Inspire Her Future: Celebrating the Winners Behind the Stories

When we opened Inspire Her Future, we wanted to give women in STEM more room to share the work behind their experiences.

Student Category Winners

The Student category was created for women currently in school, college or university who are already beginning to shape their own path in STEM. For this category, we were looking for entries that showed curiosity, practical learning and the early signs of a meaningful STEM journey.

Strong Student entries did not need to show a long career or a finished professional profile. What mattered was evidence of initiative: a project attempted, a problem explored, a skill developed, or a moment where interest in STEM turned into action. We looked for stories that explained not only what the entrant had done, but what they had learned from it, how they approached challenges, and how their experience might encourage someone else to take their first step.

The winners in this category stood out because their stories felt active and purposeful. They showed students building, testing, coding, designing, debugging, learning from mistakes and thinking about what comes next. They also reflected the wider aim of Inspire Her Future: helping more girls and women see that STEM is not reserved for someone else. It is something they can begin exploring now.

1st Place: Emilee Watson - ewat 

Emilee Watson’s story stood out because it is honest about the fact that STEM journeys do not always begin in a straight line. Her story starts with a simple sentence that will feel familiar to anyone who has ever tried to build, fix or understand something technical:

“Things rarely work right the first time around.”

Before studying mechatronics, Emilee spent nearly four years working in finance and angel investing. It was a path that made sense on paper, but over time she realised it was not a future she felt excited by. As she put it, she had “always been good at maths,” but had “neglected the side of me that loved to tinker and create.”

That decision to change direction is what makes her story so relatable. Emilee did not present engineering as something she had always perfectly understood. Instead, she described it as the place where she rediscovered the part of herself that wanted to make things, test ideas and learn through doing.

Studying mechatronics has given her a way to turn that curiosity into practical work. She writes about programming FPGAs, designing PCBs, building embedded systems and working with hardware. But what gives the story its strength is the way she talks about the process behind the work:

“Debugging is just as important as designing, and knowing when to start again can be just as valuable as pushing through.”

That is a very real version of engineering. It is not clean, instant or perfectly linear. It is full of false starts, rework, late questions, fresh attempts and the moment where something finally begins to behave the way it should. Emilee gives that process its proper place.

Her future goals are equally thoughtful. She has found a passion for embedded systems and renewable energy, and wants to work on projects that combine hardware and software in a way that makes a difference. Longer term, she hopes to support others who are considering a change of direction, especially women who, like her, “didn't always see engineering as a space for them.”

Emilee was chosen as our Student Category first-place winner because her story is grounded, encouraging and recognisably human. It reminds us that there is no single correct route into engineering. Sometimes the most important step is realising that the path you are on is not the one that excites you, and having the courage to go, as Emilee puts it, “bush whacking” towards something that does.

 2nd Place: Ayla Nicole Vaynerman - Nominated by vadimv 

Ayla Nicole Vaynerman’s nomination shows a student already engaging with engineering in a serious, practical and hands-on way. Her story centres on an embedded design project, the HackClub Macropad, and the nomination makes clear that this was not simply a small classroom exercise.

“Throughout this past year I watched her take on an embedded design project, the HackClub Macropad, designing a complete circuit card with an embedded processor, buttons, rotary encoder, and LCD display.”

That one project brings together a lot of the skills that sit behind real embedded design: schematic development, iteration, PCB layout, design decisions around size and cost, and version control. Ayla developed the schematic, refined it, moved the layout into KiCad, and put the work into Git.

What makes the story particularly strong for the Student category is the independence behind it. Her nominator describes her figuring out Git for herself and putting the design on GitHub. Engineering confidence is often built like this: not by already knowing everything, but by being willing to research, try, revise and keep going and making it public.

The nomination also makes a wider point about why young people’s technical work deserves recognition:

“What used to be a professional project 10-15 years ago is now a design we see high schoolers doing, and this is something more people should know about.”

That sentence captures why Ayla’s story belongs here. It is not about waiting until some distant future point to begin meaningful STEM work. It is about starting now, learning with the tools available, and treating a student project as a real engineering challenge.

Ayla was chosen as our Student Category second-place winner because her story shows curiosity becoming capability. Her project demonstrates the confidence to move from “I am interested in this” to “I can build this,” and that is exactly the kind of step we want to celebrate.

