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International Women In Engineering Day Mackay & Melbourne

CPEE involvement in International Women In Engineering Day Mackay & Melbourne, CPEE delivered a tailored course for Mackay Regional Council for accredited technical training for Roads and Open Space lighting, and took the opportunity to connect with the Chair Lauren Lord of the Mackay Regional Group of Engineers Australia. CPEE was invited to attend their International Women in Engineering Day breakfast function and was an excellent event

CPEE have been delivering technical roads lighting training in collaboration with the Mackay Regional Council. Some of my favourite moments with Engineers Australia have been connecting with Regional Groups, and was a privilege to attend International Women in Engineering Day 2025 Breakfast in Mackay, connecting with the Mackay Regional Group Committee, and being welcomed by Chair Lauren Lord and Riley D'Castro from Engineers Australia. It was a fantastic event, Lauren shared her journey into engineering - when she initially thought she wanted to be a teacher, she did work experience at an engineering firm as well - and it changed her life as she is now a passionate engineer who advocates for more people to come into the profession - especially more women! Robogals Global.

A beautiful keynote from Kylie Rogers from Mackay Regional Council, sharing her story - at school she had no idea what engineering was until an engineer came to her school and spoke about what they did and their love of engineering - and it changed her life. 

She spoke about her experiences and some of her recent diverse, and change making projects for Mackay. She shared with the audience, how she is more naturally reserved and did not like presenting, but as an engineer she realised it was fundamental to be able to present to and meet with a range of diverse stakeholders and she had focused on building these fundamental skills throughout her career.

Her presentation was amazing and no-one would ever know that she did not like presenting as she connected in such a natural way with everyone in the audience.

After the keynote, there was then a panel discussion with Kylie, Craig Meng from Integral, Chris Porter from Mosiac Consultants and Rachel Rae from Aurecon.

With the fantastic pay it forward initiative sponsors ETA International Association, Mackay Regional Council, Paragon Consulting Engineers, Mosiac, Stantec, IE Integral, Aurecon, AECOM and Becker Sunner Consulting meant that we had teachers and girls from year 12 attend the brekky, hear the stories and network - and I think we have some potential engineers there!

I was so impressed with the discussion and here are some of my favourite points

  • Engineers have out of the box thinking to deliver great community outcomes
  • Engineers love the challenge and opportunity to innovate in constrained environments
  • Engineers turn ideas into solutions
  • All undergrad engineering students studying in Mackay already have jobs in first year!

Great start for International Women in Engineering Day 2025 celebrations thanks to the Mackay Engineering community for making me feel so welcome!