Podcast Episode #69 guest is the stellar Felicity Furey. She’s Co-Founder of Power of Engineering and Machinam. She’s a social entrepreneur, engineer, and sought after speaker. In the conversation, you’ll hear all about the fierce work she is doing in STEM and education spaces.
Echoing some of the sentiments of last week’s podcast guest, Ally Watson (Code Like A Girl), Felicity agrees that there is a lack of diversity in the STEM world. In her work as an engineer, she says that she can generally anticipate to be the only female out of 13 professionals in a meeting. Seeing the reports of such an imbalance in gender equality within the field, she decided to lead a movement to make a change.
Power of Engineering is doing their part in transforming the space by introducing girls and regional students to what engineering is. Machinam, on the other hand, provides incredible learning resources which connect the dots between maths and its real life application.
From their surveys, Felicity has seen that Power of Engineering’s initiatives, like their one-day events, have lead to an 80% conversion rate to young students choosing engineering as a potential career pathway. So far, over 8,000 high school students have participated in their events!
Machinam’s ‘In Real Life’ learning resources are also making a big difference in the way young students perceive maths education. By presenting a learning framework that clearly demonstrates the real world’s use of maths and its direct relevance to life, students feel more encouraged and inspired.
Felicity takes a fearless approach in setting big goals, and actually found that doing this has set her up for the best learning experiences.
Another key factor of success which she emphasised is building a reliable and professional team to help advance the organisation’s objectives. She adds that with a solid sense of mutual purpose, the performance of volunteers and collaborators is elevated because they obtain huge value in their own development and learning.
We are looking forward to see the terrific work Felicity will continue to do. If you enjoyed our conversation with her, please subscribe by clicking this link, and give us a rad 5-star rating.
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This week’s podcast was brought to you by our friends at The Wade Institute.
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