The Equality Commission for Northern Ireland is creating a new series of podcasts as part of their work on improving the representation of women in STEM subjects and careers.
The series of short podcasts feature interviews with local women in interesting and rewarding STEM careers. Six are being recorded with Rebecca McKinney of Cool FM and the seventh and last one will be Prof Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, in conversation with Alan Meban.
Episode 1: Mairead Meyer
The first in the series is with Mairead Meyer from Openreach. An engineer by background, she leads a team of more than 750 engineers who maintain the telephone cables, ducts, cabinets and exchanges that connect homes and businesses to the broadband and telephone network. Mairead talks about her own career as well as some of the opportunities open now to girls and young women in telecommunications.
Episode 2: Sarah Jane Kelly
The next features Sarah Jane Kelly, a fingerprint specialist at Forensic Science Northern Ireland. Forensic science is fast becoming a popular career choice for students and there are now more than a hundred forensic science courses on offer at UK universities. Sarah Jane specialises in fingerprints and visits crime scenes as well as recovering fingerprints from items that have been submitted to the laboratory. She tells us what’s like to work in forensic science, and explains what qualifications are needed to enter this exciting line of work.
Episode 3: Lynda Kennedy (statistician)
Statistician Lynda Kennedy tells Rebecca McKinney about her work at the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency in this episode of The Equality Commission’s Women in STEM podcast. Good statistics are absolutely essential if we want to have Government decisions, laws and policies based on evidence. And they’ve been crucial during the pandemic to give health professionals and political leaders a clear view of the situation. Lynda is the deputy principal statistician with NISRA and talks about her route into statistics, and her experience in the job to help you decide whether it could be the career for you.
Episode 4: Louise & Maisy (IT at PWC)
Women make up a tiny proportion of programmers and software developers in the UK. In this episode of the podcast, Louise Black (PWC’s Women in Tech lead) and Maisy Sinclair (a student sponsored by PWC) talk to Rebecca McKinney about what their jobs involve, what attracted them into a career in technology, and what qualifications are necessary.
Episode 5: Alison McCoubrey (surgeon)
Alison McCoubrey is a consultant general and colorectal surgeon with the Northern Health and Social Care Trust. Women make up more than half of medical graduates, yet the proportion of female consultant surgeons is just 13%. Alison talks to podcast host Rebecca McKinney about what inspired her to train to become a surgeon, how long it took, what personal characteristics are useful, what the workload is like, and how patients react to a female surgeon.
Episode 6: Susan McCambridge (marine biology)
Fancy a career that allows you to scour beaches at dawn? Susan McCambridge is an intertidal ecologist with the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs. She tells our Women in STEM podcast Rebecca McKinney about the best bits of her job, the qualifications needed to study marine biology, and the gender balance in her field. It’s not a nine to five job, but Susan loves being able to spend so much time working outdoors despite the weather.