Download an annotated copy of Esther's talk.

Esther is now settled back in NZ and has started blogging. Her blog 'Reflections on a Woman in Science' can be found at: http://reflectwomenset.blogspot.com/. visit the site and have your say!

• Allow chance to play a role in your career. Lots of people now have jobs that didn’t even exist when they were young so don’t restrict yourself early!
• Grab opportunities and make your own luck.
• Follow your interests and strengths
• Network effectively. The more networked you are, the more chance and choice you will have in your future careers. Let people know what you are interested in doing and what your experiences are.
• Keep an open mind. In academia particularly people often get trapped trying to move up the ladder and realising that there are so few jobs at the higher levels.

A good source for basic data is the UK Resource Centre for Women in SET, in particular their Research and Statistics service.

The Athena Project was established in 1999 by the UK higher education funding councils, UniversitiesUK and Office of Science and Technology, Department of Trade and Industry. Its aims are the advancement and promotion of the careers of women in science, engineering and technology (SET) in higher education and research to achieve a significant increase in the number of women recruited to top posts. The site contains Reports of the ASSET surveys of higher education and research institutes as well as reports on good practice. See in particular Report 22 and Occasional Paper 5.

The Athena SWAN Charter also has case studies and fact sheets.

The Royal Society of Chemistry has produced a number of Policy Documents and Good Practice Guides.
Planning for Success - Good Practice in University Science Departments. 'Both men and women benefit from good practice; however, women in particular are adversely affected by bad practice.' In 2004 the RSC and the Athena Project launched the first Good Practice in University Chemistry Departments report which presented the good practice found in 25 chemistry departments. The revised report updates the good practice found in 2004.
The Royal Society of Chemistry have also produced reports on retention at Ph.D. level in Chemistry and in the Biosciences.

Virginia Valian's book, 'Why so Slow? The advancement of women' is a good resource, as are her webpages.

The webpages of the ADVANCE project at the University of Michigan and and WiSELI (Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute) at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have a lot of useful material.
The MIT and Princeton reports, A Study on the Status of Women Faculty in Science at MIT (1999), and Report of the Task Force on the Status of Women Faculty in the Natural Sciences and Engineering at Princeton (2003) are classics in this area.

The Open University and the UKRC have recently launched a new journal - GST - The International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology focuses on gender issues in and of science and technology, including engineering, construction and the built environment, and aims to explore the intersections of policy, practice and research.

Please let us know if you have other sources of information we can add to this resource.

The UKRC believe 'One excellent way of developing a range of skills and experience that can help women in their career is to join the board of a Non Departmental Public Body (NDPB). There are over 1000 public bodies in Britain and the government is keen to improve the gender balance of their boards. Clearly, it is very important that women are fairly represented on these boards so that policy decisions taken and advice given to the government fairly reflects the views of women as well as men.'

Read the full report of the meeting here.

The UKRC provide information on their website about public appointments and Good Practice Guides which are available to download or as hardcopies.
We thank the Women's National Commission for supplying copies of their Women in Public Life Today guide to attendees at this meeting. You can download a copy of this from their website.

Read the full report of the meeting here. Have a look at Beth Clarke's presentation and Tanya Morton's presentation.

Dr. McKernan moved from Merck to Pfizer in 2005 to become the Chief Scientific Officer for Pfizer Regenerative Medicine and set up the Regenerative Medicine Unit in November 2008 in Cambridge. On the issue of diversity, she doesn’t define herself as a woman, rather as a scientist, a parent and an author and strongly believes in diversity in teams. This doesn’t mean just mixes of males a nd females, but also people of different ages, from different countries and with different cultural backgrounds. Her experience is that teams made up of people who see the world in different ways work best. They can explore different ways to succeed and are more creative. And it is this creativity which leads to better, more profitable companies and better colleague engagement.

Dr. McKernan added “At Pfizer, the biggest barrier to increasing diversity was that managers tend to hire in their own image. To tackle this, equality and diversity training is now compulsory and ‘good behaviour’ is actively monitored and rewarded.” She believes the situation is improving in industry, unlike some other working environments. In industry there is much more control on what people are doing and more monitoring as successful work is rewarded by larger salaries.

Dr. McKernan offered some key advice to academic scientists thinking about a move into industry:

• If you want to do a Post-Doc, go abroad and expand your own horizons.
• Take on key roles both internally and externally to increase your own visibility.
• Having a mentor can be very useful.
• Don't automatically see people as competitors, you may have to work with them in the future. Don't burn your own bridges!

