Transcript 0:00 Welcome to Calling Operator, [static] the podcast where we speak to operators in some of Australia's biggest startups, [upbeat music] find out how they got there and what their impact is. [phone ringing] Operator. 0:13 Connecting to Deanna Hood, senior robotics engineer at Vexev. [static] And I am super excited to welcome Deanna to the pod. Welcome. Hey, good morning. So good to have you all the way from Portugal. 0:30 [laughs] It's morning for me at least. [laughs] So we're gonna start off with a pretty easy one. I want you to describe to me what the early phases of your life were like. 0:39 I know we're gonna get into the fact that you went to university at 15, but even prior to that, what led you from early childhood to that point? Hmm. 0:49 I think about this a lot, and even like today I'm depicking a few things 'cause I wonder, ugh, what was different about my family to others? 0:57 And I don't want people to just attribute everything to me being like a genius because I will concede that there's like a small part that I maybe pick things up faster than other people, but I think a lot of that is actually a learned skill, and you only learn that in certain environments. 1:18 And so I'm... I know that not everyone has that environment, and I think about it because I wanna foster that environment for other people. 1:25 So I think that actually my parents played a huge role in fostering the educational confidence that I had. Mm-hmm. 1:35 'Cause at some point you get into this virtuous cycle of your self-worth isn't threatened by asking questions at school, and, and so then you just keep asking questions. 1:45 You feel like you learn lots of things, and so it's, I guess, how people also turn out to run marathons and stuff is you just realize, oh, if I hustle in this particular way, success follows afterwards. 1:57 So yeah, I think my... 1:58 I do remember that my dad, he's a s- a farmer turned scientist, and put a lot of effort into encouraging me, knowing not just that maybe I had some potential, but also that society might be out there trying to convince me otherwise. 2:18 [laughs] Um, so he, he would explicitly say to me, "You can do this. Girls can do this." That was very intentional, and it was so ingrained in me that I almost forget that other people need to hear that too sometimes. 2:32 But then at the same time, my mom... So my dad was kind of like, "It doesn't matter that you're a girl." But then I remember my mom also, she found me a girls' robotics camp when I was 10, 11 years old. 2:42 I think she knew that, well, maybe it does matter, that actually this is not the, the most normal thing for girls her age to, to do. I wasn't interested in robotics. 2:53 I actually didn't wanna go to the camp, [laughs] which also I literally forgot until she reminded me about that. 2:58 I'm like, I need that sort of intel to weave into talks that I do at schools for students so that they understand that I literally in that moment was exactly who they are. I, I didn't 3:12 have any interest in going off and being a roboticist probably because it's scary. 3:19 [laughs] I'm scared of things even now and, and so having that support is something that I'm now aware of it, so that then I can be open about it just so that people realize that that is something that has helped me, and so that I can provide it to other students kind of explicitly- Mm... 3:38 the, the way it was provided to me. Mm. And were you... Did you have siblings as well? Yeah. I do have siblings, although I was thinking just last night I was kind of reflecting. I have older siblings. 3:48 I have an older sister and an older brother, but I didn't study with either of them when I was growing up. I don't have memories of them being study role models. 4:00 My sister lived in a different household, and my older brother, he and I ended up, once I skipped a few years of school, we were in the same year level. So, so I didn't have a super mega nerdy role model out ahead of me. 4:15 My dad actually put all of his energy into riding motorbikes and just the minimum amount- Yeah... into actually studying. 4:23 And so I was genuinely reflecting last night, how did I get this standard ingrained in me to just give so much effort to something? Mm. And I think part of it comes from not seeing anyone else do it. 4:38 I didn't know what else... [laughs] I didn't know the other way to be. Maybe my younger sister when she, following behind me, saw, oh, Deanna puts so much time into... 4:50 'Cause studying maths and science takes a lot of time. You know? Mm. It takes a lot of effort because you have to practice these things. 