Rising Above: Celebrating Women in Engineering

This month on Altitude, we tuned in to a special episode celebrating Women in Engineering. But this wasn’t just a celebration — it was a reckoning, a reflection, a rallying cry. More than anything, it was a powerful reminder: engineering isn’t just about things. It’s about people.

Joining host Russell Porter were three remarkable voices in the field: Josna Joies, Surveillance Systems Engineer at NATS; Dr Fiona Cayzer, Head of Human Factors at BAE Systems (Air); and Yvette Lawrenson, Regulatory Lead at Windracers. No PowerPoint. No buzzwords. Just three engineers sharing their work, their journeys, and the questions that first sparked their curiosity.

Because before the calculations and the code, before the radar and the runway, there’s usually a moment — a spark. For some, it’s the memory of pressing a forehead against the cool glass of an aircraft window. For others, it’s a childhood question that never quite faded: How does that even work?

Josna remembers numerous squabbles with her siblings for that window seat on summer holiday flights back to India. She didn’t know it then, but those glances out the window were her first engineering lectures. Why do the wings change shape? How can something so heavy fly? Curiosity, after all, is often just wonder that won’t let go.

But it wasn’t just the machines. It was a face too. Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian woman in space. Seeing someone who looked like her up there, not just dreaming but doing, made something click. Josna decided, simply, boldly: she’d be an aerospace engineer. Today, she works on surveillance systems at one of the busiest airports in the world. And still, every time she visits Heathrow, she gets that same feeling. “It’s like I made it,” she said. And she meant it.

Yvette’s path was different, but the spark was just as bright. A curious kid who wanted to know how everything worked — from combustion engines to flight dynamics — she found herself drawn to aerospace through her sister’s university brochures. Drones soon captured her imagination. What began in a hands-on workshop became a career working on large fixed-wing UAVs for Windracers, supporting missions across remote regions, and navigating emerging regulatory frontiers.

Windracers don’t do toy drones.  These are 10-metre wingspan machines, cargo-carrying, not the kind you buy on a whim. Windracers’ aircraft have flown thousands of kilometres for the British Antarctic Survey. Yvette recalls juggling regulation, maintenance, flight ops and the odd zoom-meeting interrupted by the line, “Sorry, the aircraft just landed outside.” Every day brings something new. She wouldn’t have it any other way.

Fiona, by contrast, didn’t start out planning to be in aviation at all. A university module on human factors — chosen more by accident than ambition — led her into the quieter corners of engineering: design with a capital D. Not of hardware, but of systems. Interfaces. Workflows. The messy, complicated business of making technology that people actually use — and trust.

That trust is earned, not assumed. She recalls a moment working on the Nimrod project — a massive military aircraft, as complex as it gets. Reducing the crew from 10 to 8 meant rethinking everything: how the crew worked on board, not just the tech, but the layout, the communication, even how to evacuate through a fuselage filled with smoke. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t always plain sailing. But it mattered. And if you spent time with the people — really listened to them — they’d tell you what they needed. They just had to believe you were listening.

That’s a theme, it turns out. Listening. Trust. Credibility. And, sometimes, just showing up and being seen.

Aviation and engineering is still heavily male-dominated. Josna once had someone say, surprised, “You’re a female engineer? We don’t see many here.” She just smiled. “Well, now you do.” Everyone on this panel had their own version of that story. Fiona learning to make her voice heard in rooms full of louder ones. Yvette, discovering only in hindsight the barriers she’d quietly bypassed because no one ever expected her to be there in the first place.

It’s changing. Slowly. And not just through recruitment, but retention. Mentorship, culture, visibility — all the things that help people stay, not just arrive. Because role models don’t have to be perfect. They just have to be visible. “If she can do it, then so can I,” Josna says. It’s a line delivered lightly, but with real weight behind it.

Later, the conversation turns — as all good engineering chats eventually do — to favourite innovations. Concorde gets a nod from Josna. Sleek. Elegant. Instantly recognisable. A plane that didn’t just fly but soared — its very DNA engrained in the design of every aircraft since. Fiona picks the smartphone. Not for the tech, but for the interface: so intuitive a toddler can use it. Which is, when you think about it, perhaps the highest praise engineering can get.

And Yvette? She chooses the washing machine.

Yes, really.

“It changed everything,” she says. “Gave people, especially women, time, independence. Freedom.” She’s not wrong. It’s not always the loudest machines that make the biggest shifts. Sometimes, it’s the quiet revolutions that matter most.

Because that, in the end, is what engineering is. Not just wires and metal and code. But people. Needs. Freedom. Flight. And the spaces in between.

Watch the full episode now on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.