With Christmas lurking around the corner, WESBath couldn’t have thought of a better gift. Seminar and a networking event with representatives from P&G, mince pies and drinks. We also had the former WES president amongst us. Icing on the cake!
Irina Yanshina, who works at the Supply Network Operations department (SNO-One of the many acronyms P&G is fond of!), spoke to us about the structure of P&G and what her job is like with SNO. She claimed that her love for travelling and adventure was well catered to by her job as her role in the company involved a lot of travel.
Sandra Martinelli spoke about her journey in P&G (she has never worked anywhere else!) and her career development in the Engineering sector. As our audience largely comprised of soon to be graduates, this was a definite morale booster. Her job profiles have been varied and never once monotonous. From designing equipment which made Pringles (She got free Pringles!) to going down to the plant with a toolkit to troubleshoot problems, she shared her views on how imperative it is to have a sound background in both theoretical as well as practical aspects of engineering. Another highlight of her talk was the gender equality which P&G maintains while recruiting employees and how P&G lets women especially to make choices and allows them to have flexible career profiles which helps them balance both their personal and professional life.
Paul Dodd, also from P&G, was present to illustrate the fact that support of male engineers/ co-workers has a positive effect on the development of women engineers and offered useful insights and suggestions to some of the questions posed by the audience.
I also got a chance to interact with Dawn Bonfield, former WES president who was keen on hearing all about the student WES conference which took place in Birmingham a few weeks back. She was impressed with the active representation WESBath had at the conference.
I am eagerly looking forward for the series of exciting events WESBath has in store the next year (The IET event in particular!). It is always exhilarating to be amongst motivated and passionate women engineers.
Have a lovely Christmas break!
Parimala Shivaprasad,
PhD student, Department of Chemical Engineering
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