4:57 And so she saw that, and so maybe that was useful to her, but I think it was just kind of a 5:04 qu- I don't know, like an experiment almost that I combined my mom's attention to detail and really, like precision, follow through on everything, and did, and was this amalgamation of the, the motocross free- [laughs]... 5:20 um, with the perfectionist and- Yeah. And what are your earliest memories of, of falling in love with maths? 5:26 Because I think this is one thing that I just find really interesting 'cause it's not often that you hear children that just love maths, and I think you, you described it in another interview as extreme determination, and I really loved that, but I was just thinking- Oh, good [laughs] 5:42 Just thinking like- I'm gonna say I don't even like to talk about it because I feel like this is the part that most easily separates me. 5:50 This is the part where I feel like distance is created with other people, emotional distance. They think, well, I wasn't like that, and therefore I think people are looking for counter... 6:01 I think personal stories are powerful because one story can show, can be a counterexample to a stereotype of girls can't do maths. Well, I was the top of my maths degree, so yes, we can. 6:13 But also one story can easily be written off as an excuse. I feel like when we're looking at somebody, [laughs] we're either in the mode of like, "Oh, she did it, and so can I," or- Yeah... 6:24 we're in the mode of like, "She did it. Oh, but she liked maths when she was young." It's- I can't lie that I really like problem solving and puzzles, and I just, I do logic workbooks for fun. 6:36 But everyone got really into Sudoku when it was first put into newspapers. People like logic puzzles- Mm... and that's what it looked like. 6:44 It looked like me liking logic puzzles, it looked like me lo- enjoying learning things, and it really was the thing that I definitely try to play up in some way or highlight is it certainly was not the typical engineering tinkerer. 6:59 I mean, I don't know if that is typical, but the at least the stereotypical- Mm... tinkerer engineer or whatever. My family aren't engineers, and- Mm... nobody used the word engineer. 7:10 Engineering wasn't in my vocabulary until I was looking for something to do with my maths degree. So- Mm... 7:17 that's like, yes, I got into it through maths myself, but a lot of people end up as an engineer just like doing maths because it's there, the same way that you have to struggle through wh- whichever subject that you don't like. 7:30 It's [laughs] I... Anyway, favorite subject to talk about because, like I said, I feel like it's- You feel like it's reductive as opposed... Yeah, I haven't figured out- Yeah... how to frame it yet. 7:39 And that's why I do try to emp- emphasize that it's probably environment. Mm. I think environment's a big thing. 7:45 There's some, some nascent interests and ability that we all have, but the rest is, like, how much time did you put into that- Mm... thing? And you enjoy maths when you are on that upward cycle- Trajectory... of... 8:01 Or, or any sort of problem solving. If you feel like you sit with it for a while and you might achieve something- Yeah... you're going to enjoy the temptation of sitting there with it. 8:10 But there are definitely areas of my life that I will just tap straight out of a soccer match or something, 'cause it's not, it's not in that, what do they say in pedagogy? 8:22 Like, in that circle of reach or something that it's like, "Ah, yes, I feel that this is achievable." And I was just always living in that circle with maths. Yeah. It's, it's that reward and success thing, right? 8:34 The more you do something, the better you get at it, the more you get success out of it. 8:37 So I guess it probably doesn't necessarily matter if it's maths, but you were getting some kind of brain reward because there was something that you did enjoy doing, and as you did well at it, it felt good. 8:48 Plus, if you don't do well at it temporarily, because this- Mm... is what struggle is, that happens before growth- Mm... or even during growth [laughs]. Um, you... It needs to not shatter your self-worth. Yeah. 9:04 And there are other aspects in my life where not being able to do something, honestly, that's... I learn a lot about myself. 9:11 There's a lot of personal growth that happened when I got into startups because I'm like, "Oh my gosh," they're all, they just... 9:18 When you realize that other people are braver than you, different things like that, and you're like, "What does this mean for me?" And- Mm... 9:25 I definitely have other parts of my identity which are threatened [laughs] by that gap perception. That's interesting. We won't get too into, like, all the extracurriculars I found just because we... 9:36 It could be a five-episode podcast. But, uh, I saw something that you posted, I think, on TikTok, and I'll, I'll put all your social medias in the, um, episode notes. 