Women in Hardware
women in hardware
There are strides to be made within the tech industry when it comes to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. This is especially so for Hardware, and to support this mission we want to launch a series of focused events. This event, “Women in Hardware,” highlighted the experiences of women in the hardware and engineering fields. It included introductions, personal stories, and professional journeys of various speakers, alongside panel discussions, Q&A sessions, and pitches.
Emily, an engineer, spoke about her journey, starting in electronics and EVs, working at Rocket Lab, and later transitioning into software development. She reflected on the cultural and structural differences between hardware and software work environments.
Dulsha, a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland and originally from Sri Lanka, shared her academic and professional journey. She discussed the challenges of balancing a career and family, along with her experiences navigating gender and cultural diversity in engineering.
Kate, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student working at Halter, described her experiences juggling studies and internships, as well as her role in production engineering. She also recounted the challenges she faced in scaling up production in a startup environment.
Key Themes Discussed:
Gender Inequality in Engineering: All speakers highlighted the difficulties of working in male-dominated teams, including a lack of representation, unconscious biases, and the additional effort required to establish credibility.
Cultural Diversity and Inclusion: The discussion touched on the importance of promoting inclusivity beyond gender and emphasized the need for broader cultural diversity.
Workplace Negotiations and Career Advancement: Speakers shared stories and advice about negotiating salaries, asserting themselves in technical roles, and the value of transparency and strong support networks.
Q&A Sessions:
During the Q&A, the audience posed questions on topics such as navigating cultural diversity, securing internships, and transitioning between engineering disciplines. The conversations underscored the importance of mentorship, allyship, and the active participation of men as supporters of diversity in the workplace.
Networking and Pitches:
The event concluded with an open pitch segment, where various attendees and startup representatives introduced themselves, shared opportunities, and sought collaborators.
SPEAKERS
Speaker 1: Kate Davenport from Halter
Kate is a 4th year Mechanical Engineering student at the University of Auckland, who has been interning with the Production team at Halter for nearly two years. During her internship, she has played an important role in bringing several products to mass production, gaining hands-on experience in setting up production lines, developing reliable processes, and designing testing jigs. Kate is passionate about tackling challenging problems and is an advocate for increasing female representation in engineering. In her free time, she enjoys baking, making music, and bouldering.
Speaker 2: Emily Melhuish from Multitudes
Emily loves to be involved in a range of things from blowing up circuits to riding horses to rockets. She's an Electrical Engineer by trade but has found herself working in the realms of software and data science. With a passion for both hardware and software, she hopes to combine the two to make technology smarter and more sustainable. She’s worked at Rocket Lab and Halter. Currently, she is leading engineering at Multitudes, a startup providing engineering metrics that aren’t creepy to unlock happier and higher-performing teams.
Speaker 3: Dulsha Kularatna-Abeywardana
For Dulsha, becoming an electronics design engineer had always been her passion, to combine her creativity and technical skills to change the world for future generations. As a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland, she uses her passion for teaching to enlighten and guide students to excel in electronics engineering. Through role modelling, encouragement and confidence building female students are more likely to follow careers in STEM fields, and so within her role at the university and the IEEE Women in Engineering society Dulsha extends her knowledge and services to encourage women to reach their full potential in the engineering profession.
MC: Mikayla Stokes
Mikayla Stokes is a mechatronics engineer at Crown Equipment making autonomous forklifts. She loves using tech to make cool wearable things like a light-up dress or 3D printed earrings. She's passionate about creating an inclusive community where any kid can pursue a future in STEM, and is the two time overall female winner of the BrightSparks inventing competition.
Event Sponsors
Lune Digital
Lune Digital is an embedded systems expert specialising in high-tech, IoT and wearable solutions. For the past 10 years, Lune Digital has been assisting visionary companies with hardware design, electronics engineering, embedded software development, and technical advice. They excel in optimizing battery life, boosting power efficiency, enhancing wireless connectivity, and creating scalable, future-proof systems.
Outset Ventures
Outset Ventures are committed to empowering overlooked science and engineering innovators to transform their ideas into groundbreaking ventures, helping them succeed at the critical early stages. As New Zealand's center of gravity for science and engineering startups and scaleups, Outset is home to a community of 40+ founder-led companies, 5000 square meters of laboratory and workshop spaces, and the country's most active deep technology investment fund.
lowndes jordan
Lowndes Jordan is a top niche law firm with corporate, commercial, property, employment, IP and litigation service offerings. The firm acts for a wide range of organisations across the spectrum of maturity from startups through to listed companies/multinationals. Lowndes Jordan has deep expertise in the startup space, having acted for startups, founders, investors and employees of startup companies on a wide range of matters including capital raising (including crowdfunding), ESOPs, shareholders’ agreements and disputes, IP protection and licensing, commercial contracts, US flips, acquisitions and IPOs.
blackbird
Blackbird Ventures is a venture capital fund based in New Zealand and Australia. Blackbird backs generational ambition and invests in the best startup companies, all the way through their journey from idea to beyond IPO.