Dr Maggie Aderin Pocock, Siemens International Women’s Day Employee Event

We came to Adam and the Covered Speakers Bureau in preparation for our annual International Women’s Day event which our Communications, Diversity and Inclusion team here at Siemens organise internally for our employees each year.

The event encompasses a range of topics surrounding issues about women in the workplace, gender issues and progress for women – it is aimed to educate and inform not only our female colleagues but our male colleagues too about such issues.

We were looking for a guest speaker who could come to our own recording studio in London to discuss their own inspiring story and Adam presented us with several suitable options including Dr Maggie Aderin Pocock.

Dr Maggie has a really inspiring story – she grew up on a council estate from a poor background with the world against her and very little opportunities open to her as black female growing up in the 1970s in London, not to mention her struggles at school with dyslexia.

She had a fascination for space at school – Maggie discusses how she rose to become one of the top space scientists in the UK and the projects she has worked on – and how she speaks to school children about her working developing telescopes.

As a space scientist she builds satellites that go up into space, and as a science communicator she likes to try and translate some of the complexities of science into a simple format for everybody to understand.

Maggie gave our employees a real insight into her work and discussed issues about how hard it was for her to work in the traditionally male dominated industry that is science and space.