Doctor Encourages STEM Careers with School Program

It’s well into the 2020s but some of the attitudes that Dr Jenni Wellington encountered during her medical education would not have been out of place in the 1950s.

Along with the rigours of her degree Dr Wellington met with resistance, negativity and bared faced sexism. She persisted nevertheless and achieved her medical qualification and has gone on to found a health care start up, Annuo Med Tech Solutions, but her experiences left her determined that she should do something to make the path for other young women a little easier.

Dr Wellington says “I knew from the age of four that I wanted to be a doctor. However, at my all girls high school I was told that physics wasn’t available. I was offered home economics instead. The doctor who did my medical assessment for my medical school application, told me I shouldn’t worry about becoming a doctor - I could just marry one instead. Clearly, I ignored this advice, and I found a way to get the qualifications I needed to become a doctor.”

Her experience resulted in the creation of a schools program where she and other professionals in the STEM area visit schools offering advice and contact with role models encouraging everyone but especially young women to strive and achieve valuable, fulfilling careers in the STEM field.

“By starting the schools program, I wanted to ensure that all girls know that a career in STEM is achievable, and it’s just as much for them as it is for their male classmates.

“Recently I was privileged to receive a delegate position to London for London Tech Week, representing Queensland, and while there, I met a panellist, Dr Claire Thorne of Tech She Can. Through Tech She Can, Claire and the team are dedicated to developing programs for young people that will  improve  the ratio of women in STEM. They provide free educational resources. I was inspired by this program, as it is very aligned with my own beliefs and the strategies I felt were needed to overcome the same problems in our community. Their resources provide a lot of the inspiration for the school's program.

“On my return to Australia, a fellow founder introduced me to MINDSET-do, a Sunshine Coast based initiative which mirrors a lot of the offerings of Tech She Can. They were supportive to the program we designed at Annuo and made introductions to some schools which were happy to receive us."

The program involves partnering with other STEM founders in the community to give presentations as a group of  experts so the students will see themselves in real life diverse female representation of STEM career professionals.

"We talk about our own experiences and challenges in getting to where we are, and discuss how STEM, and in particular artificial intelligence (AI), are used across a wide variety of industries and sectors, highlighting the breadth of opportunities across the STEM disciplines."

This is followed by an interactive ideation session where small groups of students discuss they can use technology to achieve their career objectives and present back to the group. Some of the students who participate are then invited to participate in a workshop held at Annuo’s office. This workshop is designed to engage the students in a deep dive of their ideas, looking at the problem and the solutions. This will lead into their consideration of how they can evaluate the reception of the user base of their technology (traction).

"Finally, we engage them in developing and understanding of how to take it to market," she says.

A key aspect of this workshop is the presenters, from all walks of life, that donate their time to the students with real world experiences.

"We want the participants to develop a roadmap for themselves and their futures that may include non traditional pathways to their destinations.

“Quite simply, I’m seeking to inspire more young people, and especially girls, to consider a career in STEM. I’m also trying to highlight that there is more than one way to achieve this, to help them see other opportunities that are out there for students to expand their STEM knowledge and develop the skills to complement what they may be learning in school. These can include using free online hubs offered by educational platforms that teach coding or give access to technology development tools such as the Microsoft e-learning and Codefinity.

“On a very practical level, I'm trying to help make sure that future employers have the option of having more female candidates to consider for positions in STEM jobs. I’m very proud of the fact that my company is female founded, led and funded at incorporation. However, when it came to developing my internal tech team I found it almost impossible to find women to fill the positions to the same level as our leadership team. This was actually quite disappointing, and was further validation for me to want to run this program.

“Ultimately, if I can walk away from a school having inspired just one girl to consider a career in STEM, then it’s all worthwhile. I truly believe the next best inventor that will change our lives is sitting in a classroom somewhere. I hope she doesn’t miss out on her future career,” she says.

The program is in its infancy, and the people driving it are still mapping out how many schools it is viable for them to visit. They have visited three schools across the months of August and September.

“I was fortunate enough to work with the MindSET-Do program to facilitate our inaugural session at Redcliffe State High School, and I’m hoping we will be able to continue to work with them to support their initiatives in this area with schools north of Brisbane and into the Sunshine Coast. We also have some sessions coming up with schools on Brisbane’s southside that I’m looking forward to.

“The feedback from Redcliffe SHS has been very positive from teachers, but most importantly from the students as well. It was very gratifying to have a group of girls come up to me afterwards telling me how they enjoyed it. I also know the students are excited about the upcoming visit to our office, and I look forward to getting their feedback on that session to ensure we are offering a valuable experience to them.”

Dr Wellington is nothing if not ambitious, building the start up Annuo Med Tech Solutions a networking platform for improved, collaborative healthcare. The platform, designed by specialists, streamlines treatment planning, monitoring and communication.

“The start-up landscape can be challenging for female founders, and I quickly discovered that forming connections with other women in this space is invaluable. Peer support allowed me to share my own experiences and learnings, exchange advice and support, and facilitated other connections with other people who may be able to help us all succeed. There is a sense of community when we share with each other the difficult journey we have faced and know that it is shared by so many others.

“The real difference for me was the opportunity to meet with decision-makers who understood the problems faced by female-founders working in STEM spaces. These key decision-makers chose to support and back me and my work. Their support may not always be financial, but they advocated for me in elevated rooms. As women in STEM we have to support and lift each other up, and that is what I am trying to do from an early age with the school program.

“I think one of the most important things is to make sure that these young people can see themselves reflected in these industries. This is where ensuring there is diversity in these real-life representation at these programs really matters. There’s no quick fix to upend decades of an entrenched attitude that STEM subjects and careers are for ‘boys’, but we have to keep chipping away at this belief and rewrite the script by continuing to showcase women that are succeeding and working in STEM fields today.

"I believe without a doubt that women and girls have so much value to add by working in STEM and shaping our future. Young women are our future astronauts, engineers and astrophysicists. We need to make sure they have the tools and the belief to get there."

Even if women graduate in a STEM discipline, many do not go on to work in the area, choosing to parent children above striving to establish and then advance in a career.

“As we balance our life goals with our work and career goals, we see more and more women putting their dreams in the backseat for a period of time or for an indefinite period of time. I do not think this is truly reflective of all women’s views. But from my own experiences there are some women who have felt it was the only option available to them to be the best parent they could possibly be to their children.

“I think there is a lot more we could do for women to bridge the 18% pay gap between women and men in STEM. This would require a larger less person-centred focus and more of a society-level focus on the value we place on women and their careers. This could be reflected in more flexible working conditions, better return to work options for new mothers, the increase in co-located child care facilities on offer by employers or even consideration of a 4-day work week. I do not have all the answers but I have met some amazing women who would appreciate the opportunity to share their ideas and see some material changes in how we do business.”