9:44 Something you posted and I think you were, you were learning to surf, and you said something around, you know, "Maybe I just need to change in my mind what success looks like when I'm learning to surf. 9:55 So rather than surfing a wave, it's just getting out there and getting- Yeah... in the water with a board." So [laughs] I thought that was just like- Yeah... 10:04 a really interesting way that I watched you kind of reframe what success and struggle and growth looked like. 10:09 Well, I'm glad that you tied that into our chat about maths because that's exactly why I made that video, but I stealthily made it about surfing. 10:18 [laughs] So then cutting forward to you, you went to uni at 15, and that is... It's a pretty phenomenal experience asid- aside from the, not just from the academic basis, right? But the- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 10:30 Being a 15-year-old and being in an environment with, A, a lot of adults- Yeah... and B, a really different structure than most 15-year-olds would experience. What was that like just as a personal growth experience? 10:40 You know, I'm disappointed. I wish I could, I wish I could experience how people think that I experienced it, but- [laughs] And as an adult now, I see... 10:47 I have the experience that my parents maybe had of like, "Oh my gosh, is that possible? How can we let her do that?" 10:53 But the actual experience of being in it is that I was the same as everyone else, and so that was the logic that I used to justify kind of pushing for what I wanted, which was to advance with everyone else. Mm. 11:07 It started when I was in kind of... I was in a year 8, 9, 10 class. Everyone I was friends with was in year 10. 11:15 We were doing the same work because it was a hippie school [laughs] and, uh, the- my friends were going into year 11, and rationally on paper, I was like, "Well, I should go to year 11 too." 11:26 And I'm still coming to terms with the fact that I might be brave, but it manifests in these like sort of backdoor, it's like backdoor brave that is like, actually I was just being really rational. 11:37 To me it was like- Yeah... "No, sorry, but same, same qualifications, we're going together." And it was the same thing at uni, and I was just focused on only one aspect of [laughs] the things- Okay... 11:49 ways that we were the same versus different. Everyone else was focusing on the other ones. But, um, yeah, I, I could be... What is that? Is it dogged, doggedness or something? Mm. 11:59 I, I'm, I don't feel like I'm like that in general, but I'm absolutely like that when there are rules that I don't understand. Mm. It's like, "Hey, this doesn't make sense to me. 12:07 I'm, I'm not changing my mind here because it doesn't make sense. If it doesn't make sense, I'm not doing it." So was that more about fairness? 12:14 It kind of sounds like you were saying, "I'm in the same class as these people. I'm doing the same work that they're doing." Yeah. "So it's only fair that I should be able to do the next step with them." 12:23 I mean, I don't, I don't... It was more about sameness as a persuasion technique. Yes, but I don't remember feeling like, this is offensive. I remember feeling like this is limiting. I need- Right... 12:35 to learn those things, otherwise I have to- I spent six months in year eight doing year eight work, and it was the, like, worst six months of my schooling because it was, it was boring, and I was not a nice person because I was bored. 12:55 Mm-hmm. So- Mm... it was more about I was aware... It was self-limiting. Not self-limiting. They were [laughs] limiting me. They were limiting you. 13:04 [laughs] And you've, and you obviously could sense at that point that this was something you really cared about and you wanted to do well at it, and so you didn't wanna be limited by someone else, which I can get, especially as a teenager. 13:13 That would be a really hard concept- Well, it just [laughs]... to make sense of. I guess. I guess. But even, like, that, that... Having interacted with a few thousand teenagers over the last few years- [laughs]... 13:21 it's not like, that's not actually the default behavior of a teenager to just sign up for more work. But I- Mm... I don't know. But did you think it felt like more work? 13:35 It felt like something that I could do because everyone else could do it. Anyway, I think we were trying to change the subject away from, like... But I could talk about this for hours. What is it that makes somebody... 