“I grew up seeing my Dad as my role model. And he is a civil engineer. So I saw him working with interesting tools and software. I remember he had this huge table with massive white papers. It had scribbles of buildings all over it, and a ruler that was taller than me.

He also had sketches on his computer. He had lots and lots of books. And all of this really fascinated me. I would even do pretend play when he was not looking.”

The wonderful quote above is from this episode’s guest, Dr. Zenan Ahmed, who is talking to Emma Nicholson as part of the series Focus on Female Engineers. Dr. Zenan Ahmed is currently a Senior Energy and Sustainability Engineer at WSP in the United Kingdom. But in her biography below you can read about more of her endeavours.

“Starting early during the formative years. I think that it’s really important how each of us are brought up in our household and how the gender bias rules are passed on from one generation to another. I think it’s really important that we eradicate that preconceived notion from a very early age.

And it’s not really about forcing people to be an engineer when they do not want to be an engineer. It’s more about exposure and validation and telling them look, this is also for you.”