Read the full transcript of engineer Alexandra Knight’s talk titled “Why Visibility, Courage and Sex Matter In Engineering” at TEDxViikki 2025 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
An Unlikely Engineer
ALEXANDRA KNIGHT: I’m what you might call an unlikely engineer. I don’t have an obsession with cars or planes. I don’t have any desire to take things apart. I don’t have top grades in math or science from school. Oh, and I don’t have any need to wear a hard hat to work.
But what’s possibly the most surprising thing I don’t have as an engineer? A penis. Yes. Despite being an engineer called Alex, surprisingly to a lot of people, I’m not a man. Now the fact that I don’t fit any of these engineering stereotypes used to overwhelm me with imposter syndrome.
So if I could have told my younger self that I’d be standing on this TEDx stage as a visible role model for engineering, I would have soon to believe my pet cat at the time was a more likely candidate. Especially as for young Alex, the idea of being a visible role model for anything was unthinkable, and this all stems from an incident when I was just four years old.
A Tragic Accident
It was the summer of 1985. My mom was driving us home from a holiday in Cornwall in the south of England when we were in a head on collision with a car driving on the wrong side of the road. My mom broke the steering wheel with her face.
She was knocked unconscious and broke her ribs on the seat belt. I was flung from the back seat of the car and smashed my forehead up on the dashboard and punctured my side on the handbrake. When we were rescued from that car wreck, the two of us were not in a good way.
But what they didn’t realize was it wasn’t just the two of us in the car. My little sister was in there too, but they haven’t seen her as she was hidden under a crumpled car seat that had crushed and fractured her little skull. A paramedic did go back and found her, but they didn’t think she’d survive. Incredibly, she did, but sadly, her brain damage was severe.
Growing up with a sister who had multiple disabilities made me acutely aware of the stark inequalities in life, and I was angry. But I had to keep that rage silent. My parents were going through enough.
I felt the best way I could help my family was to be practically invisible, and that became my identity, a shy wallflower who avoided the limelight at all costs. But underneath that invisible exterior, there was a fire burning inside of me.
Engineering for Impact
Fast forward a few years, I survived school, just scraped into university, and chose to do biomedical engineering. I’m sure this decision was influenced by my sister. I wanted a vocation where I could create innovative solutions to help people, and that’s what engineering is for me.
It’s not cars, calculators, spanners, and hard hats. Engineering is innovation. Engineering is creativity combined with practical problem solving for real world impact. I like to say, “engineers turn dreams into reality.” A career in engineering should be the most purposeful, transformative vocation.
But early on, I realized we have a huge problem in our industry holding us back from the truly inclusive innovation that our world needs.
Research proves diversity drives innovation, But we have a diversity chasm in engineering. Every country is facing this challenge. Globally, around 85% of the engineering workforce are men. So we are living in an engineered world designed by men for men and this filters into every aspect of our lives.
Take the engineering of automotive safety, for example.
Women are 71% more likely to be injured than men when they’re in frontal road collisions like the one I was in and 17% more likely to die. Why? Well, crash test dummies are based on an average male. So seat belts, airbags, the engineered solutions that are designed to protect people in car accidents are designed to protect men.
We all have unconscious biases. They’re like blinkers on the way we see the world, creating blind spots. We need engineers with many different lived experiences working together to see each other’s blind spots, and this applies to anything that we are engineering solutions for and we have a lot of urgent problems in the world that need solutions.
From the climate crisis to health pandemics to ethical AI, innovative engineering is the answer, but it has to be inclusive innovation engineered by diverse minds. And it’s not just gender diversity. We need greater ethnic diversity, neurodiversity, socioeconomic diversity.
We need diversity of thought and perspective which comes from different lived experiences. So the question is, why don’t we have more diversity in engineering? And I think the key issue is you can’t be what you can’t see.
Visible Role Models
Picture an engineer in your mind. Is it a man?
Despite me standing here in front of you, if you pictured a man, you’re not alone. More than two thirds of people associate engineering just with men. Most people can’t even name a single famous female engineer. So here’s one for you. Mae Jamieson, engineer and astronaut.
A remarkable woman showing us what is possible to achieve, which is amazing. But the problem with only having a few exceptional examples like this is that it exacerbates the feeling that if you want to make it as a woman in engineering, you have to be exceptional too. And I’m living proof that you do not. You don’t have to be a genius or fit any engineering stereotypes. You can still have a successful career in engineering.
What if more unlikely engineers like me were visible role models? Then we wouldn’t be so unlikely and a wider pool of people would see themselves belonging in our fields. The common narrative that we have is that it’s this chicken and egg situation.
We don’t have enough diverse role models to inspire more diversity. Or do we?
Let me ask you all this question. Do you consider yourself to be a role model? I’ve spoken to hundreds of people about this, and the answer to that question is almost always no. And that’s what needs to change.
Most people have no idea what powerful role models they have the capability of being and already are.
