Foram Brown on Empowering Women in STEM

This week on See It To Be It podcast, Melinda speaks with engineer, wife, cancer conqueror, mother, and ambassador; Foram Brown. Foram is based in London, England, and has dedicated her life to learning and empowering women with the knowledge she has obtained. 

She begins this episode by discussing her "big dream" when she was growing up and how she wanted to be a drama queen, movie star, and glamorous Bollywood actress. However, she felt that her only two options from a cultural standpoint were either to be a doctor or an engineer. She felt that to be able to be a self-sustaining, successful woman, she had to pick from those careers. She felt she did not have the memorization skills to be a doctor, so it became clear to her that STEM was the best option because of its key component of problem-solving.

Starting off her post-college career, she landed her first job at a pharmaceutical company as a systems engineer. From there, she worked for Rolls-Royce on civil engines for 11 years. Bombardier Transportation soon followed, where she worked on UK trains, and she now works for Alstom as the head of mechanical engineering. She has noticed an increased awareness of women in the STEM industry. She works to continually increase the number of women that are recruited into engineering roles due to the fact that she has always had a strong desire to help other women. She explains how she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019 and this changed her perspective in life. Furthermore, she decided she was going to do what she had always wanted, to help women. She ultimately started her business, Foram Brown, with the purpose of filling companies' STEM openings with women employees.

Foram Brown utilizes a simple model that requires companies to hire women and then fills those positions with a world-class candidate. Due to her experience in the industry, she is skilled in finding the right person for these jobs. She also nurtures the sustainment of women in these positions, helping create an inclusive company culture. She discusses the five key elements of inclusivity of women in the workplace; flexibility, support, trust, empowerment, and listen. 

She talks about the toll that being a mom in a pandemic takes on a women's career, which results in a decrease in women in the workforce. Likewise, she discusses the unequal disbursement of responsibilities among women throughout the pandemic that can create stress and burnout. She encourages the embracement of the change and differences that the pandemic has contributed to so that women can work at home.

She discusses how to deal with the gender pay gap, focusing on awareness. She approaches this pay gap with the mindset of knowing one's own worth and being goal-oriented. Ultimately, she wraps up with the advice to go get what you want and create the life you want to live. 

Learn more about Foram Brown: https://forambrown.com/
Follow Foram Brown on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/forambrown/?hl=en (@forambrown)
Connect with Foram Brown on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/foram-brown
Follow Foram Brown on Twitter: https://twitter.com/forambrown?lang=en (@ForamBrown)
Like Foram Brown's page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/forambrownfb/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/forambrowncommunity

Foram Brown on inclusivity of women in the workplace:
_13:08
“You make a change, and you will see a massive shift."

Foram Brown on her go-to piece of advice:
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“Life is exactly how you want it to be."

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