Engineering isn’t just about technical prowess; it’s about effectively conveying ideas, leading teams, and advocating for positive change in the industry and society at large. Our guest, Dr. Nike Folayan, MBE, challenges the stereotype that engineers lack communication skills, showcasing how effective communication is crucial in the field. With over 20 years of experience, Nike bring her passion for increasing diversity in engineering to her roles as technical director at WSP, founder of AFBE-UK and trustee of Stemettes. Her work emphasises that strong communication skills are essential for engineers to collaborate, innovate, and drive change.

The Comms Takeaways

[Intro music]

Nike: You’d view a person coming in as someone that didn’t have anything to offer, and you had to tell them everything and teach them everything.

Now I think, oh, what are they gonna, what’s new, what am I gonna learn from them? And that’s actually made a difference to who I am,

Maaria: Welcome to Pros and Cons. In this podcast, I talk to people about their professional and personal stories, uncovering the different ways and common themes of resonating with an audience. After all, communication is essentially storytelling.

I’m Maria Ginai and today I’ll be talking to Dr. Nike Folayan, Technical Director at Engineering Consultancy WSP and Co-Founder of the Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers UK. Settle in as we learn about antenna design, diversity challenges in engineering, and how curiosity about a television set led to becoming the Technical Director at one of the largest engineering consultancies in the world.

 thank you for joining me. We’re going to talk a little bit today about you, who you are, your journey and what you’ve learned about communication through your life.

So, I would describe you as an engineer who is inspiring the next generation and making the world a better place for engineers of the future. So that’s my little quick summary of you. But as you said, before we start recording, you’re an expert on your life. So, tell me a bit about yourself and your career.

Nike: Okay. So, thank you for having me. It’s a real pleasure to be here. My name is Nike. I am an engineer by day, and I always say I’m an engineer by night as well. Just to be sure. I’m a technical director as a company called WSP. It’s one of the largest engineering consultancies in the world. And I am also co-founder and co-chair of the

The Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers UK, an organisation I founded alongside Dr. Oli Folayan, who happened to be my brother back in 2007 um, and yeah, so I, my, my passion and my love is to ensure that we can continue to show that our industry, which is less diverse than it should be, is diverse.

For creativity to exist, we need skills and talent. And so that’s what I focus on, enabling people to acquire the skills and to demonstrate their talent in an industry that can be very exclusive.

Maaria: and on that, you, how did you get into engineering in the first.

Nike: Ah, so that’s an interesting one. I Love television. That is why I became an engineer. I became an engineer strictly because of television. Because when I was younger, I would look at we had a, the old style that looked like a box, TV box. And I always wondered how, you had the images, the people.

To me, they were just people within the box. And my dad would say, oh, it’s an aerial. And I’d be like, an aerial? And then he’d this is what the aerial looks like. And I’m like that’s a piece of metal. How do these people, do they crawl into the,

Maaria: still doesn’t

Nike: exactly. Do they just crawl into the, how do they get into the TV?

the old-style TV had these printed, green printed circuit boards, and they had vents, and you could see through them, and I used to try and poke them to see whether maybe one of

those people might Yeah, the people were alive. They’d come out and I’d find that there was a whole world out there of little people that just existed in this TV box.

And so that’s what got me into engineering. That’s what got my interest in engineering. And I was always interested in electronics. But I didn’t know it was engineering per se. I just thought it’s electronics. But I also loved maths, I also loved physics specifically. I didn’t quite like chemistry, didn’t make any sense to me, still doesn’t.

 And so, when I came to choose my subject, I was like, yeah, this is something that I really want to do. And I remember saying to mum and dad electronics, something I really want to do, engineering. And I remember my mum feeling a bit apprehensive about it and thinking, oh, this is not a real thing.

A subject for girls this isn’t something that you really want to do. Maybe architecture, that’s good, that’s nice, that’s creative, right? But I, obviously I knew that wasn’t what I wanted to do. So, I did uh, study for a degree in electronics engineering. And then, because of my passion for and love for aerials antennas or to understand how signals work.

