Bringing Manufacturing Education to Youth with Vinita Palaniveloo

N: Welcome to Automation Ladies, the only show that we know of where girls talk about industrial automation. I am your host, well one of them, Nikki Gonzalez, head of partnerships at QuoteBeam, and I actually have my co-host Ali G with me today, who is the owner and principal engineer of Process and Controls Engineering LLC.

Hi Ali.

A: How are you doing, Nikki? 

N: I'm pretty good. How about you? Hi. I haven't seen you in a while. 

A: Yeah, I've kind of been MIA. I'm sorry about that. 

N: That's okay. I think everybody knows by now our listeners that you are in the field a lot and, it just depends week to week, whether or not you can make it to the show or not.

But I'm very stoked to have you here today, especially for this conversation. I would be remiss not to mention our sponsors. Our season two sponsors are Clarify and FactoryFix. You can find out more about them at clarify.io and factoryfix.com. One is for exploring data in your factory, and the other one is for hiring factory workers.

Or if you're looking for a new position, you can join their platform to find a new company that might be looking for your skills. So thank you guys for supporting us. We appreciate it. And our guest today is Vinita. She is a senior software engineer at Miso Robotics, but taking a little bit of a break right now and working on some stuff.

Uh, and we got in touch with her. Because she was recently on a panel with our automation lady, Courtney Fernandez, and she just said that we had to get involved, and talk to Vinita and see what she's up to. So Vinita, thank you so much for joining us today. 

V: Thanks for having me here, Nikki and Ali. And I've been like enjoying my panel discussion with Courtney and got to know what you guys do at the Automation Ladies level to bring around women and engineering and women and manufacturing.

So it was like a wonderful opportunity for us to connect and talk about what we could do or contribute because I'm part of the Society for Women Engineers and I contribute my time as a secretary for the society.

N: Mm-hmm. 

V: So I was thinking of how we could contribute in each of our capacities to see where we could bring, the industry and the skilled education together because my kids go to, IUSD and I find a different sort of, uh, STEM education being administered in school levels. And when I look at what we do at the industry level, there seems to be a disconnect and the need for the kids to be retrained in order to get those jobs.

As part of this panel, I was able to meet Andrew Crow, who is in doing his awareness around manufacturing the license. Yeah, so that was a interesting conversation for me to see the interest that he's creating in youth. To get into doing that CAD stuff. 

N: Mm-hmm. 

V: So that they can start their own manufacturing business and be independent earners by the time they start their college education. So it's like, when I look at it, these are some skills, the ground level skills that we have lost over the years because of the jobs that's been outsourced to different places. 

N: Mm-hmm. 

V: And manufacturing seems to be the bread line that's going to [lead to] improvement in technology, and is going to take us leaps and bounds to what we could create for our future.

So that's the reason, like I'm more interested in this, uh, cross section of this computer science technologies, the manufacturing, mechanical engineering. So all that comes together. Introns and which is automation and which you guys are in. Yes? 

N: Yes. That is part of what we love about it. And I agree with you, like, and I love what Andrew's doing.

We're gonna have Andrew come on the show soon. We have been sort of trying to, we're not trying hard enough apparently to plan having him on the show, since we started last year. But, so we, here at Automation Ladies. Part of, I mean, it's not our original mission or anything, to educate kids, but as we see and talk to more people in the industry, we are, we're seeing the same thing you are Vinita, which is a disconnect.

And I hear this, whether it's, you know, community college programs teaching CNC machining or programming coming into controls engineering. The stuff that we do in industry is not really being taught in schools. Um, and, you know, like you said, there's a lot of retraining and additional training that's needed, when people do come out of school coming to do what we do.

Um, and especially, you know, it's not something that kids get exposed to very young. I'm personally very excited about this sort of era of our manufacturing, or renaissance like Andrew will call it because there's like kids that learn how to code when they're young and they maybe have produced their first app before they're even, you know, 10 years old.

Um, and there's been a lot of access to learning how to code and do computer science because we all have, most of us, I wouldn't say all of us, but most of us have access to internet and computers of some kind now. But the hardware, the stuff that we deal with in industrial automation is a bit harder to come by.

You know, not as prevalent and any of the hardware stuff that we do is like not as. Easily seen in popular culture as software is. But I think now with a decrease in cost in things like 3D printers, you know, there's a lot more that we can do so that kids, like you said before they, even make it to college can be makers.

They can be making their own thing, whether it's producing something they're interested in, manufacturing that in their garage, or, you know, creating something automated. Uh, writing software that connects to something at home, that's pretty cool. I think bringing a little bit more of the hardware into the kids' lives versus just learning how to code, which I think now is still something that, you know, not every kid learns, but it's get getting more prolific.

