Event held in Portsmouth to celebrate female engineers and encourage women to pursue engineering careers

An event, hosted by Portsmouth-based technical recruitment firm Astute and Havant-based fire detector manufacturer Apollo, was held on Wednesday, January 29 to celebrate and focus on women within engineering in the workplace.

The Women in Engineering Build Your Brand: Power Your Potential event, which was held at Lakeside North Harbour, Portsmouth, hosted two renowned key speakers who provided tips and practical ideas to help organisations support female engineers.

Personal branding expert, Jennifer Holloway presented her talk, Personal Branding for women engineers, educating guests on the importance and value of personal brand and the impact it has in order to excel professionally.

The best-selling author, speaker and businesswoman provided interview and public speaking advice to the audience.

Dr Inken Braunschmidt gave insights into her journey in engineering and how diversity within innovation is crucial through her talk, Diversity, innovation and you, as well as talking about what it's like to work at the parent company of Apollo, Halma plc, where she is the chief innovation and digital officer.

In October 2019 she was named as one of the most influential women in engineering.

The two firms collaborated to help improve diversity in the industry.

Wendy Osborne, who is the head of HR at Apollo said:

‘We’re committed to achieving a diverse workforce in our company.

‘We know that engineering is a male-dominated industry, which is reflected within Apollo. As such, we’re taking positive action to address this. Not only is this the right thing to do, but more importantly, we recognise the value all diversity brings to our business.

‘It’s our intention that initiatives, such as our ambassadors visiting local schools to do fun STEM activities with the aim of inspiring more females to consider careers in engineering, and events such as ‘Women in Engineering’ that we held recently, enthuse women in their motivation to excel professionally, regardless of the industry in which they choose to enter.’