I went on to study for a PhD in antenna design. So, I have actually personally designed a few interesting antennas and have gone on to support particular industries. And then I then decided that I wanted to actually work within an environment where I could talk to people because I realised that.

Also had a skill of trying to bring people together, trying to network and so I, I decided to join the industry properly and work in an engineering consultancy where I found that I was the only female on the floor of, uh, about 100 and 150 men. Yeah, so that’s the short version of my longer story.

But yeah, that’s what inspired me to become an engineer.

Maaria: And now you’re, as well as an engineer, you’re a communicator in telecommunications. So, it’s a brilliant package.

Nike: It’s all communications, ultimately.

Maaria: That’s it. Everything’s, this is what I’m saying. Everything’s about communication.

Nike: That’s right.

Maaria: So, tell me about these antennas that you’ve designed then. I’m really interested in

Nike: I worked on what we call the electromagnetic bandgap materials which are essentially materials that stop, and they determine a particular frequency range the antenna can work at. For example, you have your mobile phone, and You know, people talk about 3G, 4G and 5G. Those work at particular frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum.

So, what I did was create a system to allow specific frequencies to propagate and discourage specific frequencies from propagating. And you need that in specific environments. For example, if you went to a UN building and they were having a specific meeting and they didn’t want anything to additional signals, you’d use those materials on the walls to prevent particular frequencies from entering into the space and that sort of thing.

So that’s what I did. my main design was around bow ties. So, what I used to do was go around looking at patterns, looking at different patterns, and designing things using capacitance and inductance to determine the band gap, so determine what frequencies I was going to produce.

So, I ended up designing what I call a bowtie electromagnetic material. Which is, which looks like a bowtie and is really cute. To prevent specific frequencies from propagating in specific environments. So yeah, that’s one of my designs. Went on to look at different sorts of patterns. If you look at the sort of stuff that I did, you’d be like,

Maaria: Is this art or is this engineering? But it’s all engineering because everything is based on inductance and capacitance and how they work within these environments this is exactly it. People say, oh, engineering and art can’t mix. Engineering and science can’t mix, but the creativity in what you’ve just said alone.

Nike: Absolutely. to differ. Absolutely. To be honest, one of my designs was based on looking at a winter coat that my sister was wearing, and I just looked at the pattern and I thought this might work. Maybe I should try it out. And it did.,

Maaria: Amazing. It’s all connected.

Nike: that’s right.

That’s right.

Maaria: So, moving on then from the sort of creativity in your day job now, how does the creativity come into play when you’re doing your day job as a technical director for WSP?

Nike: Oh, it’s absolutely essential. For my day job. One aspect of it is looking at how. We make things work how we make things work efficiently I work in the transport sector. So, if you walked into for example the train station There is so much that goes into making it functional and making it able to function as this place that humans can existing without harm and in safety.

And so, what I do is I create in those environments, for example, I create neat radio networks. So have you ever been in a space that you walked into space and all of a sudden, your mobile stopped working and you’re thinking, Oh, okay,

yeah. Exactly. What we, what I spend time doing is I create networks, so radio networks, everything from Wi Fi networks to networks that allow people like the emergency services like the police ambulance, and fire.

To come into that space, so if there’s an emergency, they can still use their walkie talkies to find things, to find each other, to find places to set up for rescue, for example. And that requires a lot of creativity. That requires looking at the structure of the space to understand how potentially signals can propagate in those spaces.

So that’s one of the ways that I use my creativity. The other way I use my creativity is making sure that my team has the right ingredients of people to make it work. And so, people normally say things like, oh, we need the best talent. I personally don’t believe that we, Because the best talent means that you’re essentially recruiting the exact same person.

And when you have a team of exact same people, one, you decrease the creativity, and the innovation is gone because possibly they have the same sort of experiences. They’ve gone to the same sort of universities; they’ve had the same sort of upbringing. So, what I do really is build teams of people with various abilities and various kind of skills and talent so that we can come up with the most innovative designs that we have in the space that I work in.

And so, you’ll find in my team When I joined the company I work for, WSP, there was only two people there and the team is now about 34 people across the world. So, we have people in England, we have people in England, but we also have people in Scotland, and we have people in India as well that make up my team.

