Career Mail The doctor engineering real change
GRoWING up in Nigeria, ozak Esu was often frustrated when power cuts interrupted her beloved cartoons on TV.
As a result, at school, she developed a passion for electronic and electrical engineering and decided to become an engineer.
Dr Esu, now 27 and living and working in Birmingham, is an electrical engineer at the global engineering consultancy Cundall.
She designs and specifies co- ordinated electrical services for buildings — fire alarms and lighting, plus security and access control systems.
She also leads projects in the UK, Europe and Nigeria.
Dr Esu arrived in the UK as a 17-year- old international student in 2008 and graduated in 2011 with a firstclass BEng degree from Loughborough University. She went on to gain a PhD there in Wind Energy and Advanced Signal Processing, while working as a graduate engineer with visa sponsorship from Cundall. Dr Esu became a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) Ambassador while at Loughborough, helping to promote STEM subjects to young people, particularly those from under-represented groups.
She is also a volunteer and member of the Association For Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers UK (AFBE-UK) and a volunteer GCSE maths tutor for The Access Project, where she helps pupils in disadvantaged areas.
As a mentor with The Visiola Foundation in Nigeria, she encourages girls into STEM careers. And she was the 2017 Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Young Woman Engineer of the Year.
Dr Esu says: ‘I am hard-working, ambitious and consistent — attributes that enabled me to succeed in my early career.
‘ But I also recognise that without the right opportunities and support, it’s not so simple to achieve one’s goals. We [male and female engineers] all need to encourage young people from under- represented groups into engineering. To young people, and especially girls, engineering is an international and global career.’ The IET 2018 YWE awards, celebrating women in engineering, are open for entries. The deadline is July 8, 2018.