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Previous WE50 winner profiles
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Dawn Childs, mechanical engineer, aeronautical engineer and civil engineer and WE50 winner in 2016
Interview by Anne Hall
Dawn Childs at Stealth, Thorpe Park
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“We are now at crisis point with an ever-burgeoning skills gap and an almost stagnant increase in female engineers,” says Dawn Childs, Group Engineering Director at Merlin Entertainments. “We must change perceptions of engineering and make it a desirable career that students aspire to and their parents encourage them to pursue.”
Dawn was named as one of the UK’s most influential female engineers in 2016, the inaugural year of the WE50 Awards from the Women’s Engineering Society and was elected as its President in 2018. Dawn has been an engineer since she left school when she was awarded a cadetship as an engineering officer in the RAF. She studied mechanical engineering at university and then completed her officer training at RAF College Cranwell. |
During her 23-year RAF career, she became the first female Senior Engineering Officer of a squadron and the first female Officer Commanding Engineering Wing at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire. It was here that she was responsible for the operational maintenance and logistics of Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) aircraft based there. Despite those high-level roles, Dawn admits to a touch of ‘imposter syndrome’, particularly at RAD Waddington. “I felt significant pressure to ensure that I not only delivered but exceeded expectations. I didn’t want anybody to be able to say that a man could do better in the role.”
When Dawn left the RAF in 2012, she moved into civilian engineering at Gatwick airport, where she became the first female Head of Engineering at an international airport. Her current role, as Group Engineering Director at Merlin Entertainments, means that she in charge of engineering delivery, standards, practices and processes across the company’s worldwide portfolio of more than 120 theme parks, resorts and attractions, including Thorpe Park, Chessington World of Adventures, the London Eye and LEGOLAND.
For a woman who has achieve several notable ‘female firsts’ during her engineering career, it’s an endless source of frustration that there are not more women in engineering, and she has been involved in engineering advice and advocacy for many years. “While I was in the RAF I worked briefly as the head of the RAF Engineering Liaison Team where I was responsible for increasing the recruitment of engineers into the RAF through schools, university liaison and careers fairs. That’s when I first became aware of the Women’s Engineering Society and when it also became obvious that there was a significant lack of understanding amongst students about engineering careers and the potential options. I realised then that the advice that I was able to give could really make a difference, so I continued to engage in engineering careers advice and advocacy even after my engineering liaison role ended.”
Like many of her fellow female engineers, her message is to schools and careers advisors. “We need to make sure that girls choose the right subjects for GCSE. In particular, schools need to focus much more on the ramifications of GCSE options and how it can limit choices later down the line. Often subjects such as physics and science are dropped early and there is no understanding that this will significantly reduce the options open to students as they look at further or higher education.”
Dawn also believes that careers advice needs to improve dramatically. “We desperately need to deepen the understanding of what a career in engineering can lead to by showcasing how rewarding, challenging and world-changing it can be.”
Finally, she wants to understand why girls and women often opt out of an engineering career later down the line. “Even if girls do stick with physics and science subjects and go onto an engineering course, they don’t always follow through into a career in engineering or they start in engineering and then leave quite soon.” Dawn believes it’s important to understand why this happens and work with women engineers and employers to help support them through every stage of their careers so that they are able to stay within the engineering profession.
When Dawn left the RAF in 2012, she moved into civilian engineering at Gatwick airport, where she became the first female Head of Engineering at an international airport. Her current role, as Group Engineering Director at Merlin Entertainments, means that she in charge of engineering delivery, standards, practices and processes across the company’s worldwide portfolio of more than 120 theme parks, resorts and attractions, including Thorpe Park, Chessington World of Adventures, the London Eye and LEGOLAND.
For a woman who has achieve several notable ‘female firsts’ during her engineering career, it’s an endless source of frustration that there are not more women in engineering, and she has been involved in engineering advice and advocacy for many years. “While I was in the RAF I worked briefly as the head of the RAF Engineering Liaison Team where I was responsible for increasing the recruitment of engineers into the RAF through schools, university liaison and careers fairs. That’s when I first became aware of the Women’s Engineering Society and when it also became obvious that there was a significant lack of understanding amongst students about engineering careers and the potential options. I realised then that the advice that I was able to give could really make a difference, so I continued to engage in engineering careers advice and advocacy even after my engineering liaison role ended.”
Like many of her fellow female engineers, her message is to schools and careers advisors. “We need to make sure that girls choose the right subjects for GCSE. In particular, schools need to focus much more on the ramifications of GCSE options and how it can limit choices later down the line. Often subjects such as physics and science are dropped early and there is no understanding that this will significantly reduce the options open to students as they look at further or higher education.”
Dawn also believes that careers advice needs to improve dramatically. “We desperately need to deepen the understanding of what a career in engineering can lead to by showcasing how rewarding, challenging and world-changing it can be.”
Finally, she wants to understand why girls and women often opt out of an engineering career later down the line. “Even if girls do stick with physics and science subjects and go onto an engineering course, they don’t always follow through into a career in engineering or they start in engineering and then leave quite soon.” Dawn believes it’s important to understand why this happens and work with women engineers and employers to help support them through every stage of their careers so that they are able to stay within the engineering profession.
WE50 awards in previous years have included:
2019 - Current and Former Apprentices
2018 – Returners and Transferrers
2017 – Under 35
2016 – The inaugural Top 50 Women in Engineering
2019 - Current and Former Apprentices
2018 – Returners and Transferrers
2017 – Under 35
2016 – The inaugural Top 50 Women in Engineering