And the idea of the team is that we have three people. People with various abilities, various things they’re interested in. So, on my team, I was recruiting people that have the engineering core skills but have worked in different professions.

So, at a point I had someone that was yoga teacher as well. I had someone that was air hostess for a while and had joined back into the industry. And that just creates a variety because when you work on projects, like we work on across the globe, you find that you need those sorts of experiences.

You need people that have experienced different environments, which understand different cultures as well, the way different people work to create something that is innovative and really works for everybody.

Maaria: So obviously communication between people, different communication styles is incredibly important in that. And there’s the stereotype that engineers don’t really know how to communicate. They’re not good at talking to people sometimes. So how do you, fight against that stereotype and help the team who are spread all across the world communicate?

Nike: That’s not, that’s a really good, good thing. There’s a silly joke that says that What do engineers use for birth control? Their personalities. Because they don’t have any, they don’t have any personalities. But that isn’t true. We have flair, we have personalities, as you can see. But we try to, what we do effectively, on my team specifically, Is, I try to create an environment where people can actually express themselves, be themselves.

We have things like inclusion moments in our meetings, especially because we’re working across the world. It’s really important. So, one of my projects, for example, we had people working in our office, the WSP office in Colombia, where the project was, but we had people in Canada We had people in Hong Kong working on this project and we had people in the UK.

And so it was very important that I outside of those technical meetings where everyone is talking about, the technical aspects, we have those sessions where we just have a, sit down, have a coffee, have a virtual coffee, you find out what people are into, what they like, what is of interest to them, and it then builds that relationship such that when people have creative ideas, they’re not afraid to share the creative ideas and think that person’s that person is going to think I’m stupid.

Oh, that’s not going to work. So yeah, so it’s a really important piece of innovation that you have opportunities to communicate, to network, to feel that we’re ultimately humans and we’re all here to, for the greater good. And that means that we’ve got to find out about what we all kind of, our synergies and how we can connect together.

Maaria: and going on from that I guess that’s a nice little segue into what you do at AFBE which is bringing those experiences and different people into, the forefront of engineering. So, tell me a bit about the organisation and how that started and your activities.

Nike: Thank you. So AFBE is it, I, oh, We call it a labour of love because we started at a time in 2007 when inclusion and diversity was less of a topic but at a time when it was crucial that we demonstrate that people from our culture did a lot more things that was reported in the news. So when AFBE started at the time we were in, myself and Oli were in London and There was a lot of talk around gang culture and crime and at the time the Prime Minister of the day then went on to say black culture was responsible for crime and here we are sitting thinking our whole culture like really all of it not just all of the culture is responsible for the murders in London and that at the same time we were in industries that were very hostile to anyone any difference we were in organisations that were that didn’t treat us with the value that we expected when we have, studied to get the degrees that we have and we’re trying to get into the industry and just work like anyone else.

I was in the specifically hostile environment and I remember Many times I would go into ladies and just have a cry at lunchtime because of the experiences that I was having in the workplace, being on the floor of around 150 men being the only female engineer and being the only black female engineer.

And then looking at the top of our organisations and hoping that we could find people that we could talk to tell us how to navigate the space and realizing that there were no people of colour within the organisations we worked in. at those senior levels. So, we thought, hang on, we need to ensure that even if we’re experiencing this, the next generation of people that are coming into the industry don’t have these same experiences.

So, I remember at the time We drafted an email together and we said we were going to send it out to a whole load of people and ask a number of questions. The first question was, are you doing anything in your community to help inspire young people bearing in mind what’s going on in the news? The second question was, do you have anyone at the top of your organisation of colour and have you reached out to them for support?

And then we started from there to we had a lot of people saying, yeah, this is a great idea. And we said we want to set up this organisation. We think, we want to help the community, want to demonstrate that our culture is more than crime. And then also we want to change the stereotype about what it means to be an engineer.

And obviously support also female engineers, because that was really important to us both. And so, we sent this email out and we got a lot of people saying yeah, this is exciting. And then the first meeting, which was actually in Ollie’s flat, there was two of us and three other people that turned up.