V: Yeah. Kids work with kids like First Tech, robotics and, you link and there are so many robotic kids out there, but those are good for younger [kids] because it puts them into a framework and there is a limit on what they could do. 

N: Yeah. 

V: And in order to open up the creativity of, uh, the children, once they go on to like middle school and high school, it's important they get to look at the real stuff that's out there, so that that opens their mind to say, or they need to look at it to know what is out there in order to create something better out of that.

So that's the reason, like we want to put together something that kids are able to really relate to what's really happening. And I was blown away, like I was part of IUT STEM judges STEM competition. 

N: Mm-hmm. 

V: To judge the engineering project submissions. And I was blown away by the quality of work that the students put in everything.

Like there was one of those projects where the kid built a robot using, and those are like tandem robots, like three or four robots that would be hooked up around those pillars and scan and you. Falls on those, or the cracks on those pillars. 

And he built a working model of it and he demonstrated it. I was thinking like he put together, he brought together machine learning, he brought together robotics. He brought together, uh, the embedded system, the programming part of it.

And this is like high school kids doing these projects. And imagine where we could take them and where they could be with the right. 

N: Absolutely. Yeah. Ali is actually, working on a little project. Not that she doesn't have enough on her plate yet already, but she's been taking some donations of, uh, older or not necessarily just old, but of PLCs and related automation equipment that we are going to get into, schools and work with some instructors and parents. 

So if you guys are vendors, systems integrators, you've got some stuff laying around that you don't need, contact Ali and she can put it to good use. But with this, I know a conversation kind of got started before, I asked our normal first question.

So to get back on, uh, the scheduled program of our Automation ladies episode, Vinita can you give us a little bit of an introduction of yourself and tell us how you got to be in this position that you are today at Miso Robotics and working on the things that you are in automation. 

V: When people ask me about, tell me about yourself, the first thing that comes to mind is like, I'm a mother of two boys and the boys [are] age 10 and 16, and I've been in the industry for 25 years working in India and in Australia. So because I need [to] go with my family for personal reason and other reasons. So my career has not been something that's carved out or streamlined to one particular discipline. So I was able to learn, uh, different things as I was going.

Like, on my PhD in computer science while in Australia, and then I moved to the US, and I worked with OK International, which is into industrial automation, making soldering and dispensing robots. 

N: Ok. 

V: And I was part of the team that provided the backbone to connect these soldering instruments to collect data from these solar instruments and log it into, uh, the remote database for user analytics.

And, the second part of my work has been actually designing those dispensing pumps and the automation and UI interface for those pumps. And then I moved on to Miso Robotics, where we are into kitchen automation. And I would say, Miso is one of the most, uh, vibrant places that I've worked with, and it's all young blood with, millennials and Gen Z's and [those] who have this shared vision of creating an automated kitchen.

[00:10:00] When they say automated or robotic based solution, it's like more of  integrating AI into this robotics so that you provide a turnkey product where the user doesn't need to do any programming just with minimal calibration. They should be having these [types of] equipment in their place and start working with them.

So that's what excites me with the Miso Robotics. And at Miso I'm working on a specific product called Sippy, which is actually this uh, [product] for dispensing drinks at drive-thrus. 

N: Mm-hmm. 

V: So what it does is like as the orders [come in], it actually automatically dispenses the right beverages into the cups, label, set and gets it ready for to be served.

And during rush hour, like it'll do, it could do something up to 50 drinks an hour, which is like, the productivity is very high compared to what one person could do at the drive thru and what is the product doing? Actually working on forecasting the demand based forecasting, which is like collect the data of the orders that's being received at any given time or a day of a day in a week. 

And based on the forecast, like you are able to say, if the demand for Coke or Pepsi is more, it's going to tell and be ready to be given out rather than waiting at the, uh, drive-thru. So it's like in [the] restaurant industry, it's more of a place where, uh, I would say... there's a lot of unskilled workers. 

N: Mm-hmm. 

V: And the, worker attrition rate is large. Uh, it's [so] high that they need to be retrained often, and you have, like when you look at these videos coming out on TikTok and YouTube, you could see the, what do you say, contention or, the fight that happens between the restaurant workers and the patrons.

N: Mm-hmm. 

V: Cause like they want everything to happen instantaneously because it's a fast industry. So anything that we do in this space excites me because it's going to make the life of those restaurant workers easier. 

N: Oh, I completely agree. I always to say when I lived in the Bay Area, there was a particular Taco Bell in Pleasanton that I loved because they somehow never messed up my order.

And they were always really nice. Like everybody that worked there, they had great customer service and they were just really nice people. And I always thought like they're doing something right in that these people that work here, they seem to enjoy what they do because it's not that common to go to fast food restaurant through the drive-thru and really think that the person on the other end of that interaction really enjoys their work.

