"I'm Lois! I'm 22 and a renewable energy engineer. I think it's rare to find young women who are outgoing, sociable and chatty in the engineering space but this doesn't mean that my kind of personality doesn't fit the role I do. I think a benefit of having a social personality in a role like mine is the power of the word of mouth. Chatting about things your working on (even if it is just in a social, casual sense) can spark ideas and conversations, it allows people to get to know who other people are and therefore what they can help them with. I was given \"coach\" as one of my personality traits which I think reflects well on the social, friendly element of my nature. As well as being quite sociable and chatty, I also try really hard to absorb lots of information. Whether this be directly related to technical work, or who people are in the organisation. This again helps in knowing where to direct your energy when you need help with a task. I also got \"developer\" as a personality trait which I think fits in well with the work I'm doing in innovation, aiming to develop things to be better and more efficient.Finally, I was given \"manager\", although I'm not currently a manager, it is definitely a role i aspire to in the coming years and I hope before then I can project manage on some projects."

"I'm on the engineering graduate scheme at EDF Renewables UK&I, which means I get the opportunity to move around different areas of the business for 5 placements. Currently I'm working in the innovation team, which sits in the Engineering team. I work to bridge the gap between the technical Research & Development activities that are being carried out across EDF group with the right people in EDF Renewables UK&I. A large part of my role is also feeding back to the R&D teams what our needs are in renewables UK as the innovation needs vary significantly across global markets. Once the R&D is happening, we take the outputs from it and feed it into the right teams in our organization so they can implement the findings and new developments into their projects. Outside of my core work I also try and organise social activities for the office and aim to get involved in as many \"extra-curricular\" activities as I can"

"For me, renewables hasn't always been the plan! When I was in school I wanted to be a doctor, but the med-school application process is brutal and I was unsuccesful. At that point I had a decision to make, take a year out and try again or go to uni and study chemistry (with the view that I could do medicine as a post grad). I decided to go to uni and almost as soon as I got there I realised that being a medic wouldn't have been for me. I continued with my Chemistry degree and loved it. I took a particular interest in green chemistry. At the end of my undergrad I decided I wanted to do a green chemistry masters, but the course didn't run due to low numbers as a result of the pandemic! So, I took to the uni website and discovered a masters course in \"Sustainable Energy Engineering\". I was really interested but didn't think I would be qualified (given I hadn't done an engineering degree and didn't even do physics A level). But I asked, and after some deliberation along with evidence of my work (doing lots of maths and thermodynamics helped) I was accepted onto the course. From the second I started I loved it and before long I was applying for grad schemes in the renewables industry (to be completely honest, I was only doing this because all my peers were). The EDF R scheme caught my eye and (like hundreds others) I applied. After lots of rounds of interviews, competency tests and various assessments, I was offered a place on the scheme and now here I am, doing a job I love! It just goes to show, not every path is clear, you don't have to always know exactly what you want to do, and bumps in the road are not a bad thing, but an opportunity for something greater."

"At the moment I live in greater London and although I may be biased, London is definitely the best city in the world. The opportunities for social activities, jobs and meeting people are endless. In my free time I enjoy going to the gym and do quite a lot of bouldering! I'm also really trying to get into running and would love to run a marathon at some point in the next few years eek! I'm also teaching myself the piano. And, it's such an engineering cliche but I really like Formula 1. I also love meeting my friends after work to go for dinner and drinks and I spend a lot of time with my family."

"Every day is different for me, I usually work from home 2 or 3 days a week and am in the office on the other days. If I'm working from home I usually get up and go to the gym in the mornings, have some breakfast and then get ready to go. I start my day checking my teams and emails and then usually make a to-do list for the day. Some days I have lots of meetings, or even day long meetings so I don't get the chance to tick much off, but other days I'm able to crack on and get lots done. This kind of variety works really well for me and really keeps me engaged. I usually have a catch up with my placement manager to make sure we're on the same page about what we need to get done and when by. Towards the later half of the week I have more meetings with the wider team and on a Friday all the grads have a catch up to check in on eachother. The tasks and meetings that I do throughout the day vary, for example at the moment I'm prepping an innovation report which goes out to our organisation so they can see updates on the innovation activities. This often leads to calls with different business units, talking them through the outputs of R&D activities which are relevant to them in a bit more detail. Some of my free time (not in meetings) is spent collating the right information and generating presentations for these calls. I also spend a little bit of time each week making sure I'm working towards engineering chartership. "

"I have A-levels in Maths, Chemistry and Biology. An undergraduate degree in Medicinal & Biological Chemistry, and most recently, a masters degree in Sustainable Energy Engineering. Without my masters i most definitely wouldn't be in my current role or probably even this industry. Life is not as linear as you think and you never know where you'll end up or what opportunities will come your way."