And, at that point, you’re just a little bit deflated, like, all the yeses, and then, what’s going on? But we just, we carried on. for the first 10 years of AFBE, we didn’t have a single sponsor, but we organized programs in schools.

We organized programs in universities. We got people together to volunteer. We had a number of what I call affairs. So, organisations that would flirt with us, turn up to our events, but not really want to commit to being a member of AFBE. And then after 10 years because we’ve been around for 17 years.

After 10 years, we then started to get people interested started to say we know that this works. We’ve seen it work. We want to get involved in your program. And now the organisation itself has grown to near, going near 3, 000. Members, individual and student members. We have over 80 corporations that support the work that we do.

In the years, we’ve had over 20, 000 beneficiaries of the work that we do. And we’ve had people that we met at 15, 16, now working in industry and saying and I, and now I feel very old, but yeah, people that have really benefited from what we’ve done. And we continue to. Hope that our industry is more diverse.

When we started our industry, I believe it was around 4 percent ethnic minority people. Now it’s around 9%, which doesn’t sound huge. But it is, if there wasn’t a drive to make change happen, that would have been even less than where we are today.

Maaria: That’s amazing to, to get that far and to have that journey and be able to then see, the effects of it and have like actual people going, you guys changed my life. It must be just amazing to feel that, and you talked on some of the challenges at the beginning in terms of not being able to find sponsors and supporters.

What were some of the other big challenges that you faced?

Nike: So, I personally there’s this opinion, which is a wrong opinion of people that when they see people that promote inclusion and diversity and that sort of thing in, any technical spaces. They assume it’s because they’re not good at the technical stuff. And so, what I have, have had a challenge with is, people don’t understand how I can actually be a really good engineer and be promoting inclusion.

But I think it goes hand in hand, actually. I think the best engineers. are passionate about including everybody. Because, if you want, again, if you want the best innovation, You must be passionate about including everybody and so one of the challenges that I’ve personally had is kind of people understanding how I balance it myself and Oli We work in technical roles in industry and we maintain working in technical roles whilst we could have just said focused on, as people have suggested to us in the past, focus on AFBE.

But for us, it was about showcasing that technical excellence does not, it’s not exclusive to wanting an industry that is diverse and inclusive. So those, that’s one of the challenges. The other challenge is the resistance that we got at the start of our journey. And so, I’d go into meetings, and I’d say AFBE.

Its Ollie would describe it as bad breath. It was like saying I’m coming from AFBE. And straight away, people would slowly disperse from you. Oh gosh, this person. Because in the engineering space, the only diversity and inclusion at that time that was really accepted was gender related inclusion.

And for me, that was a struggle because I’m like, yeah, I’m a woman, but I’m also a black woman. So how am I going to divide myself up? I normally talk about my gender when I know that there’s an intersection between, my ethnicity and my gender and the way that I am treated in the industry and the way that I am believed in industry So yeah, so that’s that was one of the challenges.

The other challenge was acceptance, a sense of belonging. I always say to people, I’ve been in the industry for near two decades and I still some many times question whether I belong. And that’s something that I personally struggled with. And I continue to talk about because I think it’s important that if I’ve been in the industry this long and many times I still go into spaces.

And I think I still have to say actually, I’m the engineer leading this meeting, or I’m, I’m here to do the engineering bit, I’m not here to make the coffees. That’s still a constant struggle. I remember going into a meeting which I was actually leading and being at the, a coffee tea points and making a cup of tea and someone actually come walking over to me and taking the cup outta me.

I’m saying thank you, and going to sit down, and I just thought, oh my god, what’s going on? But I said nothing,

 then I said, okay, let’s start the meeting. And at this point, I think he wanted to dissolve and just disappear, those struggles that you still feel that, sometimes you can still be othered.

Sometimes you have to still assert yourself in these environments. Sometimes you still have the struggle of having to explain why inclusion is important in these environments. Sometimes you still have to talk, stop your colleagues from saying certain things because you think I can take it because I’ve been in this industry for this long, but this next generation are not, they’re just going to walk out the door if you talk to them in this manner or if they feel that you’re, you’re treating them in this manner.