[And] I would say for the majority of it, it's kind of the opposite, and to be able to make that job something that people can actually enjoy doing I think that that's pretty exciting for the world in general. And as I know people that have worked, you know, flipping the burgers in the back of the McDonald's or whatever, and there are certain parts of that job that are terrible and if they can, get more help with those parts or be more efficient at doing, you know, they can spend more of their time on the customer service.

I think that that's amazing. And you're absolutely right in terms of the forecasting. Uh, different restaurants have different times of day that they get a lot of traffic. There's a lot of patterns. To what is in demand when, and people don't like it when you come up to a restaurant and they're out.

I mean, there's a running joke, right? Like the ice cream machine at McDonald's is always down and definitely don't go after this, you know, time of day because you're not gonna get what you want. I actually just went to [well] tried to go to a restaurant on Sunday that we like, and we came in and they said, oh, we're actually on a 20 minute break from taking any new customers because we don't have enough waitstaff and it's a quality control break to make sure that we don't take too many guests for what we can, you know, provide good service for with the amount of staff that we have. 

So lots of opportunity to, I think, make the restaurant industry better for everybody involved. There's also a pizza restaurant that I follow, um, the CEO on LinkedIn, and I'll have to add this in the notes later, but I don't remember the name of it.

But he's building in public a restaurant where he's integrating a lot of tech, including like the picnic pizza robot, cause it's a pizzeria. But through all the data analytics that they've done now that they've been able to, you know, they're using all these digital platforms and things, they've actually shut down in-store dining during the weekdays because they just lose money on that compared to, the times that they actually have a lot of demand for the dining room.

And then other times they have much more demand for takeout and they don't have a reason to have all these servers standing around the dining [room] when they just basically lo take losses on those shifts. So I can only imagine that there are so many industries like this that we have kind of been operating the same way every day of the week the same way in every store and location because we haven't had the ability to take a granular look at scale at all the different patterns.

Um, and that's one of the things that machine learning is so good at. And I think we're at a point now, right, in automation where whether it's industrial. You know, the type of stuff that you're working on is not just the mechanical, automation of things, but integrating that machine learning for it to be smarter.

So, because you definitely don't want a robot programmer to have to come to your local, uh, fast food restaurant every time they change something or they add a new menu item or, you know, something like that. Right? So can you tell me what is different and cool about Miso? So, other than the fact that, you know, automating flipping burgers, and they're a fairly new company. What do you find to be the most exciting about the technology? If there's anything in addition to what you already told me. 

V: So with Miso, as I told you, it's more newer company. 

N: Yeah. 

V: Uh, what people get to contribute is contribute at a product level in terms of improving, conceptualizing the product that's going to be useful to the customers because you are at the user end of things when it comes to like going to a fast food restaurant.

So you can provide incremental feedback on what could make it better. So that's something that you get to work on a product that's going to actually [improve] on a day-to-day life. And even for little things like when I look at it, people need to stand near these hot oils and they need to fry chips for an eight hour shift.

And, imagine people getting tired and, uh, the workplace injury hazard and the compensation that, you need to take care of. So all that is going to be something that we're gonna solve with this technology. And, when you look at it at a big picture level, like we are not actually doing a product, but we're providing a solution that's going to be wholesome and that's going to make the user experience and the worker experience much for pleasant and enjoyable.

N: So shifting gears there, after talking about Miso, which I could probably get into a whole episode just asking questions about that, but how did you get interested in engineering in the first place? You started learning engineering back in India, right? 

V: Yes. My engineering journey was. My father is a physics professor. He taught me how to wire stuff at home and as little [as I was], like I was taught how to change fuses because it was the time when new townships, like we move into new townships, new transformers were installed and a power stabilizer was not a concept back in [the] 1980s and the fuses would go off. So I'd be one of those girls like, uh, who knows how to change the fuse and install them and people would call me.

So I was [a] pretty hands-on person. I love, like taking about clocks, or radios and seeing what is inside and putting back stuff. So that sort of person, but I never understood what engineering or knew what engineering was. I know that one of my uncles was an engineer and he was quite respected in the community, but I didn't know what he was doing.

All I knew was like, he works in a coal factory. And what happened was when I was in; I started in a Catholic school, so, which means like I had bit more of an opportunity, because they were around providing awareness for, uh, children in new technologies. I had a chance to look at a computer that was brought in, brought to the school in [the] late 1990s.

It was one of those old small computers, and the lady there, she asked me to type my name in and I typed it and it just flashed on the screen saying like "hello Vinita". I was like, that was something that I've not seen. And I was like, how does it know my name? And I wanted to build something like that. That was how I fell in love with technology.

And when I was in a year trial, like one of the teachers said, how many of you think that you'd be able to get into engineering? I didn't know what engineers do. And honestly, I thought because she asked, raised that question, [that] it should be something prestigious. So I just put my hand up saying like, I want to do it, and here I am.