 3rd Place: Janki Pisal - jankipisal 

Janki Pisal’s STEM journey stood out because of the range of practical ideas she has already explored as a student, and because those ideas are clearly connected to real-world problems.

Her story begins with a sustained interest in science, technology and innovation from school. She writes:

“I have been learning STEM since 8th grade, and this journey has helped me achieve many important milestones. From a young age, I developed a strong interest in science, technology, and innovation.”

Across her projects, there is a clear pattern: Janki is using sensors, programming and electronics to think about practical needs. She created a smart walking stick for visually impaired people, worked on a waste-management and plant-watering project, and developed safety-focused systems using sensors, buzzers, emergency lights and SOS functionality.

One of the strongest examples is her SOS Button for Women project, which she describes as part of her wider STEM journey:

“I also developed a project titled ‘SOS Button for Women along with Defence Bracelet.’ Through this project, I was selected for the first stage of the INSPIRE Award (MANAK) and received a scholarship of ₹10,000.”

The supporting material for this project showed an electronics build using a GPS/GSM board, a microcontroller, battery, voltage regulation and an SOS button, with code designed to send a location link by SMS and place a call to an emergency contact. It is a student project, but it shows the kind of thinking that sits at the heart of engineering: identify a problem, choose appropriate components, build a system around them, and use code to make the design work in a practical situation.

Janki’s story also shows that her interest has not been limited to a single project. She writes about gaining knowledge of Arduino boards, sensors and electronic components, completing online courses, participating in exhibitions and competitions, and continuing to grow her skills.

“STEM has helped me develop creativity, problem-solving skills, and the ability to build innovative projects.”

Janki was chosen as our Student Category third-place winner because her story shows sustained enthusiasm for STEM through multiple hands-on projects. Her work reflects the way many student journeys begin: by noticing a problem nearby, wondering what could be built to help, and learning enough to try.

Early-Career Category

The Early-Career category was for women in the first years of their STEM journey. For this section, we looked for stories that showed direction, momentum and the process of turning early ambition into real work, whether through employment, entrepreneurship, research, education, technology, creative practice or another STEM-related path.

We were especially interested in entries that showed how the entrant had moved from interest to application. That could mean building something new, applying STEM thinking in an emerging field, finding a route into technology from another background, or using their skills to solve a problem for others. The strongest entries were those that balanced personal story with evidence of progress, showing not just what the entrant hoped to do, but what they had already begun putting into motion.

1st Place: Emb Hashmi - Emb  

Emb Hashmi’s story begins with a problem that many people in STEM will recognise: brilliant ideas that fail to land because the story around them is missing.

After more than a decade as a BBC journalist, Emb had watched scientists, engineers and innovators struggle to communicate the value of their work. Her motivation is expressed plainly:

“The research was groundbreaking. The story was missing. That gap bothered me deeply.”

That observation became the bridge into her current work. Emb founded Storytelling for CEOs, built a CPD-accredited programme, and began developing StoryMirror, an AI platform designed to generate personalised storytelling openings for sales and leadership conversations.

Her story is not STEM in the narrow sense of a lab bench or circuit board, but it sits in an important place: the space where technology, education, communication and leadership meet. It addresses a real challenge in technical fields. A strong idea still needs to be understood. A complex piece of work still needs to be communicated in a way that people can act on.

Emb is also candid about the difficulty of building something from the ground up:

“I founded Storytelling for CEOs with no business background, no investment and no safety net.”

That sentence gives Emb's story its edge. This is not just a polished founder narrative. It is about risk, transition and the practical work of building a programme, a product, a client pipeline and a future direction at the same time.

The impact she describes is also wider than her own business. She co-founded Women in EdTech, wants to create a mentorship pipeline for women of colour entering STEM entrepreneurship, and sees communication as something fundamental rather than decorative:

“My goal is to prove that communication is not a soft skill. It is the infrastructure everything else is built on.”

Emb was chosen as our Early-Career Category first-place winner because her story shows how STEM impact can depend on communication, confidence and access. She is building tools and training to help technical people tell the stories that allow their work to be understood, supported and remembered.

2nd Place: Juniper Sikora - Juniper  

Juniper Sikora’s story brings a different kind of STEM journey into view: one that sits between art, environmental observation, material experimentation and public engagement.

Her work begins with a question:

“My work began with a simple but persistent curiosity: how does water behave, and what does it carry from the places it moves through?”