So that education piece also has been, for me one of the things that have, I’ve always been there. And obviously things are getting better, but it’s really slow and sometimes it can be frustrating.

Maaria: can totally believe that.

So, you mentioned about this education piece. That is something that, you know, even now with all the efforts of, and focus on DEI, inclusivity, getting individuals, in for their experiences to help creativity and innovation in spaces.

So, what, key things do you think organisations still need to do to be able to educate or themselves or be educated on how important that is and then implement that stuff into their organisations?

Nike: That’s a really good question. I think the first thing organisations need to do is to be honest. I really, really do not believe that a lot of organisations that talk about inclusion. I don’t think they’re honest with themselves. Because they want to start at the end. They don’t want to start at the beginning.

They don’t want to start by baselining. So, if you’re really serious about inclusion, you have to baseline. You have to be honest. What does it look like in your organisation? How many people are at board level in your organisation that are different, are not the same? How many people in your middle management that are in positions of authority and decision making are from diverse backgrounds?

How many, be honest about it. And then, based on that, what programs, where are you on that journey? Are you, if you’re an ally, there’s a, what we call the allyship continuum. Where are you on that journey? Are you in the space of denial, because that’s where most people start from? Or have you started to appreciate it?

Because that’s the only way that you can move forward. The second thing organisations need to do, is they need to understand that, Outreach is great, but it’s not everything if you are trying to you know if they say if the underbelly is still rotten, but you’re trying to present the top as the shiny thing, then again, it’s not honest, is it?

So, people are experiencing, how are the people in your organisation feeling? How are they experiencing the workspaces? Are there safe spaces for them? Can they actually talk safely and freely about how they feel in these workplaces? The Royal Academy of Engineering, which is the leading UK body on engineering, did research on the engineering culture, the inclusive culture within engineering spaces, and they still found a number of things that were a challenge for a lot of people.

So, whilst the engineering spaces, creative and all that, the engineers had so many positives to say, there were still issues around machoism. and banter. Things that people are allowed to say and the issues around transparency whereby you should, you’re expected to accept things that really are hurtful and over time turn people away from the industry.

Last year, actually this year, the Engineering UK, which is another leading body in engineering did research that showed that 38, 000 women Between the ages of 35 and 60 have left the industry between 2023 and 2024. And the reality is that previous to that, there was only 16. 5 percent of women in the engineering industry.

Now, we recently had a conference curated by my wonderful, a wonderful friend of mine called Giovanni Acchiola. And The idea of that conference was to bring together and bring together a body of women and talk about things like retention and progression. And we were, all we were asking is for organisations to invest in the women at those levels so that they feel valued it was a very it was a holistic conference.

It had all this but even that sometimes in some organisation organisations were great at investing and supporting their women to attend but others were not so great. But then when it comes to Women’s Day and everything, you see all the banners and things. So, I think the third thing organisations need to do is actually invest.

Put your money where your mouth is. If you’re talking about inclusion and diversity, invest in the people within your organisation. Because if those people are not experiencing the organisation in a positive way, what can happen is that they leave. And as we’ve seen between 2023 and 2024, they leave. Where 38, 000 women have left the industry.

It’s clear evidence to my mind that there is an issue around investing in the people within organisations. So yeah, so honesty, transparency and investment are the three things I’d say if organisations did to promote inclusion would really help.

Maaria: Definitely. And do you think part of that piece, especially around understanding sort of women in organisations is that in that male dominated industry, there just isn’t that understanding at the top where those decisions are made to invest and be honest.

Nike: I think so. I think that there is a lot of theirs there are two aspects. I think there is a lot of that going on. The lack of understanding, but I also think there is a lot of ladders pulling that the women at the top need to start to take responsibility as well. What’s going on in the organisation.

How are you supporting the people in the middle? Because it’s so easy to say, we’re doing all these outreaches, we’re attracting all these women, or 50 percent of our recruitment were women, or 50 percent of our recruitment were ethnic minority and so on and so forth. But how are you supporting those at the middle, trying to either get to the top, how are you supporting them?