N: I don't think anyone knows what engineering is before they become [one]. I, maybe some children, but like most of us, I don't think, even after I was done with engineering school, I did not understand what engineering was until I did it.

A: Yeah, it's ok. I think it's okay not to know, even as you're graduating with an engineering [degree], at least a bachelor's, you probably still don't really know what engineering is, but you may end up loving it.

Hopefully you do. I just thought about this the other day cause I saw a post about, coloring books for kids with all different trades and it listed all these different ones and I realized that I still don't know what all of these trades are. 

[00:20:00] And then I was thinking, so in the history of the world, right? Trades are generally passed through sort of the generations in families or communities. Right? Like tradesmen train their families and people and those sorts of trades, those sorts of careers have often been apprenticeship based. You know, you learn from another person. And then we started, this whole academic schooling and then it was like, oh, you can go, you know, you'd be the first person in your family to go to college because you can make a better living that way.

And then everybody goes to college and sees, okay, if I'm not gonna do what my family [is doing]. I'm gonna look and do something different. And then you see on tv you can be a doctor, you could be a lawyer, you could be, I don't know, those are the things that you gravitate towards when you're not absolutely following in somebody's footsteps that you know.

How do we... now that there is the internet, so many options and you can learn from people even through the internet, even if they're not your family or down the street from you. Like, how do we democratize the access to all of these different things and make them all valuable? Because I think over time we've devalued the work that non-college educated people do, which is not necessarily reality either, because a lot of these jobs are well paid. 

And I'm not asking you Vinita to solve [and] to answer this question cause I'm just going off. But I find it to be really interesting and maybe, you know, with more AI, like we can have more personalized, learning paths for people in the future.

Like more mass personalization with more options based on maybe people's interest or [yours] where they're naturally drawn to being good at. I think we're overwhelming people with options. Or maybe we need to, like with the AI pre-select what options to actually show people. Cause if you show everyone right now, I think there's already like anxiety in people.

N: Yeah.

A: Cause they're like, what are you gonna do with your life? You could be anything and here's a thousand things you can be, and you're like, I remember being pressured or just feeling pressure from what are you gonna do when you grow up? It's like, I have no idea. And so for now, if I was with what's available to me now, yeah, my brain would explode.

And so I feel bad actually for kids because they have every option now, ever. Well, not every kid, and I wish we could, fix that too. But a lot of kids, a majority in, certain areas have so many things they could do and they have, decent teachers and decent access to like, you know, books and stuff cause that's, just as important as like the enthusiasm of the teachers, but...

V: Mm-hmm.

A: I don't know. I think, I think they're over. I think we need to figure out exactly that, like use AI to bring down our options, or way more [ability to] customize our options based on maybe better aptitude tests or something. Maybe they just study us that out in the wild and figure out like what makes us, you know, able to handle that type of work.

Yeah. And then see if you can figure that out in kids, because, you know, like control stuff or industry, is there are ways to do that job in a relaxed manner, but it's not a very relaxed [area], it can be high stress. So normally things are running smoothly and that's what you want is to have like the smooth running and a lot of people are supporting the smooth running, but there's gonna be shutdowns and there's gonna be times of extreme chaos.

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And there's no way around that in manufacturing period. Even if you do the absolute best of, you know, and they're getting better. I definitely will give them that with all their preventative maintenance and all the AI they're already using. They're getting better at like, not shutting down plants, but I love your idea, Al, because even when you get into engineering, your personality might be suited to do something like an admin engineering, or you wanna be an entrepreneur if you're not in the right, no.

You're an engineer. Yes. Yeah. Then you are, you're not going to be happy. So it's like, Trying to find out, like putting together your personality, your interests, and your [00:24:00] actual qualification, and trying to find a pathway where you'd be happier and contribute better. I like that. Somebody should run with that because there's so many more opportunities, but still, and this is something, this is basically what also drew us together to talk with you, Venita, is that you've been looking at how you can help, right?

Bring you. You know, seeing this with your sons, how can we bring more opportunities for kids to learn about robotics into schools? Do you wanna talk a little bit about that and what you've been doing and thinking about? I've been, uh, as a parent, I've invested a lot of money and time and teaching kids, like putting together small robotics teams for competitions like Wonder Robot and First Tech.

V: And my boys were interested up to a [point] then they've lost interest. All of that is more of a screen time that, they're happy to do rather than lot of hands-on work. And I've been trying to get interest, like for people or the kids in the community to bring them together to do things. 

N: Mm-hmm. 

V: Recently, like my son worked on one of the projects for IUSD STEM Competition. And what we did was he's into collecting rocks and he wants to be a geologist. So he is examining these rocks to see if they're pressures and things. And we didn't just stop with that. What we did was we integrated this 3D imaging with that. And we were scanning these rocks and putting together 3D pictures of it and analyzing them.