13:44 It's just so weird. How we've... I really feel like it comes down to the explicitness in the requirements. I knew that I met the requirements for an engineering degree because- Mm-hmm... 13:54 they were there on paper, and I had met them. And I feel like it was in my interest that I had not heard of engineering because I didn't have heaps of stereotypes about it. 14:02 Whereas some people can know that they meet the requirements and still not feel like they meet them, and just be really actually interested in an engineering degree and still opt out of it because of a fear of failure, and this is why I... 14:16 Or because, you know, they wanna use their good mark for something else. They want to... 14:21 This is what the studies show about young women, like why they don't go, or maybe they don't feel like they can help society with it. 14:27 So these other things cause people to turn away, but for me, the feeling was that I could do it, that it wouldn't threaten my identity. Mm. Um, and I didn't really, at the time, care about helping society [laughs] 14:41 so- [laughs] That's okay. You were 15, neither did I. [laughs] Yeah. So when, when, when were... When... You talk a lot about how, like, you didn't really know what an engineering degree was. 14:48 When was it sort of presented to you? I know that you, you said you went to a robotics camp- Yeah... but that's not necessarily a link that you would draw- No, I remember doing that... for engineering. 14:55 But when was it presented to you as, like, a, as an path? We can probably pinpoint the month if somebody knows when you have to put in your, uh, engineering- Sorry... university preferences in year 12, I think. 15:09 So it was... I was flipping through a book of courses, and I was specifically looking for what double degrees you could do with a master's degree, and there was engineering- Mm... and I was like, "What is that?" 15:21 So that was [laughs] Mm. And then sp- Well, it's different now. I know it's different now because I spoke to an hall full of year seven students, and one of them was like, "I don't understand. 15:31 Why don't you do engineering at school?" Like, "Why don't you do the engineering class?" And I was like, "Oh, would've loved that," but that just, like [laughs] just wasn't in the vernacular back in the day. No. 15:42 And I, I think, to be fair, that actually is a really incredible growth aspect of society because I, I joke all the time, and it's not a joke, it's serious- Mm... that I didn't know what engineering was really- Mm-hmm... 15:52 until I got a job at Baraha, which I was in my- Mm-hmm... mid-20s. Uh, especially as a female that went to a, you know- Yeah... co-ed public school, it just wasn't presented to me. I was told, "Go do drama, go do art." 16:04 Um, that was what I was pushed into, and I think maybe similarly to you, I showed an interest in creativity from a really young age, and so that was the natural direction of which I was pushed in. 16:14 But in saying that, even when I was at university at Sydney University, which is a pretty stock standard university, at that point I still- Mm-hmm... no one had mentioned really the word- Mm-hmm... engineering to me. 16:24 And so I think to your point, it's great that we're seeing schools that are implementing that, but I also wonder, are all schools implementing engineering classes? I mean, you work with- Mm... teenagers all the time. 16:33 Have you noticed that it's public, private? Is it, is it specific or is it seemingly- Hmm... becoming part of the regular vernacular? 16:39 I know it's not all, um, but the schools that I interact with, they know about it because they have signed up for [laughs] an engineering camp that I speak at, but they... It was, like, confirmation bias there. 16:52 I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that... I wanna say people like me, but it's, like, people like me in this particular dimension. I'm a very look before you leap sort of person. 16:59 I only like to try things that I know. I got into engineering and I, I knew enough about the technical content to know what I was signing up for. I had already soldered a circuit in my physics class. 