Rather than approaching that question through a traditional scientific route, Juniper began experimenting with material processes. She works with bioplastics infused with water and sediment collected from local waterways, observing the changes that emerge in colour, opacity, texture and structure.

What makes her work compelling is the way it treats material as evidence. Each piece becomes a record of a site, shaped by the environment it came from and the process used to create it. Juniper describes this as “material-led research,”. Her work is not simply using science as a theme. It is built around observation, response, environmental systems and the behaviour of materials.

“Each piece became a record of a specific site, shaped not only by my process, but by the composition of the water itself.”

Her story is also honest about the difficulty of working between disciplines. Juniper writes that one of the challenges has been navigating a space “where the work doesn’t sit neatly within art or science.” Rather than treating that as a weakness, she has made it part of the strength of the work.

Through exhibitions, open studios and community engagement, she has seen how people respond first through feeling, before analysis. That gives her work a public-facing purpose: it creates another way for people to engage with ecology, place and environmental change.

Looking ahead, Juniper is developing Water Response Atlas as an ongoing project across multiple sites. Her goal is to continue exploring how material processes can reveal patterns, differences and behaviours within water systems, while creating new ways for people to connect with the environments they are part of.

Juniper was chosen as our Early-Career Category second-place winner because her story broadens how we talk about STEAM impact. It recognises that environmental understanding can also be explored through material practice, sensory communication and creative research.

Pro / Educator Category

The Pro / Educator category recognised experienced professionals, researchers, teachers and mentors whose work shows sustained contribution to STEM. For this category, we looked for entries that demonstrated depth of experience, clear impact and a commitment to helping others understand, access or progress within STEM fields.

Strong entries in this section went beyond listing career achievements. We wanted to understand the journey behind the work: the challenges faced, the areas of expertise developed, the people supported, and the contribution made through research, engineering, education, mentorship, leadership or community engagement. The most compelling stories showed how professional experience can become a platform for wider impact.

The winners in this category stood out because their work combined expertise with purpose. They showed that being established in STEM is not only about personal achievement, but about what that experience makes possible for others. Whether through teaching, research, innovation, mentorship or advocacy, these stories reflected the kind of contribution that can help shape the next generation of engineers, scientists, technologists and makers.

 1st Place: Dulsha Kularatna-Abeywardana - Dulsha  

Dulsha Kularatna-Abeywardana’s story is a strong example of what the Pro / Educator category was created to recognise: technical expertise, sustained contribution, mentorship and a commitment to making engineering more accessible.

Her motivation is clear from the beginning:

“Dulsha Kularatna-Abeywardana’s STEM journey is driven by a desire to make engineering meaningful, accessible, and impactful.”

Her work is rooted in electrical and electronics engineering, with a focus on sustainable electronics, energy harvesting systems, supercapacitors and renewable energy solutions. These are areas that sit behind many of the technologies people rely on every day, even when the engineering itself is not always visible.

What made Dulsha’s story especially strong was the connection between research and outreach. She has established herself as a researcher in sustainable energy systems, contributed to international engineering communities through IEEE, and led outreach initiatives through the Women in Engineering Network at the University of Auckland.

Her work as co-founder of Little Engineers also gives the story a strong educational thread:

“As co-founder of Little Engineers, she has also created hands-on STEM experiences that have inspired students across a wide age range to engage with electricity in fun and meaningful ways.”

Confidence in STEM often begins before someone makes a formal career choice. A hands-on experience with electricity, electronics or engineering can be the moment a young person realises they are allowed to understand it, enjoy it and pursue it.

Dulsha’s story also carries a clear commitment to inclusion. She writes about navigating the challenges of working in a traditionally male-dominated field and using those experiences to support and uplift other women in STEM.

“She is passionate about mentorship, building confidence in students, and creating inclusive pathways into engineering.”

Dulsha was chosen as our Pro / Educator Category first-place winner because her story brings together the strongest elements of the category: professional achievement, research contribution, education, mentorship and a clear commitment to the next generation of engineers.

 2nd Place: Avye Couloute - Avye  

Avye Couloute’s story is one of those rare examples where the scale of the achievement is impressive, but the reason behind it is even more important.

She began with a love of coding and physical computing:

“I started coding when I was 7, and I loved it straight away. I especially enjoyed physical computing, because I could see my code come to life and actually do something in the real world.”