So it's like so many things that you can bring together. Like even though the kids are just glued onto your pictures, you can bring real parts of what is existing in the outside world. And even with these rocks, he wants to now  to use those Dremel tools, polish them, and see iff we can cut them.

So if you look at it, the way  that interest is progressing is like you just hold onto something that they like and then they, you develop out of it. And that's where we are. Like when I looked at those science projects, there were kids like trying to use this machine learning or AI apps to find out what is the animal based on the [images].

And there was one kid who was trying to do the portion collection using for, violin students. So it's like when you look at what can be done, it's more of like, if we provide them with these real life tools and then channelize them where their interest or their specific are, then they could be innovating in that sector.

So that's where I was at. And I spoke with the STEM coordinators at IUSD and Saddle Valley United District. And they were interested in this proposal, like where we want to create an engineering hub where we could have these tools donated. Big companies, like for example, if it's going to be a, a robotics or manufacturing based hub maker space, then it's going to be like, get tools from universal robots and set up a engineering space that could be shared by all the schools in that particular county.

N: Mm-hmm. 

V: And because we have this IT and camera technologists just hook it up in a place and define a curriculum that's progressive, like going all the way, starting [and] understanding what these current tools are to actually innovating them and making those equipment [pieces] better. Like for example, add 3D printed fixtures to your universal robot and make you do something better than what is doing down for a specific application.

It could be for like, assisting with your portion correction for violin students. So it's like so many things you could do, like bring that technology into [one's] passion. So that's what I was interested in. And we're still under discussions with them to see where we could, as industry, contribute to the education of kids.

N: Mm-hmm. 

V: And also bring up the skill gap that exists between like where the kids pass out from the schools and the colleges. When they're trying to get the job, they would be getting more hands on skills with the tools that're being used in the industry instead of having to go through this retraining process.

So that we could find way a to work with the educators. So that's what I'm trying to establish now: How are you finding the educator? Just because I'm with Society for Women Engineers and we do a lot of outreach program[s]. On my personal time, I try to work with the school district, my son attends, and with suite we get outreach requests from the school saying like, can you come and present us with this program or do a introduction about your current career and what are the career prospect[s] for children if they take on engineering. 

So we get those outreach requests and we go and meet with the educators. So it's been a really active community with at least Society for Women Engineers in Orange County. We work with Scout Orange County very closely providing coding volunteers for their coding workshops. 

So it's like we have been trying to do a lot of outreach activities and yeah, I've just been finding them on, like LinkedIn, I just say what I'm doing and then people respond to me. But I would like to have like a more solid channel/partnership. Wink. I love the idea though, of this being a shared resource, right?

You don't need every school to have a robot, for every child to have the option to access when, so like you said, with the, with remote monitoring, remote control, you know, sensor technology, all this stuff, there's no reason why you couldn't have a centralized [00:30:00] lab. That students can access and maybe they could, make a field trip to come to the lab in person, you know, once or twice or something.

But they, uh, I think cuz that's an another big thing here, especially here in the us, the way that schools are funded it, it's, you know, different communities have different levels of funding for their schools and robots, industrial ones are very expensive. So I can see. Think hopefully if we can get something like this off the ground, there will be more access to more places.

 Instead of having to rely on each individual school or district to be able to afford to buy and run these programs themselves. And like you, I think we were talking before the show that there are also some places that have really low enrollment for these sorts of things. And so it's hard for them, even if they get it on the books, to keep it going because if they don't have enough interest, you know, then it kind of drops.

And this way, if you had a centralized ecosystem or, or a lab that all the schools could access, then it wouldn't necessarily matter how many kids are enrolled in at a particular school for this program. And [00:31:00] maybe once, once the first five, get on it, they tell their friends about it. You never know.

It could, it could really grow. And then I'm sure, you know, different communities have different interests as well. There will be some kids at one school and maybe a lot more at another. I know my stepbrother, he goes to a STEM focused school cuz he's a total nerd and is really into math and that's what he wanted to do.

So he goes to a science and technology school. So I bet there would be a higher percentage of kids there that would be interested versus your regular school. But yeah, with the, I think with G P T four also, which was released today, one of their early partnerships was with Khan Academy. Which is an app for kids and they're looking at it as a way for there to be basically a personalized tutor, for every kid that can get help with, math or reading or whatever it is that they're learning, like at their level and at Therapy pace.

Because something I've also observed is like when I was growing up, my higher income friends had access to tutors outside of school. And so, for instance, I have a friend that was able to get, he took the s a t multiple times and he [00:32:00] got great. Resources for tutoring to get him better at it every time.

Whereas like for me it was like, well, I can't even afford to take the class, the test more than once, cuz you have to pay for it, let alone paying for a class to help me get better at it. So I, I'm very excited about like this sort of potential for more personalization in our education. Yeah. And one more thing, Nikki.

