard to beat. I also love that my job sits at the intersection of people and technology. I am never just staring at a screen. I am constantly in conversation with engineers, manufacturing teams, quality managers, IT specialists, and senior leaders, all trying to solve the same puzzle from different angles. That variety keeps me genuinely energised every day.
The hardest part is the pace of change versus the weight of legacy. Aerospace is a heavily regulated industry and rightly so, because the stakes are high. But that means change moves slowly, and sometimes you can see exactly what needs to happen digitally while the organisational or regulatory process takes much longer to catch up. It can be frustrating to know the answer and have to wait. The other challenge is that as a woman in a technical leadership role, you sometimes have to work harder to be heard in a room. I have learned to handle that with confidence rather than frustration, but it is still something the industry needs to keep improving on.”
What was your route into Engineering?
Full-time university degree
Where do you see your industry in 25-50 years’ time?
In 25 to 50 years I believe engineering will be unrecognisable in the best possible way. The physical and digital worlds will be so deeply connected that every product, from an aircraft to a medical device, will have a living digital twin that evolves alongside it throughout its entire life. Decisions that currently take weeks of analysis will be made in real time, with AI surfacing insights that no human team could process alone. Manufacturing will be more sustainable by necessity, with zero waste targets driving entirely new ways of designing and building things. I also think the boundaries between engineering disciplines will dissolve. The engineers of the future will move fluidly between software, systems, materials, and data in a way that feels impossible to imagine today but will feel completely natural to the next generation. What excites me most though is who will be doing this work. I believe engineering will finally look like the world it serves, with women, people from every background, and voices from every part of the globe shaping how our future is built. That is the industry I want to help create, not just work in.
How does your work relate to the sustainable development goals?
My work connects to the sustainable development goals in several ways. Most directly, I work in aerospace manufacturing, an industry under enormous pressure to reduce its environmental footprint. By building better digital systems for how products are designed, changed, and managed, I help companies make smarter decisions faster, which means less waste, fewer physical prototypes, and more efficient use of materials and energy across the supply chain. This connects to SDG 9, which is about industry, innovation, and infrastructure, and SDG 12, which is about responsible consumption and production.
The digital thread I help create means that when an engineer changes a component, the impact ripples through the system immediately and accurately, rather than being discovered late in production when it is expensive and wasteful to fix. Getting it right the first time is not just good engineering, it is genuinely more sustainable.
Beyond the technical work, I am committed to SDG 5 on gender equality and SDG 10 on reduced inequalities. I am building Women in Engineering Wales to create pathways for women and underrepresented groups into engineering careers, because a more diverse engineering workforce will design better, more sustainable solutions for everyone. The problems we face as a planet are too big to solve with only half the available talent.”
Have you had any career setbacks or challenges, and how did you overcome them?
“One of my biggest challenges has been relocating internationally and rebuilding my career from scratch in a new country and culture. Moving to the UK meant starting again in many ways, re-establishing credibility, adapting to a different professional environment, and proving myself without the network I had built over years. It was humbling and hard at times.
The way I have always dealt with setbacks is by going back to learning. Education has been my anchor throughout my career. Whenever I have felt uncertain about where I was heading, or when a role did not go the way I hoped, my instinct has always been to study, to add a new qualification, deepen a skill, or explore a completely new domain. It is not something I do strategically on a spreadsheet. It is genuinely how I am wired. That drive has led me to certifications in configuration management, product management, enterprise architecture, systems engineering, and Lean Six Sigma, often pursued alongside full-time demanding roles.
I have come to see that impulse as one of my greatest strengths. Setbacks do not derail me for long because I turn them into a reason to grow. The harder the moment, the more determined I become to come out of it knowing more than I did going in.”