Nicky Donowski
Senior Consultant, MI-GSO | PCUBED
Women often face the prospect of switching companies in order to secure engineering roles that match their career goals.
Women can face a range of challenges as they strive to develop a career in engineering. It can often be difficult to move roles within a company, says Nicky Donowski, with women “pigeon-holed” and told the direction of travel for their career.
Switching from traditional STEM companies into consulting can be an option. There are organisations within the sector with positive career development strategies for women in engineering.
Transferrable skills
Having studied Chemical and Process Engineering at the University of Leeds, her first job was in surface engineering, researching different coatings, before moving to become a quality process engineer in the cosmetics industry to progress her career.
“One thing with engineering is that you have a lot of transferrable skills, so you don’t have to stick to one sector or one job,” says Nicky. Realising she enjoyed project management, she moved to project management consultancy MI-GSO | PCUBED as a project analyst five years ago and has since progressed to a senior consultant.
To enable continual personal and professional development we are assigned a coach who will provide guidance and mentoring to support a personalised career journey.
Career progression
Working with engineering, aerospace and defence clients, her current project is a new direction for her. It sees her working on the divestment of a client’s company, making sure the project is on track, within budget and delivered in the appropriate timeframes.
Other aerospace engineering jobs have involved developing projects from concept to completion, through certification phases and managing budgets. She found she was given more client-facing responsibility from the outset within the welcoming environment of the company compared with her previous work.
There is internal mentoring and support for growth too. “To enable continual personal and professional development we are assigned a coach who will provide guidance and mentoring to support a personalised career journey. They also provide representation through the review periods, encourage training opportunities and share their expertise,” she says.
Opportunities for progress
Alongside the ‘day job’, the positive working environment created at the company has added appeal, including wellbeing, charity work and interviewing new recruits.
While gender balance remains a challenge in the male dominated engineering industry, at MI-GSO | PCUBED they aim to encourage more women into the sector and make a more open environment for all. They have a Women in Consulting group as well as continually highlighting progress and efforts for Women in Engineering Day each year.
MI-GSO | PCUBED is a unique global Project Management constancy focused on project, program, portfolio and change management services for industrial, public sector and financial services customers.