It's like the Covid pushed us to this platform to use this. In an efficient, and only when we have the centralized hub use those iott and camera technologies, we'll be pushing people to think beyond like the mindset of having to be at that place in order to do it. And you can come up with solution in order to make it work.

And uh, like you said, when I think back the career path that. Mother wanted for me was like she wanted to get me to become a school teacher or, work in a post office or a [00:33:00] bank so that I have this 95 job, I can come back and take care of the kids. But when you are into engineering, you need to put a lot of hours in and you need to be out there.

But that doesn't mean you have to be on the field, in the ground every day. It could be like two or three days a week, but the rest you could do it remotely. And how. Use this technology i t robots, in order to do the work for us when we are not there in person. So we should ask and help the kids to come up with a solution for it so that we don't fall back to this pre covid practice of asking people to be in there every day.

We gotta make a program for kids to program their chores away. Yes. It's like you can still, I don't take the trash anymore because I made. And it's like the trash robot incentive as the kids be like, you can still get your allowance if you automate this. It's as long as it gets done. Like [00:34:00] how will these dishes get cleaned?

It's up to you. You do it manually, you do it every time, or you teach a robot to do it, then you can go take a break and still get paid. No, this is actually, this is really cool because thinking through it, it's not just for the students, but it can also show industry how we can be more flexible with these.

If we can have kids learn it remotely, then why can't we do some of the jobs remotely too? I think a lot of that is like a culture change that's needed as we, you know, the technology has been there. It hasn't been as widely adopted as I think all of us would have if we were in charge, right? As being, you know, the automation ladies that we are.

But yeah, that, that's actually, I hadn't really thought about that either, that. A successful model like this for education can actually also teach industry quite a bit about what we can change. So speaking of change, you're involved in the Society of Women's Engineers and you clearly have had a very successful and cool, although unintentional engineering career.

Right. Uh, is there anything that you think, from your experience and I know you shared some articles with us as well, like [00:35:00] why are women not sticking around in these engineering jobs? Because a lot of, you know, there. What, 29% of engineering degrees are women, but they're, you know, not staying in the industry doing that job.

Uh, is there anything that, from your perspective, we can change to not only bring more women into engineering, but actually keep the ones that we have working for us or with us? We did a lot of discussion around this in the robotics panel because we wanted to like quite understand why that attrition rate is.

29% of women are engineers or graduate with an engineering degree. But, uh, the people who, the percentage of women in the workplace is 14. And there was one of these articles which explained the. Rate at which the, women drop out from their engineering careers during the first four years of, their initial career.

And it looked, it explored all the reasons, like everything from stereotyping [00:36:00] women like. Uh, if she's an women engineer, then she's good at taking notes, the meeting notes. She's good at doing this, admin engineering, ordering parts. She's good at coordinating, uh, activities between these teams. So those are the works that's being assigned.

And the second thing is they felt uncomfortable to be the. Only lone women in the team. Mm-hmm. And it's hard for them to voice. And some of the, uh, something that I wanna bring out even from the side of women is for women who have been in the field for a long time, what has helped them is. To accept what they know and to understand that they don't need to know everything, and you can go and ask for help, which is something that doesn't come naturally as women.

Like we want to be, we want to know all the answers instead of having to, go and ask for help. So that's something that we could improve on our side in order to make that shift happen. [00:37:00] But it's not easy A lot of things happen that would want to make you quit and run. But that's not the solution.

Like, and we tend to work a lot and we think that, like even for women who have been in the industry, we think like by working a lot, you are going to get what you want, like in terms of promotion and things like that. And then you feel that you are stagnant, like you have an ambition to be someone. Mm-hmm.

And you're still stuck in the same job and people tell you like you're good at what you're doing, just continue doing it. That's not what I intend to be or what I want to be. So it's like we, we don't have the mentorship in the industry say like, okay, I'm stuck in this place. I love engineering. I want be this person, but I'm stuck here.

What do I need to do in order to become an entrepreneur? Or if I want to, get to an executive level? We don't have the role models, we don't have the mentorship to take that women to that [00:38:00]next level. So that's what we. And we need to create an ecosystem to do that. And we need women all the way from the shop floor onto the executive management in order to ensure that we retain more women in the STEM carriers.

Like having them in just working and just one particular layer, like in just on the shop floors or in middle management. It's not going to help. We need to have women representation all the way to the board level. Absolutely. Women in manufacturing, women are actually pretty common in the manufacturing workforce.

But like you said, generally for manufacturing, it's been on the shop floor. We've see obviously some examples like with gm, you know, you've got a c e O now that kind of rose through the ranks. But generally there's, it's. That pyramid, like it's very bottom heavy if you have a lot of women, and I don't know how that like looks for all the other things that are not considered manufacturing, right?