So going to, for example, as a man going to a women’s conference, or as someone that is not from an ethnic minority background, turning up at an event for ethnic minority people, just so that you can experience how it may feel when you’re not the majority. That really does help people. And I always challenge leaders to do this because it does make a difference to the way that they think about things after they’ve left those spaces.

Maaria: What would your advice be then to people on the other end of the spectrum? Minority people who are looking to get into engineering and can see this environment. What would your advice be to them?

Nike: I my advice to them is don’t be discouraged. I think we can only make a difference by making a difference. So, if you exclude yourself because you don’t think, I mean, who’s going to be the first if you’re not the first? Who’s gonna, who’s gonna change? If we’d, myself and Oli, if we’d accepted that we’re a minority and we’re not, never going to get to the top, AFBE would not exist today.

If you want to make a difference, you’ve got to be part of that change. Be the change that you want to see. So don’t be discouraged. There will be many situations where you feel overwhelmed by the lack of value even as a human being in general, there are many situations where you feel undervalued, but don’t use that as a basis for making the decision as to whether you’re part of an industry.

The industry is a great industry. There’s so many opportunities to innovate. I’m the sort of person that every time I walk into a space where I’ve been part of. I tell everyone, my family are kind of fed up with me like walking into places and I’m like, oh, you know, Oh, there’s your mobile work.

Oh yeah, that was me. And so on. And so don’t let that be taken away from you because of other people’s view of you, the environments they create for you, but also there are many communities now. There’s AFBE, but there are all sorts of different communities, similar, that you can be part of, to strengthen that sense of belonging in the space.

So yeah, just don’t give up, don’t let anyone, don’t let anyone put you down, don’t let anyone tell you can’t, because you can, and just push forward with it, because then when you achieve the big things, when you make a difference to the whole world, when people go into space and you’ve been part of creating that, what a fantastic feeling.

Maaria: And something you must feel all the time with the amazing work that AFBE you’re

Incredible. And you mentioned other organisations as well. You’re also not just an engineer and just a founder of AFBE. You’re also a trustee for Stemettes and Engineering UK

Nike: Yes. Yes.

Maaria: about the work you do with them and then if there’s any crossovers between sort of day job.

Nike: Yes. Yes. Yes. So, the Engineering UK is a fantastic organisation. In fact, we just had the Big Bang Fair at the NEC in Birmingham. It’s a huge a huge celebration as I call it for over 20, 000 young people to come and find out about engineering. So, they get to see various industries, immerse themselves in various activities and find out about the world of engineering.

I’m a

Maaria: I was a volunteer for three years, a while.

ago, a good long while ago, but it’s been going on for

Nike: that’s right. That’s right, isn’t it amazing? and so I’m a trustee for that organisation because I really truly believe that for us to make an impact and make a difference in the world of engineering in general we can do it through various sources, and one of them is Engineering UK.

I had the privilege to be asked to be a trustee and it just really, they’re the main organisation that really, they’re bringing together various organisations to talk about how we do outreach. They have something called the code which is a way of providing outreach and cross collaboration with it between the about 600 outreach organisations we have in the UK.

So, I’m a part of that and I am privileged to be on the board with a number of really amazing people, including heads of the professional engineering institutions in the UK like the IET, the IMechE. So that’s great to be involved. Uh, Stemettes Futures is a great organisation. Um, they promote um, STEM to girls and non-binary young people wanting to have careers in engineering and STEM and tech.

 What’s incredible about this organisation is that I’ve seen so many of these young people come through their program, working in a tech space, making a difference, really confident. Stemette Futures offers a lot of value. So, they, apart from the outreach initiatives and the fun and the food and so on and so forth, they also offer a lot of value.

Offer accreditation and qualifications that people can actually hold on to. And they provide platforms for young people as voices to actually be heard. Around issues to do with inclusion within STEM, but also around innovation, creating solutions for real world problems. I’m involved as a trustee as well in that and very proud of what STEMETs Futures does and has done for many years as well.