Role Modeling Without Realizing
Because as humans, we are influencing people around us all the time, role modeling without even realizing it. You don’t need to wait to be any more experienced or any more qualified or any more beautiful to be a role model. Recognizing that unlocks your agency. It unlocks your power.
It’s like in the Disney movie “Frozen 2” when Elsa is searching for answers about her purpose in life.
And in the depths of that glacier in the middle of the ocean, spoiler alert, the ghost of her mother says to her, “you are the one you’ve been waiting for.” That’s how I felt when I recognized I am a role model just as I am. This is how I gave myself permission to stop striving to be invisible and instead striving to shine.
It’s this visibility that is the key to our diversity chasm. We always look at that lack of diversity in engineering with a scarcity mindset, but if you flip that view, we can open our eyes to a solution that’s right in front of us.
For example, in the UK, we only have 16% women in engineering, But that is nearly a million women working in engineering and technology that can be the visible role models we need to start a ripple effect. To tackle the gender stereotypes that cause career limiting beliefs, we have to reach children young with these diverse role models.
We have around 20,000 primary schools in the UK, so that is almost 50 female engineering role models for every single school. Imagine if every child in every country had the chance to directly engage with a real life woman engineer who was relatable and reachable. How many more girls would believe they could become engineers too?
A Personal Mission
This mission has become the focus of my life. Five years ago, I finally found a way to put that burning fire inside of me to use. I sold my house, left my nice job, and I followed my passion for equity and inclusion.
I founded a nonprofit called Stemazing that supports and empowers women in STEM to be more confident, visible role models and inspire the next generation with really fun, interactive, hands on science and engineering experiments.
I’ve worked with hundreds of women who initially didn’t see themselves as STEM role models, but have now gone on to collectively have over 150,000 amazing kids engagements in primary schools.
These everyday relatable role models are absolutely smashing stereotypes in a big way and benefiting themselves in the process by leveling up their courage and visibility. Role models like Kaylee Mills, an engineer who is deaf. Kaylee now inspires deaf children with amazing kids’ activities all in sign language.
Kaylee told me this little story about a girl who came up to her after her first amazing workshop and signed to her, “you wear hearing aids like me.” And Kaylee said, “yes.”
And she said, “and you’re a girl like me.” And Kaylee said, “yes.”
And she said, “and you’re an engineer. So does that mean I could be an engineer like you?” And Katie says, “yes.”
Recent Shifts
It’s stories like this that just show the power of relatable role models, And it’s seeing the impact of this connection that keeps me going, especially as we’re already starting to see a shift in focus on equitable and inclusive STEM solutions in recent years.
Like in automotive safety, a Swedish research team led by female engineering professor Astrid Linde has developed a crash test dummy based on female physiology. This could finally make car safety more equitable for women.
And if you need more of a business case, getting women into engineering is not just good for inclusive innovation, it’s good for our global economy too. The STEM skills shortage is costing us billions.
This just wouldn’t be a problem if we stopped alienating almost half of the population from STEM careers. So what can we do about it?
A Radical Solution
Well, the solution has to start with more female STEM role models in the national curriculum in schools, but I think we can do better than that. I’ve got an idea.
Imagine a future where the education of our young people is not just the duty of schools. It’s a shared responsibility with professionals in industry from all sectors, particularly career priority sectors like STEM, where being a visible role model in schools is not just the ad hoc voluntary hobby for a few enthusiastic people. It becomes an automatic civic duty for every adult in the country.
So as a professional, you’d expect to get called up to do your bit for the country’s education at some point. Think jury service, but for education outreach. Let’s call it education service.
Now this may sound radical, but we need something radical to accelerate the pace of change. We need many, many more everyday role models like Kaylee, people like me that are not up on a pedestal, but absolutely worthy and capable of inspiring others.
And there are millions more like us around the world who are currently missing out on the opportunity to make a difference just by being more visible. But I appreciate being more visible is scary. Visibility takes courage, especially if your starting point was as low as mine.
But believe me, giving a live STEM workshop to a class of eight year olds is possibly the best thing you can do to accelerate your confidence and competence with being more visible and a better communicator.
Fight for Equity
We still have a long way to go, but I’m optimistic about the future. My sister still faces barriers every day due to her disabilities. But despite the original prognosis that she would never live an independent life, She now runs her own business with her husband and lives a full life with their two kids. She is my role model, and she continues to inspire me to fight for equity and inclusion, not just in engineering, but everywhere in our society.
But this fight needs all of us. Let’s ensure that every child of every gender knows that your sex has nothing to do with whether or not you can be an engineer. So my plea for our policy makers in government is recognize we need a radical solution for plugging the STEM skills gap, like creating education service for everyone in the country.
My ask for business leaders is, please invest in connecting your employees with young children. So think longer term so we can inspire that long term future.
Be a Role Model
And finally, my message for every individual listening is recognize you are a role model. Be courageous. Be more visible, and be part of the everyday role model revolution for a more equitable, innovative, and inclusive world. Thank you.