You've got like tech companies, maybe they're less [00:39:00] concentrated on the bottom, but we see obviously the same problem with entrepreneurs, right? Women entrepreneurs are funded. Than they're male counterparts and therefore you end up with less women led organizations out there. In terms of both the crops of new companies and the old championing for women in entrepreneurship, do you think if we invented more robots, like our world would be cooler?

I think women need to have. More money in their pockets become venture capitalists in order to fund the programs and create the workspace that would be convenient for them. There was one of the study, uh, outlining the female specific benefits that could be rolled out in order to retain women. And all that change is going to come only when our pockets are.

So, which means we need more women to get into entrepreneurship, otherwise, like you're going to get stuck in this role doing the same grind day in and day out. And what comes out of that is just [00:40:00] frustration. So it's like I'm at a point like thinking how can we change it? What needs to be done, because I've been in this industry for 25 years and being in different places and for women it's not a straight line.

Like you have a career trajectory, like you get out of engineering, you don't have to take a career break to have children or take them to, Take care of them when they're sick or ill and fit all the other things of your family into your schedule. So how can we create that workspace? Only women can do it for them, and any kinda bargaining or explanation is not going to happen.

So you are doing it as an entrepreneur. Ali is doing it. As an entrepreneur, I think we need to have more entrepreneurs in this field and women need to get. So that they can fund the programs that's going to help them. Yes. No, you're ab you're absolutely right. That is, I think that's probably also one of the prevailing, reasons for kind of the continued gender inequality [00:41:00] is that we have not had the money in our pockets to be able to make the decisions.

I actually am a very big component bank account. Right, right. Being barred from owning. He's good job for a long time. Uh, yeah. And there, there is definitely. When we talk about systemic inequality and things like that, barring people from ownership has been a huge way to keep all kinds of people down for a very long time, right?

If you can't have, generational wealth that you can pass to your children, that's, you know, a way to keep whole groups of people down and, not having the power to command your own destiny. Being economic power in a lot of ways. Yeah. I think that's one of the things that's very exciting about the future.

I'm personally, in trying to get a little bit more involved in this side of things. I mean, I'm not a VC by any means, but I found a woman owned VC firm. She's actually a solo GP that funds companies. Basically that have underrepresented founders, whether it's women or other groups that have been [00:42:00] traditionally underrepresented in funding.

And that's my work with Ghana's vc. But really, I, I just help, you know, find companies that are good fit, but it's a great way for me to get started. And one of the reasons why I wanted to do this is to, sometimes you just, you need a role model and you need somebody that's willing to show you the ropes a little bit.

I know when I did that, couple people in my network and like my bosses were like, Hey, what, what are you doing? The, I. It's just a way for me to get my foot in the door and learn about vc. Like I work for a venture funded company. We, we thankfully work with a really great, uh, company called, or not work with, but are funded by a group called Bowery Capital.

And they have a ton of really cool females, on their team, that work with us. And, yeah, I, you know, it like you, it has to happen at every. The, the funding organizations, the tech companies themselves, the manufacturing companies that use the tech, we need to kind of attack it from all sides at the same time.

Right. Do you have any, advice, I guess, based on your [00:43:00] career for women or girls wanting to come into this field, whether it's, you know, computer science, engineering, robotics, I don't even know what these things are gonna be called a few years from now. Maybe they'll be exactly the same, or maybe we're at like a precipice of so much change that we don't even know what it's gonna look like yet.

I don't know. And my advice would be like, not to shy away from being ambitious, lot of. Times like women, we are pushed to being modest and we realized like, this is where we regret it. Throw that away. I regret it. I think everyone regrets it. Cuz you're right, like we are young and they're gonna tell us like, you don't need to be like loud or pushy.

It's I should have been, keep going. Sorry. Yeah. So that's one ambition. Advice like for women, just you can't change. Ambition just for the sake. Uh, because it's not accepted in the society. So keep your dreams [00:44:00] alive, keep pushing forward to it. Keep your eyes open and do what it takes. And the other thing that I found it really odd or difficult to comprehend is I see you as a voice, Nikki, as a voice on LinkedIn, voicing manufacturing in engineering, bringing all this awesome women and, talking about it.

But all of that needs the backup from their employer. In order to do that. I think still, like I ran a poll once, uh, couple of weeks ago on, one of the closed groups and Facebook as to how comfortable people are in engaging in a conversation on LinkedIn. Mm-hmm. And what of women are not interested in sharing what's happening in their workplace or willing to engage on a topic to avoid the backlash from their employers?

So what do we. To, uh, to change that. Like we have a voice, we have a platform, but we're not willing to [00:45:00] talk. We're, we're not willing to come out and show our ambitions. We are not willing to show our, uh, dreams and desires. So who needs to change in, what needs to change this equation that needs to be put out to the women as well?