That early interest could have remained a personal hobby, but Avye noticed something that stayed with her. At coding and robotics workshops, most of the participants were boys. She kept asking herself a simple question:

“Where are the girls? Because I knew girls would love this too.”

That question became the start of Girls Into Coding, which Avye founded when she was ten years old. Her aim was to create spaces where girls could explore, build and feel confident in technology and engineering.

As the initiative grew, Avye came to understand that the challenge was not only about getting girls interested in STEM. It was about confidence, belonging and breaking down the barriers that make girls feel as though these spaces are not for them.

“That’s why everything we do is designed to be inclusive and accessible.”

Girls Into Coding has since grown into a community, with hundreds of workshops and outreach reaching thousands of girls. But what makes Avye’s story especially strong is that she does not talk only about numbers. She talks about the moments inside the workshops: the point where a girl who was unsure at the start becomes curious, gains confidence and begins to see STEM differently.

“The moment when a girl who was unsure at the start begins to gain confidence, becomes curious, and starts to see STEM differently, not as something intimidating, but as something she can enjoy, explore, and succeed in.”

That is why Avye has been recognised in the Pro / Educator category. Although she is currently studying, the heart of her story is her work as a STEM educator, mentor and community builder. She has created practical learning opportunities, role-modelling and confidence-building pathways for girls who may not otherwise have seen a place for themselves in technology and engineering.

Her next goal is to build a dedicated Girls Into Coding makerspace, because, as she puts it, one-off experiences are not always enough:

“A single workshop can spark interest, but real confidence comes from having a place to return to, somewhere you can keep learning, building, and growing.”

Avye was chosen as our Pro / Educator Category second-place winner because her story shows education and mentorship in action. It begins with noticing who is missing from the room, and grows into building a space where girls can see that they belong there.

3rd Place: Ksenia Sternina - uxksu  

Ksenia Sternina describes her STEM journey as one that began with an interest in how systems work, both technically and socially.

“My journey into STEM began with curiosity about how systems work - both technological and human.”

She studied computer science and later focused her PhD research on human factors, looking at how people interact with complex technologies. Her career has sat between engineering, business and communication, with a focus on turning technical ideas into products and strategies that people can use in practice.

Ksenia's career journey returns to one problem in particular: technology can be well built and still miss the needs of the people it is meant to serve.

“Many brilliant ideas fail not because of technology, but because companies struggle to understand people.”

That thinking led her to work in her current role where she works on a platform designed to simulate human audiences and support faster research and decision-making. For this award, the focus is not the platform itself, but the STEM approach behind it: computer science, human factors, applied AI and the attempt to build technology around how people make decisions.

Ksenia also frames her future goals around the relationship between people and technology:

“Looking ahead, my goal is to continue developing technologies that amplify human intelligence rather than replace it.”

Ksenia was chosen as our Pro / Educator Category third-place winner because her story shows a professional STEM journey built around computer science, human factors and applied AI. Her work looks at how technology can be shaped by a better understanding of people, rather than treated as separate from them and her hard work demonstrated to get there.

Congratulations to Our Winners

What I like about these stories is that they do not all look the same. Some are about finding your way into engineering after taking a different route. Some are about building something with the parts and tools available to you. Some are about research, education, communication, or making a space where someone else feels able to have a go.

To me, that feels right for a celebration like Inspire Her Future. A person's career, especially in STEM is not one fixed path. It can start with a school project, a workshop, a question about how something works, or the realisation that something could be done better if someone took the time to build it, and it can start at any point in your lifetime, whether that was planned from a young age, or pivoting later in life.

Across the winners, there is a lot of practical and evidenced work here. There are circuits, sensors, coding projects, sustainable electronics, AI, material research, mentoring, teaching, and community-building. There are also the less visible parts of STEM: confidence, persistence, changing direction, explaining complicated ideas clearly, and helping others see that they are allowed to be part of the expression and experience too.

We hope these stories give other people something to recognise in their own journey. Maybe that is the student trying a project for the first time, the person thinking about changing direction, the maker working something out by testing it again, or the mentor creating space for someone else to get started, and I hope that we'll hear more from these people on the element14 Community.

Thank you to everyone who submitted a story or nominated someone for Inspire Her Future. Congratulations again to all of our winners, and we look forward to seeing where their work, ideas and projects go next. We will be in touch directly to sort and distribute prizes.