Maaria: So, do you get involved with on the ground stuff as well as a trustee? Do you like to do?

Nike: Oh, I do love to do that, with STEMETS, where you go to a STEMETS event, it’s just mind blowing. So I do get involved, sometimes I’m asked to do a little talk on the things that I do at my work and so on, but sometimes it’s just sitting there and just watching and seeing the creativity of some of these young people and just feeling really hopeful and inspired for the future to know that, okay, there is another generation coming, and they’re fire, they’re coming with all the creativity, they’re coming with all the innovation, and they have refused to see any barriers, they’re just, pushing ahead and going forward.

So yeah,

Maaria: It’s a really invigorating energy to be around. Do you find that you have to change your communication style when you’re talking to younger people? Especially, I feel quite old because I have younger cousins, and they are saying lots of things which I have no clue what they mean. And I feel like I’m a little grandma, so how’d you get around that?

Nike: Oh, it’s a challenge. I think I always say to people when, I’m very comfortable talking to older people. I’m not so comfortable talking to younger people because they will, they’re looking for something different, so you have to change your communication style if you really want to communicate with them.

You have to talk to them at the level that they’re at. You have to listen to them more, less talking, more listening I always prefer to have a Q& A session with young people because then you’re answering the questions that they have and you’re not talking at them.

They see things. So, for me, they see things so differently in terms of innovation and how they can actually make change happen. They’re. Okay, let’s just go out and do it. Let’s not wait and spend time talking about it. What are we going to do? How are we going to change things? How are we going to make things happen?

For me that’s really progressive. Yeah.

Maaria: the way you work across your day job and the activities that you do? I

Nike: It does. Because, obviously, each year, a set of graduates, or sometimes apprentices, and so on, and they’re coming from that background. They’re coming from that space. But every time I find that when I actually talk to them and I listen to them, I learned something new. So, for example, I was working on a project, and we were thinking about the challenges with maintaining equipment.

And one of them just said, oh, can’t we just use augmented reality? And I was like, how? And he came up with this whole presentation around using AR and virtual reality and augmented reality for maintenance. And he said, oh, I saw this video and I think it’s interesting. And we presented this to the clients and the client was like, oh, this is fantastic.

We’re going to incorporate this into our design. And I just find that listening to them sometimes and just taking notes sometimes does make one, it makes a difference to How designs happen, but it also makes a difference to them to know that their contribution is valued in those spaces and it’s actually making a difference.

So yeah, it’s it’s interesting I did a talk recently to a group of, so the BSP does placements, they’re prolific at doing placements and those sorts of things. And they had a placement student, and I had to do an introduction on railways. And I did a talk on railways, but I also talked about the stuff I do at AFBE and, and after the talk, they were asking me all sorts of questions from, I had a kind of H& M billboard thing, and they were asking me about that, they were asking me all sorts of things that I hadn’t even thought about.

And I talked about working on projects across the world, and one of them was like, oh, so which Jollof rice do you prefer? And I was just like, okay. I’m talking about engineering, but this is much more fun because they are more about the whole person and not about, okay, this aspect of your life or this aspect of your life.

So yeah, very inspiring to think that I can actually talk about my whole self in this space. And that has actually influenced the way that I view, in the old, older days. You’d view a person coming in as someone that didn’t have anything to offer, and you had to tell them everything and teach them everything.

Now I think, oh, what are they gonna, what’s new, what am I gonna learn from them? And that’s actually made a difference to who I am, made me a much better person. So yeah.

Maaria: think that’s a brilliant thing that people can take away, like a mindset, like what can I learn from this person or the situation and in anything that they do? What would you like to see in the industry of engineering then in the next five or ten years?

Nike: In the next, and this is really ambitious, but in the next five years, I would like to see better representation at all levels. At the moment, over 33 percent of the engineering students, UK domiciled engineering students, studying for a degree in engineering are from black and minority ethnic backgrounds.

However, there’s only 9 percent of us in the industry. I’d like to see that changed. I’d like to see the translation of people actually studying for a degree. engineering into the industry being comparable numbers. There was research to show that if you are white male, you’re 71 percent likely to get a job within the engineering industry, post-graduation, within, I think, a year post graduation.