• Do you know it? – education, ability.
• Can you use it?– practical experience, problem solving evidence, ability to think across different dimensions as jobs will change over time.
• Do you want to do it? – motivation, stay in the lab or move into a management role?
• Can you communicate ideas well?
• Are you flexible?

• Know yourself, your skills and what you want.
• Confidence is all – gain experience, take advantage of mentoring and training offered, if all else fails act and pretend to be someone else!
• Always do the ‘right thing’ personal integrity will see you through.
• The more open you are to learning and doing new things, the more likely you are to succeed in industry.

"I found Ruth’s talk really interesting, fun and informative. I think she makes a great role model for people like me."
"I thought this was a fantastic talk. A very gifted speaker with her own take on women in science. I felt I came away with a better understanding of work in industry (and how it differs from/is the same as academia) as well as a shovel full of good advice."
"The high light for me apart from the very delicious lunch, was hearing and then meeting Ruth McKiernan. It was very good see someone that have made it to the top and to know they did not get there without some hard work, struggles and a bit of heartaches. It was very inspiring and I got some helpful pointers and advise on career related decisions I needed to take."

Lamia Walker, presented research showing that teams made of equal numbers of women and men are more innovative and effective and therefore good for business. Despite this and despite three decades of Equal Opportunity legislation, there are still few women at senior levels in business and industry, particularly in science, engineering and technology.
The event’s other presenter, Professor Virginia Valian believes that although childcare and the simple fact that fewer women enter SET careers are important issues, they don’t explain why women are still under-represented at senior levels. In fact, in subjects such as the biosciences women now outnumber men at undergraduate level but are still underrepresented in more senior posts, whether they have children or not.
Professor Valian suggested that we all hold implicit views about gender differences which advantage men and disadvantage women professionally. It is the accumulation of these small advantages which help men to succeed and women to miss out. Individuals, and the organisations we work for, need to put in place procedures to prevent us making assumptions based on gender so that the fair treatment of women and men becomes possible. And as research shows, this will be good for us all and good for business.

Prof. Virginia Valian,
Hunter College, City University of New York.
Lamia Walker, Director Centre for Women in Business, London Business School.
Research Reports quoted: Inspiring Women: Corporate Best Practice and Innovative Potential: Men and Women in Teams

Our first event was on 22nd January 2009 when Dr. Patricia Fara spoke on Ghosts of Women Past - looking at women's vital but concealed participation in science's development. Nearly 100 people came to this fantastic and informative talk. For those of you who couldn't make it, please have a look at the presentation and we'll be putting an audio transcript here shortly.
'Science: A four thousand year history' by Patricia Fara is now available. The book is a groundbreaking new history of science, from ancient Babylon right up to the latest hi-tech experiments in genetics and particle physics, illuminating the financial interests, imperial ambitions, and publishing enterprises that have made science the powerful global phenomenon that it is today. It has been listed as a contender for the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize, widely seen as the UK's most prestigious literary award for non-fiction.

Our second event was on 12th May 2009 which featured three women working in Science, Engineering and Technology today. Anne Miller, Val Gibson and Suzanne Cohen spoke about their personal career histories, discussed the qualities they believe women need to succeed, what the current challenges are in their fields and why they love what they do now. This event was held at St. Mary's School and we thank them for hosting this event and for their support.

Anne Miller, The Creativity Partnership - Anne has a background in mechanical engineering and is probably one of the world’s most successful female inventors. She now helps organisations (largely technical ones) become more creative. Anne decided she wanted to be a professional inventor in her teens after meeting a Professor in Mechanical Engineering. She went on to study engineering at Cambridge University and then worked in industry and in consulting. In 1988 she and a group of colleagues set up TTP with the mission statement “Have fun and make money”. By 2000 Anne had 39 patents to her name and has many products she invented being used today. She really enjoyed inventing and working with a team but by 2000 needed a new challenge so set up TCP as a subsidiary of TTP concentrating on organisational change and training. In 2004 she set up as an independent company enjoying deciding what to do and how to spend her own time, which included writing her first book - How to get your ideas adopted (and change the world) – for more details see www.annemiller.info. Anne knows that it is normal for people to ignore new ideas and to succeed as an innovator you need: Creativity, pragmatism (you need to be grounded in reality, to be successful your idea has to be useful), persistence (but with a degree of flexibility to enable you to adapt your ideas so they are successful), the self confidence to carry on when people are negative and the ability to listen as there will be elements of truth in people’s criticism. In addition you need to be independent and diplomatic, have enough courage to look left when everyone else is looking right and be numerate and have the basic tools of your field. Anne suggests that it takes around 10 years to gain sufficient knowledge in your field to enable you to apply your knowledge to something new! Anne believes that climate change and the transition to a low carbon economy is the current challenge we all face and her personal challenge for the future is to write a new book on why we are afraid of creativity. She thinks that we all have the right to enjoy our own jobs and would love to continue to do things that are interesting, important and profitable (and ideally all three at the same time!).