Like, it's not just a one-sided game. It's yeah, we need to be ambiguous so that the world opens up for us. No, I think you're right. You know, one of the reasons why we did this was we were complaining about it behind closed doors and then realized, you know what, if we're gonna try to say that other women should get out there more, then well, what can we do?

Lead by example, even though it's uncomfortable, let's put ourselves out there. Just, and this is completely anecdotal, and, you know, a small, small data set. More often than not, the women we invite on our show are reluctant if they're not already out there, you. Putting themselves out there. Uh, often we actually do like to contact a lot of women that are not very active, you know, as a creator or, [00:46:00] putting their stuff out there cuz we wanna learn about them in their jobs.

When they do accept, they more often than not, choose to pre-record an episode rather than do one. Live, whereas the men are much more likely to a jump on getting on the show right away, or they've been asking us to get on the show, and b, they, they're happy to do it live. They wanna go out there and, you know, have a discussion and talk to people and are less afraid.

So I personally am a little guilty of this, like, I'll complain to an organization that they're having a panel discussion and it's like all dudes on the panel. I'm like, come on guys, you can do better than this. And they're like, oh, well, you know, no women applied. You're welcome to. I'm like, that's such a cop out to just say like, oh no, women applied, so we don't have any.

But it is true. That is true. If no women applied, it's harder. Right. And I think we just all need to acknowledge that. Like, Hey, we all need to work together. It's not one. Group's problem. It's not one group's responsibility. It's we kind of all have to work at it and we [00:47:00] all have to make, you know, some changes in learnings as we go.

Right. And when you put yourself out there, you should be ready to

your time. So you should be willing to take that and you should have a backup plan in place. Yeah, if anything happens. You have to be at the top of your game. That's all. It's, I'm lucky I have an employer that I'm not afraid of what they're gonna say about me being out there, but that is a very different situation cuz I have a small team and they knew me before they hired me.

So they got, they knew what they were getting theirselves into if I was, you know, Putting out my resume for a job without somebody really knowing me, then I can definitely see that being a concern. Well, uh, I think we're getting close on time here and we're trying our best not to make the episodes super long anymore, that we'd love to talk with you for a very long time.

Is there anything. That we didn't ask about or mention [00:48:00] that you'd love to tell our audience or make sure, that we talk about today. And this was perfect. Thanks for this opportunity, Nikki, and enjoyed talking with you and Ali, and it's been a pleasant experience. Thanks. Great, thank you. And then we do have one last question, and that is just to remind our audience where they can find you and what we should expect to see from you going forward.

So if there's anything you wanna highlight where, maybe there is networking or resources or something that people can reach out to you for, or if there's anything that you'd like to ask for from our community, they can find your guest profile on our website after the episode. Or tell them where else they.

You know, find you follow, you get in touch with you and support what you're doing. I'm very active on. And uh, my goal for the next couple of years is going to be get to a place where I can get a lot of women entrepreneurs out on the ground. And I'm trying to find out ways to do it, and it's a learning curve [00:49:00] for me, like being someone who has been in the country just for five years trying to network no people and getting out there and doing things so you can.

Being very active on LinkedIn, and you can connect with me to know about what you could do to become entrepreneurs. All right. Well, thank you so much. I share my, sorry, Nikki, I share my experience as I go down this path, all my ups and downs to Oh, good. Yeah. I'm a huge fan of like, building in public or growing and failing in public because that's a, how you learn and b, You know how people can see that it's okay for themselves to, to do that as well.

And I'd love to see more failures. I think there was a post the other day, but it was like, let's see more of the failures of robots before they were successful in something. Um, because I think a lot of times we don't see the r and d that goes on for years. Before something actually works, and whether it's like a robot falling down, one [00:50:00] is learning how to walk or a person, I think that we all feel a little bit better about ourselves when we see other successful people and how they have failed and they still had success.

I'll tell you a secret, Mickey, I, I tried my hands on. With three startups back in Australia and I failed. And uh, I tried one year I failed. So it's going to be my fifth venture. Like it's going to be more on gearing my master's in, uh, business administration degree to learn about business before I venture into technology.

So that's the path I'm planning to. Well, I am very excited to follow along and I'm sure, plenty of our community will as well. So you can find venita on LinkedIn. If you go to automation ladies.io and, to this episode, there's a profile that will have links to her ventures and her LinkedIn profile.

So thank you so much, Venita. I'm, I'm really excited about seeing A, how we can collaborate with you going forward and B, how everybody in our community can, you know, learn from what you're doing. So we really appreciate it, Allie. Any closing [00:51:00] words? No, nice to meet you and I look forward to talking with you more.

Yeah. Thanks for this opportunity. All right. You have a great day. Thank you so much. Bye. Thank you.