Anne-Marie Imafidon, MBE (en)
This is a blog post by Hannah Dee, for International Women’s Day 2021. You can find the Welsh version here.
Dyma blog gan Hannah Dee, ar gyfer Diwrnod Rhyngwladol Y Menywod 2021. Cewch ffindio’r fersiwn Cymraeg yma.
Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon MBE is a technologist and speaker who has achieved an amazing amount. Born in 1990, she got her computing GCSE at 11, and went on to be the youngest person (aged 19) to get a Master’s degree from Oxford. She then held various graduate jobs in the tech/banking sphere, and whilst at Deutsche Bank she attended a women in tech event and realised that she liked the feeling of being in a majority-female tech space, and found it inspiring. So she formed Stemettes. In her own words, “…taking that feeling and that experience, and mapping it to a slightly younger audience, and giving people that positive experience in their formative years”.
So, what’s Stemettes?
Stemettes is a social enterprise which aims to inspire and encourage girls and young women into STEM. They run events, a mentoring system, have an app, hackathons, and generally do awesome work with the next generation of STEM professionals. The programmes they put together are based around “free, fun and food”. One of the key things Anne-marie spotted was that girls don’t necessarily know what STEM jobs or in particular Tech jobs involve outside of the actual work. Perks like free food and the ability wear-what-you-want might seem incidental or superficial to some of us but might motivate a teenager to find out more about career paths that they’d otherwise have ignored. Obviously the food part has been harder to maintain in the pandemic, but they’re trying – posting out food, and if necessary laptops.
Anne-Marie has four honorary doctorates (at the time of writing) and a whole host of awards. She’s Head Stemette, is a trustee of the Institute of Work, a keynote speaker, writes (a book for kids https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/DK/How-to-be-a-Maths-Whizz/24316085, articles for the press, … all sorts) and runs a podcast (Women Tech Charge) spreading the word about women in tech https://www.standard.co.uk/tech/women-tech-charge-evening-standard-podcast-episode-list-a4088361.html.
I first saw her speak when I invited her to keynote the BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium in 2014; she was a fairly new graduate then, still working for Deutsche Bank, and had set up Stemettes just a year before. She was great. I saw her most recently speaking at the Suffrage Science awards in November 2020, and was struck again by how thoughtful and clear she is at cutting through the confusion that sometimes surrounds questions of gender and science. As she said: “If you don’t intentionally work to include people, you’ll end up unintentionally excluding people”.
If you get a chance to see her speak, I would thoroughly recommend it. Also if you’re a young woman (14-25) take a look at Stemettes – they might just help you out.
