After a successful expedition for a large group of women from around the engineering world Katy comes back to talk to us, almost a year on from the first plans last year.
Podcast Show Notes
Katy Toms Returns from STEM Malawi Engineering Expedition
Katy Toms is an accomplished Civil Engineer and Chair of Institution of Civil Engineers Plymouth, and Senior Vice Chair of ICE South West Regional Committee. She is currently at WSP as Senior Engineer.
We caught up after she and the large group of women returned from Malawi Expedition. The passion she has for working with others and having a possible effect on the community with Engineering shows through in this as well as all her past work. As Katy put it "Working in engineering and construction gives you the opportunity to be part of something bigger than yourself."
Learn from the Cliff Notes on STEM Malawi
- Listen again to Ep13 Katy Toms planning
- Listen again to Ep22 Gemma and Jess join the expedition
- The come back to normal life after such an expedition
- They all learnt brick laying, plastering, painting
- Katy - "Everyone embraced every role"
- Ran ten STEM activities on trip for the students
- Two nurses on trip, and try ran first aid classes too and with the teachers
- Similar to hands on sessions in UK, from electrical engineering to planning and cleaning water
- Katy - "Positive feedback from everyone"
- Learning when there about women's "no sex for fish group"
- Katy - "So much more than just a building"
- Built on going relationships with the school
- Made sure all people helping were paid fairly
- Potential for thousands of students to benefit
- "One student told Katy "I'm sad, they will graduate and not use the facilities"
- Being positive role models as a short term successful goal
- Would love to drag my husband over in the next 5 years
- Advice for other groups who are inspired to do an expedition - Katy happy to speak to you
- Loads of groups who you can join doing things like this
- Recommend Orbis Expeditions they make the right connections and make it sustainable
- Katy - "It is so rewarding"
- Since returning has taken on role on Humanitarian Aid Comity
- A documentary of the project set for release after august trailer
This episode of Cliff Notes Podcast: Lead manufacturing, host and founder of Holdingbay Tristan Bailey talks to Katy Toms for the Cliff Notes podcast. Katy is an accomplished Civil Engineer and Chair of ICE Plymouth, Top 50 Women In Engineering 2017 and now a Senior Engineer at WSP.
As a personal journey Katy went to Malawi with group of women from across the UK in May 2018 and then back in 2019 to trade skills with Malawian women entrepreneurs and build new school classrooms .
Resources
- Contact Katy at https://twitter.com/katytoms1
- Follow the project https://twitter.com/STEMBuildMalawi
- Tailer for the documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgCvQnceLoQ&feature=youtu.be
- More about WSP http://www.wsp-pb.com/en/WSP-UK/
- Also featured in The Manufacturer Female Engineer Article
- Tweet to us @cliffnotespod
#stem #mfg #women #malawi
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