Introduce a Girl to Engineering: Meet Bruna Barbosa

I am proud to say I am an engineer at Ericsson. When people ask me about how it is to work in such a technical environment I always explain that it is not all about programing and technicalities. You can work on technical projects with a strong purpose, improve health, energy efficient, technologies that improve the lives of people living in poverty, societal safety and specially how to use our intelligence, creativity and values to create a sustainable future and solving world’s biggest problems.

How did I get here?

Well, when I was in high school, me and my female friends were equally strong in mathematics and sciences as the boys, but I was the only girl to go to engineering. So as expected when I started the University in 2003 I had more male colleagues than females, but it was not a completely male-dominated environment and I never had any issues with men taking me less seriously.

After graduation, I decided to apply for executive trainee programs, and most of them were restricted to engineers. Initially I thought that I was lucky to be one of the six candidates selected out of more than 10,000 candidates for Ericsson’s trainee program in Latin America but today I believe that I was well prepared for the position. The program was focused on job rotation, so I have had a chance to work in areas such as Services, Supply Chain, Sales and Finance, giving me an end-to-end view of the business. Afterwards, I worked as a Project Manager leading projects with major Brazilian telecom operators, giving me good experience to take a regional role as Program Manager for Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility in Latin America. In 2014 I had an opportunity to take a short-term assignment in Ericsson Headquarter in Sweden, opening the doors to move permanently to Europe and work in global roles, current within Customer Group Industry and Society.

As engineer I could go to a more specialist/ technical path or more generalist and this flexibility is what I like most.

Independent of your career, it is always good to have a network of great leaders that you can be inspired by and have as a mentor. Once I got a feedback from a senior female mentor that I should trust more in myself and after that I did a self-analysis and realized that sometimes when facing a challenge and considering the problem, even if I knew the way to solve it I would convince myself that ¨it could not be the best solution¨ and started to discuss around the hypothesis and it would turn out that I was correct the whole time but doubting myself. Many studies show that women, more often than men, start to doubt their problem-solving abilities; we tend to limit ourselves with certain thoughts and behaviors. We need to change that to achieve greater things and play big.

Despite a growing global demand for engineers, my main advice is that you need to go for something that you feel passionate about. An interest in mathematics and science is a prerequisite for a successful career in engineering and there are many scholarships in place for women who decide to pursue this career.

I strongly believe in the power of diversity. Engineering may have been a male-dominated profession, but an increase in women’s voices will increase to the problem-solving and innovation that is at the heart of engineering

You can learn more about Bruna’s journey, including her work in the Amazon, here.