Our Speakers
Jennifer MacDonald
Jennifer pivoted from frontline engineering on oil rigs to working full time in the diversity and inclusion space with a mission to expand STEM opportunities for all. Jennifer will share how she navigated her late dyslexia diagnosis, the tricks she uses to navigate new problems and how engineering enhanced her life.
Vince Pizzoni
Professor in Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Nottingham, Vince has coached and mentored 1000s spanning the whole career lifecycle from school to university, executive and board level, and made it his mission in life to inspire and mentor future generations into STEM, Engineering and Energy careers.
Vince has 40+ years’ of relevant, global business experience incorporating executive management and board positions in blue chip companies including ExxonMobil, Suez, V. Ships, Nalco and P&G and today manages a portfolio career as a consultant in a boutique energy executive search firm, energy sector career coach to students at several prestigious UK business schools including LBS, Imperial, Oxford, Cambridge and Chicago Booth and holds Trustee/NED/Ambassador positions on several boards.
These include the Women in Engineering Society, Female Leaders in STEM Subjects, POWERful Women, MyBigCareer, a charity providing career guidance to students from disadvantaged backgrounds, FOCUS expatriates and the South Shropshire Multi-Academy Trust.
Vince is also a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of a number of organisations including the Institute of Chemical Engineers, Energy Institute, Women’s Engineering Society and the Chartered Management Institute.
Ann Hodgetts
Ann is a chartered engineer with over 20 years’ experience developing safety management systems, safety assessments and providing project and programme management services within both the defence and non-defence sectors. Ann currently enjoys splitting her time between:
- Working for STEMAZING alongside her freelance engineering roles;
- Undertaking STEM outreach in schools and performing other STEM ambassador roles;
- Mentoring graduate engineers, post-graduates and engineers in their early career.
Working with STEMAZING allows Ann to apply her professional experience and expertise to promoting inspiration and inclusion in STEM, where she is working alongside the STEMAZING team to roll out a programme of STEM outreach across the UK. Ann finds working with other women-in-STEM and inspiring others a source of inspiration for herself.
Ann has excellent communication skills which she has developed throughout her career, and she now loves using these skills to excite children about STEM, and how it applies to the world around.
Sgt. Barbara Vinden-Cantrell
We are the Royal Engineers Works Groups, infrastructure engineer specialists for the military. We work on projects worldwide and for a variety of organisations. The unit provides support for:
- Humanitarian aid
- Disaster relief
- Civil engineering projects
- Military operations
We are extremely busy and currently have personnel deployed across the globe in: Nepal, Falklands, Ascension Islands, Cyprus, Italy, UAE, USA. We are a hybrid unit – half Regular and half Reserve. The main works groups are:
- Power
- Fuel
- Water
- Rail
- Ports
- Airfields
- General Construction
We also have other specialists such as geologists, facilities managers, project managers, etc.
Huyen Le
Huyen Le is a first-generation doctoral researcher at Loughborough University, specialising in materials engineering and focusing on developing innovative functional water-based coating formulations. She holds a First-Class Integrated Master’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Sussex. She has gained industry experience at ex-GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare (Haleon), where she researched within interdisciplinary teams bridging scientific concepts and practical healthcare applications.
Huyen is deeply committed to promoting diversity and inclusion in STEM, reflected in her recognition as one of the UK’s Top 50 Women in Engineering 2024 by the Women’s Engineering Society and as a Royal Society of Chemistry Scholar under the Broadening Horizons programme, which supports racial equality in the chemical sciences sector.
Huyen’s PhD research experience exemplifies the power of multidisciplinary research and innovation in addressing some of our most pressing healthcare challenges. Supervised by Dr. Nacho Martin Fabiani, Huyen is part of a team also focused on antibacterial R&D. The goal is to better address the increasing threat of antimicrobial resistance.
At the WES Student and Apprentice Conference, Huyen will discuss how Loughborough University’s engineering research contributes to creating personalised healthcare solutions. Her talk will explore integrating engineering principles with healthcare needs, highlighting how these efforts lead to the development of tailored nanomaterials and potential tools that could enhance patient outcomes and optimise healthcare environments.