Notes

"I think I've left it too late for Chartership."

I hear this more than almost anything else — usually from engineers with 15 or 20 years behind them who are, by any honest measure, more than ready.

So let me say it clearly: there's no expiry date on becoming Chartered.

This photo is from my own ceremony — October 2015, holding the certificate, still not quite believing it. I completed mine through the Institution of Mechanical Engineers well into my career, not at the start of it. And the years I thought might count against me turned out to be the evidence.

These days I mentor engineers towards Chartership across the IMechE, the IET and IOM3 — the last one close to my heart, since my degree was in Materials Science from Middle East Technical University. And the pattern is always the same: the people who think they've missed the moment are usually the most ready of all.

Chartership isn't a test of potential. It's a record of what you've already done.

So if you've been telling yourself that story: it isn't too late. It was never too late.

What's something you almost didn't start because you thought you'd missed the moment?

The most dangerous assumptions are usually the ones that have worked for years.

They become habits. Then beliefs. Then simply "the way things are done."

Until something forces you to look at them differently.

Mine was that setting the ambition level was my job. Now I write my targets down, ask the team to write theirs, and compare. Theirs are consistently higher than mine.

What's an assumption your team still runs on that nobody has tested since the last time it worked?

Twenty years ago, I was often the only woman in the room.

Last week, I watched an engineer I'd mentored stand up, disagree with a room full of senior people — and be right.

I've rarely been prouder. And it made me want to write something I've been turning over for a long time.

About what two decades as a woman in engineering actually teaches you. Not the technical things — the quieter ones. That competence, not confidence, is what keeps you in the room. That the obstacles are real and you can still build a career you love. And that the most important part of any climb isn't how high you reach.

It's the door you hold open behind you.

Someone held it for me once. It's the reason I mentor now — and the reason I believe the best measure of a career isn't how high you climbed, but how many people climbed after you.

Who held the door for you?

People used to slow right down and stare at this on the road.

Which is sort of the point of the wrap. It isn't there to hide the car — it's there to confuse the eye about its lines. Break up the surfaces so a long lens can't read the shape.

I've spent a good chunk of my career around vehicles that looked like this. Unbadged. Unfinished. Rough in ways the customer version never would be.

Here's what testing teaches you that nothing else does.

The version of something that's still in camo is not the version to judge. It isn't supposed to be right yet. It's supposed to be learning.

I wish more people gave their own early work that grace. And other people's.

At what point does your organisation start judging a design — and is that earlier than it should be?

People ask why an engineer paints.

I'm standing next to my answer.

I built this red up over weeks — layer on layer. And it taught me something I now tell every engineer I mentor:

You can't be bold on an empty canvas.

The red that looks so fearless is sitting on a foundation nobody sees — the base coats, the quiet groundwork. Skip it, and the boldest colour just soaks in and disappears.

Careers are the same. Everyone wants the brave leap — the big role, the pivot. But the ones who leap well laid the foundation first: the Chartership, the range, the reputation built one reliable delivery at a time.

So here's what I tell my mentees: Be bold. Be brave. But lay the foundation first — so when you reach for the red, it holds.

Which layer did you skip — and how long before it showed?

I went to the University of Oxford thinking I already understood leadership. I was wrong — and uncomfortably so.

Twenty years into leading teams. Which felt, honestly, a bit late to be asking the question.

Eight modules of an Executive Leadership programme. A lot of reading. And the genuinely uncomfortable bit — being made to look at how I actually lead, rather than how I'd like to think I do.

Some of it confirmed what I'd learned the slow way. Some of it stopped me completely. One thing in the first module quietly rearranged how I think about the whole job.

I came away with pages of notes. And they've been sitting in a drawer ever since, which seems like a waste.

So I'm sharing them. One module at a time, every four weeks. Whatever was actually useful, in plain English, no jargon, no "leadership is a journey" nonsense.

A few of these I thought I already had sorted. I was wrong about at least two, and I'll tell you which.

I've had the privilege of mentoring an engineer whose journey has been one of the quiet joys of my career: an industrial design degree from Middle East Technical University, a PhD from Liverpool, and today a lead user experience researcher shaping how people actually experience the vehicles we build.

We share a starting line: both of us left METU and built our careers here in the UK. I know what that takes — new country, new language, a field where women are still outnumbered — and to keep backing yourself through all of it.

Here's what mentoring taught me, though: you start out thinking you're the one giving. You're not. Watching someone take an idea and run further with it than you imagined — that's the real reward.

The best measure of mentoring isn't who you helped. It's who they go on to lift next.

Twenty years since graduating from Middle East Technical University in Materials Science and Engineering — and a commemorative medal from my department head to mark it.

Standing in that room, I thought about what I'd tell my 21-year-old self:

The degree opens the door. Curiosity keeps you in the room. And the people you study with become the network you lean on for decades.

What would you tell your younger self at graduation?

A couple of months ago I kicked off a finance training journey at Stanford. I built my own curriculum from scratch.

This kind of learning is unorthodox. It runs entirely on self-motivation, and some days that's harder to summon than others. Working through material, completing courses, and getting coaching from experts along the way.

But that's also the point. Teaching yourself something hard forces you to own every part of it.