Val Gibson, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge - Val has just been awarded a Professorship and works in the area of High Energy Physics. She is the most senior woman Fellow at Trinity and is currently part of an international collaboration working on experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN, Geneva. Her very successful collaboration with CERN stemmed from a summer job opportunity after her Physics degree at Sheffield, which she obtained on the toss of a coin! During this time she met her future husband and has subsequently had two daughters who she believes are her greatest personal achievement. Her work at CERN concentrates on the LHCb experiment, which is designed to study matter/antimatter asymmetry. Val is the lead scientist for the eight UK Institutions involved and has already been working on this project for 15 years. The experiment will run for about another 15 years so all of her career will be taken up by this experiment. Val believes you need persistence and passion to succeed and that you can’t do science without being able to work with people. She relies on Ph.D. students and Post-Docs to actually do the research and that young people give her the inspiration to continue. She also believes that if you decide to do a Ph.D., you should do it in something that you really enjoy doing. Once you have completed the work you will be pulled in many different directions if you stay in academia or if you move into industry and it is at this stage that Val believes it is extremely important to get good careers advice. In addition to her academic work, Val is also involved in outreach activities including school talks and lectures during science week. She has also invented a board game, Hunt the Higgs, a game of chance and tactics based on the fundamental particles and laws of nature. This is available from http://www.hep.phy.cam.ac.uk/mc/higgs.html

Suzanne Cohen, MedImmune - Suzanne has a background in pathology and immunology and now leads a team within respiratory, inflammation and autoimmune biology, which supports preclinical development of drug candidates from target selection to clinical trials. After a degree from Cambridge and a D.Phil. from Oxford she left academia with a sound knowledge base and practical and analytical skills and moved to the Pharmaceutical Industry. She was given very little careers advice during her time at University and rather used personal contacts to find out about possible career options. She started working at Cambridge Antibody Technology in 2001 as a research scientist working on the generation of human monoclonal antibodies. CAT was bought out by Astra Zeneca in 2006. Being part of a company with 65,000 employees was a huge change with much more emphasis on making money than previously. In 2007, Astra Zeneca bought MedImmune and all biological drug development groups were brought together under this name. As part of this change, Suzanne moved more into management and now manages a cross-functional project team, which she really enjoys. She likes helping others develop in their careers although managing people can have its challenges! Suzanne has recently returned to work after maternity leave and is now having to find a successful work-life balance after years of being a bit of a workaholic. She is very proud that some of the drug candidates she worked on when she started out are now in clinical trials and believes the future is moving towards personalised medicines with no one drug fitting all people.

Our third event From School to SET: Inspiring the Next Generation of Women in SET was held on Wednesday 11th November featured a panel discussion with young women scientists. Members of Cambridge AWiSE and STEM Ambassadors from STEM TEAM Cambridgeshire took part in this event. They spoke about their careers and why they love what they do to an audience of 450 girls from both State and Independent Schools across the region. Our contribution was the final part of a day long 'Girl Leadership Day' organised by Charlotte Avery, Head of St. Mary's School, Cambridge.
Many many thanks for organising the magnificent final part of the day, it really was a pyrotechnic feast! What was so clearly conveyed by the speakers was their passion for what they do, the range of their jobs, the opportunity to travel and the importance of a flexible approach. I have no doubt that your panel have certainly focused the minds of many students and helped inspire the next generation of key female players in STEM.

So what’s an elevator pitch? It’s simply a way of introducing yourself that encourages a short conversation.
1. Be Approachable
Most of these conversations take place in a social environment so your elevator pitch must be easy to understand. You may end up with several different pitches for different audiences – professional contacts, dinner parties, the school gate etc. How you deliver the pitch is very important, it’s very easy to be patronising unintentionally and imply that someone will not understand! Don’t say “well its very complicated”, you'll put people off and you may actually be talking to someone who is an expert in your field!
2. Be Interesting
Concentrate on the benefit of your work rather than the job itself. Focus on the verb, not the noun and decide how your work is interesting to lay people. Avoid using the word research – use looking at, investigating, studying instead.
3. Be Short
It should be a 30 second conversation, not a monologue! Use humour!
Practice your elevator pitch on lots of different people and refine it using your experience of how it goes down. It’s good to have reflection from perfect strangers!
So, from the organiser of the UK’s largest regional network for women in science, engineering and technology, Happy Networking and hope to see you all in the autumn!