FLAVIA TATA NARDINI

CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, FLEET SPACE TECHNOLOGIES

Flavia Tata Nardini is literally a rocket scientist. But she wants you to know you could be one, too – or at least work with one. “We need great women engineers, software developers and team leaders,” she says of the space industry, which received a boost in Australia with last year’s announcement of the government’s new Australian Space Agency. “It’s time to jump into this industry!”

With two degrees in aerospace engineering, she’s more qualified to say that than most. After working at the European Space Agency in The Netherlands, in 2013 she moved to Australia and co-founded her first start-up, Launchbox, which enabled schoolchildren to launch nano-satellites.

“There are way more females in engineering in Europe than Australia,” she says (in countries such as Lithuania, Bulgaria and Latvia the majority of scientists and engineers are women). “There is a tremendous lack of awareness about what space technologies actually are and what you can get to do. I think it’s a lack of exposure – if girls aren’t exposed to something they’ll never know if they love it.” Tata Nardini is certainly someone who loves what she does. “Space engineering is great! You get to build rockets!” she says.

Her second start-up, Fleet Space Technologies, was launched in 2015, and last year it sent its first group of satellites – which have the capability to connect devices remotely through the Internet of Things – into orbit. Currently Fleet’s clients are in the agriculture and logistics industries, but the applications of what Tata Nardini calls “the next industrial revolution” are endless.

She is adamant that being a woman has never held her back in her career. “We’re in an amazing country, in which there are no issues for women to work in any industry. I’ve been working in a maledominated industry for years. I founded a start-up with a oneyear-old baby, I founded a second one when I was nine months pregnant. I raised capital with a baby in my arms. It’s just about hard work. You don’t have to work double, you just have to work.”

“IF GIRLS AREN’T EXPOSED TO SOMETHING THEY’LL NEVER KNOW IF THEY LOVE IT”