STEM Wana Trust is proud to collaborate on this official Ada Lovelace Day 2021 event designed especially for Aotearoa- New Zealand. Featuring some amazing wāhine toa women working in Engineering and STEM.
Join us for a fascinating discussion about engineering challenges and opportunities
About this event
Ada Lovelace Day and STEM Wana Trust invite you to join Sujata Roy, system planning engineer at Transpower, Renée Young, associate mechanical engineer at Beca, Natasha Mudaliar, operations manager at Reliance Reinforcing, and Victoria Clark, senior environmental engineer at Beca, for a fascinating conversation about the challenges and opportunities of engineering.
About our speakers
Renée Young
Renée is an associate mechanical engineer, project manager, boxer and coach. She is passionate about the empowerment of women through community and support to break through gender industry boundaries within construction, STEM and the sport of boxing.
In her 15yrs experience throughout the Asia Pacific and North American construction market, under representation of strong female leaders in top executive roles ignited a passion for further engagement within the early years of young women. Whether it’s through Mana Enhancing Self Defense Workshops for at risk girls living through trauma or educational engagement promoting females in STEM outreach programmes; Renée’s mantra is to give back to her Wāhine Toa and strengthen us all.
Victoria Clark
Victoria Clark is a senior environmental engineer at Beca. She graduated from The University of Canterbury in 2013, with a bachelor of natural resources engineering, following which she joined Beca. She spent my first year at Beca on secondment at SCIRT, gaining invaluable experience and meeting great people and now has over five years experience working on a variety of 3-waters design projects, with a focus on stormwater, however ranging through pipe, irrigation, pump station and wetland design. Last year, she returned from a Volunteer Service Abroad assignment in the Cook Islands, where she volunteered as a water engineer for six months. Her role was to help to improve water supply systems in the Pa Enua (outer islands).
Natasha Mudaliar
Natasha Mudaliar is a passionate civil engineer with a BE(Hons) from the University of Auckland. She has been in industry for just over 2.5 years and has worked for some of NZ’s largest construction and consultancy firms, such as Fletcher construction and Opus (now known as WSP).
Following completion of her degree, she started her career as a Graduate Transportation Design Engineer at WSP and quickly worked her way up to becoming a Transport Design Engineer. She has played an active role in high performance alliance project teams and soon enough was given the responsibility to own and look after design packages, taking them from 50% detailed design to issue for construction.
Her experience grew in roading and roadside feature design, including walking and cycling facilities. With a number of major projects under her belt, she became the operations manager at Reliance Reinforcing, the family business. Reliance Reinforcing are a start to end rebar company, providing full service for customers, including carrying out measures, detailing, cutting, bending, prefabbing and placing of reinforcing steel.
Sujata Roy
Sujata studied at Epsom Girls’ Grammar School in Auckland after which she pursued an engineering degree in electrical and electronics engineering at University of Auckland. She was inspired by a group of women from the Women In Engineering network who convinced her that engineering was a way to serve society using mathematics and science.
Sujata worked briefly in the electronics field with electronics of household appliances, before choosing to specialise in power systems. Sujata Roy has worked in the power systems field at Transpower for almost 7 years, including the last 5 years as a system planning engineer.
Sujata is passionate about communicating complex information in a simple manner and improving user experience by understanding their needs through design thinking techniques. She had an idea to communicate planning information in a quick and interactive way, so Sujata drove the development of the public visualisation tool ‘TPR Envision’. She is currently driving the development of another visualisation tool- ‘Envision Opportunities’- which will indicate to new generators and load connections where there is capacity and system strength available.
Sujata is a board member of Young Energy Professionals Network, and is active in the industry network which aims at giving young professionals opportunities to network with industry leaders and hosts seminars. She recently organised the panel session on ‘energy poverty’, a social justice cause within the energy sector.
About Ada Lovelace Day
Ada Lovelace Day is an international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) which is held every year on the second Tuesday of October. It aims to increase the profile of women in STEM and, in doing so, create new role models to encourage girls and women to study STEM and support them in their careers. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s celebrations will again be held online, with three webinars and a content extravaganza on social media.
Ada Lovelace Day is run by Finding Ada, which also runs the Finding Ada Conference, an online event covering careers, equality, and widening participation; and the Finding Ada Network, an online mentorship platform. You can watch some of our past events on our YouTube channel or public Patreon page.
About STEM Wana Trust
STEM Wana Trust is a registered charity in Aotearoa, New Zealand, that works to promote awareness of opportunities in STEM to young people and their whānau (families) through community events, collaborations and meaningful partnerships. It runs a portfolio of community based projects and events, including the award winning Tauranga STEM Festival (STEMFest) and other STEM outreach initiatives.