If you’re a black male, you’re only 58, or is it 48 percent likely to get a job in the industry. I’d like to see that change in the next 5 years. I’d like to see also the number of women retained in engineering to increase. It’s really heartbreaking that we are losing women and we’re losing women at a critical age of 35 and 60 when they should be going towards leadership, progression and so on.

I’d like to see a reversal of that. I’d like to see also more focus on inclusion within organisations, more creation of sense of belonging, more safe spaces within an organisation than there is currently. So yeah, those that’s not a lot to ask right, in five years’ time.

Maaria: Have. Goals to strive towards.

Nike: Yes,

Maaria: these are important things that are only going to help. Not just the engineering industry, but every industry to, to innovate and evolve.

Nike: Absolutely.

Maaria: is going to be a big thing to help reach these goals. So, in your opinion, what are the most important things for effective communication?

Nike: Effective communication is, for me, number one is active listening. active listening because, yeah that’s really important for you to be able to communicate. Active listening. The second one is clear ambition. Clear ambition. What I mean by clear ambition is, knowing what outcomes that you want to achieve.

It’s one thing to say, oh yeah, we want to increase, we want to promote diversity. How? What? What are you trying to achieve? What’s the outcome? No one knows. So, people don’t believe you. Yeah, because you haven’t actually said anything. Communicating your ambitions really clearly. For me, the third one is openness.

In communication, openness is really important. I see a lot of diversity and inclusion strategies within organisations that say a whole load of things, but don’t actually talk about number one, don’t talk about what the current situation is. Oh, we’re going to do all of this stuff. You have never published your gender pay gap reporting is, by law, you have to do it, but ethnicity, for example, or even disability or any other strand of diversity publications around that.

So, if you’re really going to communicate an idea and if people are going to believe that this is something that you really care about, it’s got to be included. And then final one, a bonus one is, if you are really going to communicate with people, you’ve got to be bold. You’ve got to be bold.

I was listening to something where someone had said they were trying to use microaggression, but they’d said microindescription. And that really gaslighted me personally and I thought, What the hell is micro indiscretion? They don’t mean microaggression, but because they were trying to soften it, they thought that was a better word to use.

So, I think sometimes it’s about boldness, about saying it as it is. It may be uncomfortable, sometimes, for people. I know you don’t want to, turn people away, but at the same time, you need to be bold in your communication. You need to be bold about what you’re saying, otherwise no one’s actually gonna listen to what you have to say.

Maaria: I love that. I love that end piece of being bold and just being clear. Don’t try and fluff anything because people sometimes don’t know what it means.

Nike: right. that’s, right. That’s

Maaria: the opposite of effective communication.

Nike: right.

Maaria: Brilliant. Oh, it has been an absolute pleasure talking to you, Nike. I can’t believe the time has gone already.

I don’t know where it’s gone but thank you so much for joining me and telling me a bit about your amazing career and the amazing stuff that you do with your organisations. And I wish the best for you with AFBE. I be keeping my eye on

it, seeing what’s going on.

Nike: Thank you.

Maaria: So, I think there’s one more question that I would like to end.

Nike: Yes.

Maaria: And it is what’s the one thing you would like to leave people listening with?

Nike: I’d like to leave people with, Be courageous. Courage is the most important thing that I found in my career and in my life. Have the courage to do what you need to do to make what you want to happen. Yeah.

Maaria: Incredible. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: Nike’s passion for making her industry a more diverse space is inspiring, and I love the idea of being bolder with your communication. Sometimes we need to say it as it is if we want people to really hear what we’re saying. We also touched on being open and actively listening to those around us, particularly younger generations.

If we want to progress, especially in life science, we need to be open about our intentions and ideas and be open minded to new ideas from avenues we might not have thought about.

You can find more information about this episode on the Mowbi website. Find the link in the show notes. If you want more pros and cons, why not subscribe on your favourite podcasting platform? You can follow us on Instagram, at prosandcomspodcast, join in the conversation on YouTube and let us know what you think of pros and cons by rating us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.