Charlotte Levy
Safety Engineer at Babcock International Group
Know that there is always a way to make something work and it’s ok to not know exactly what you want to do. A career is something that you work on and develop over a lifetime and there’s never a stationary end-goal. Make the most of every opportunity: you have to be really enterprising and proactive. I’ve been lucky enough to have won several awards, but that was also because of my own ambition and resourcefulness. Also, work on your mindset, as it’s the best tool you’ll have to develop yourself and your career.
About Charlotte...
Who am I?
"I would describe myself as ambitious, friendly, caring, and independent, with a particularly anxious disposition! One of my main values in life, especially when it comes to a career, is to keep on learning in the never-ending pursuit of knowledge."
What do I do?
"I'm a safety engineer within the Defence sector. Not only have I been fortunate enough to be involved in extremely interesting technical roles throughout my education and career thus far, I also get to do a lot of extracurricular activities and travelling relating to it. I do a lot of STEM engagement work and outreach and enjoy it a lot. At first iIt started off as simply researching a few things that I was interested in whilst working on my PhD, such as the science and chemistry of chocolate, and then it transformed into a presentation that I’ve delivered multiple times, including making it through to the IET’s PATW competition Global Final in 2016! I’m now also getting more involved in mentoring other students and I really enjoy that – it’s great to get out and about and to speak with people. If I can help anyone in any way, then I’m happy. Now that I'm in a large company that has many offices all of the UK and internationally, the chances for moving about and progressing are many. That's one thing I really love about working for Babcock, is that there's so much interesting stuff going on you've really no idea what you could potentially get involved with!"
How did I get here?
"After my PhD, I continued to work at the university and simultaneously for a small independent laboratory. I also joined the Royal Naval Reserves. Then I started with Babcock. I was very lucky to have encouraging parents and teachers. No one pushed me in any direction other than what I wanted to do, and for that, I’m forever thankful."
The life I live
"I really love being active so am heavily involved in general strength and conditioning/fitness training and occasionally some do Jiu Jitsu; both keep me active and help me become tougher emotionally. In additional free time I love baking and sharing it with friends!"
My typical day
"I'm working on the Probabilistic Safety Assessment of a Safety Case, which involves a lot of Fault Tree Analysis and Event Tree Analysis."
My qualifications
"A couple of A-Levels and Open University courses.BSc(Hons) Applied ChemistryDoctorate"