17:11 But by default, I don't like to sign up for things that I have no idea what it's gonna look like. 17:16 And so just introducing the words and the concepts around engineering is an important step because it just lowers that barrier emotionally a little bit of it being such a new, foreign world, and people are willing to sign up for law degrees, not necessarily because they understand- Mm... 17:39 heaps about what goes into it, but maybe because they've seen lawyers on TV, and I think there's a big- Mm. 17:45 It feels big to me because I'm a part of it and I'm in it, so I don't know how big it is in the scheme of the world or how actually, how many people in total it impacts, but I think there's a lot of potential in just showing people this is what an engineer looks like. 18:02 This is what an engineering job looks like. Would you like to be a fly on the wall in my life? Mm. These videos are like [laughs] I've watched... They... I look at the, like, fly on the wall videos from other engineers. 18:12 I'm like, "Why is this interesting?" It's actually just somebody sitting at their desk- [laughs]... 18:17 or writing on a whiteboard, but it's because that's the level that we're at in terms of transparency of what engineers do. Mm. 18:23 Very low-hanging fruit on [laughs] in terms of the desensit- or, like, desensitizing of the right word. Lowering the bar- barrier to en- Yeah. Is it almost like humanizing it all? 18:33 Humanizing and making people less afraid of it. Familiarizing, I think. Familiarizing- Yeah... 18:39 I think we can, we can probably [laughs] get, I don't know, 80% of where we're trying to go by just having it be more familiar. Nobody knows- Nobody thinks they know engineers, but we're all pretty- Mm... 18:51 we're just normal people. That's the problem. So there's just not a lot of representation, and that probably isn't even just in the gender sphere, right? 18:57 But there's not that many TV shows that I can think of which are based around stories of engineers, for example. 19:03 There- Even though engineering technically touches- There's not enough representation because the representation that we have is very negative. Like, Big Bang Theory is the show- Mm. Mm... 19:11 that will feature engineers, and they don't do it in a very sexy way. So we actually have worse than no representation, which is why people... 19:20 I have had a girl just about shriek when I got close enough that she saw that I had a nose ring. She was just like, "This is blowing my mind that you have a math degree and a nose ring." 19:30 And I remember watching a mathematician that I used to look up to, still look up to, Lily Sana, on Facebook. You know, she was posted a picture coming out of the surf one day. I was like, "What is this?" 19:42 That's what brings me to TikTok, pretty much. 19:44 [laughs] Well, this is probably a good segue into the startup ecosystem because I, I think something that you just touched on, which is it's really scary to get into something when you don't have a grasp on the language or the words around it, and I think startups- Mm... 19:58 can be a little bit like this as well. Mm. 'Cause people will say things, "What do you mean work in a startup? Like, what does that mean?" [laughs] Yes. Or worse, people know enough to know that it's like, "Oh, no, 20:09 startups. You work 70-hour weeks and you have beer fridges or whatever." [laughs] Like, oh no, I've heard about those. [laughs] Well, I haven't worked a startup- Yeah. But it's not-... like that yet, but hopefully. 20:22 [laughs] First role in a startup, what, what would you call that? Because I guess the, the work you were doing in San Francisco is technically a startup. Mm-hmm. And how old would you have been then? Quite young still? 20:33 Let me think. So I finished my uni degrees, undergrad degrees at 20, and I did a master's in France, Spain, Scotland, and Switzerland, and I left there, must have been 22, maybe I'd just turned 23. 20:48 I had a gap year, and then I ended up in Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley. So 24 or 25. And what was the first experience? So wait, firstly, you did your master's. Oh, yes. I completely can't believe I- Doesn't matter... 20:59 brushed over that. [laughs] Incredible though. No, it's cool. But I was still... It's more of the same. I don't feel... Like, that was great fun, but it was more of the same thing of like, oh, well, I mean, there was... 21:09 I guess this is... I do find it interesting that I'm a little bit entrepreneurial or, like, risk-on in other areas of my life. Moving to other countries, living out of a suitcase, doesn't bother me. 21:19 It's impossible for other people to fathom, but very, uh, whatever. Because once I've done it once- Mm... it's fine. Also, I got into it as in a hand-hold-y way that my masters, they organized, like, the visa stuff. 21:32 I was just... I was, like, shadowing them at how to be an expat, and now I can do it myself because I've seen them hold my hand through it. Paved the way. Okay. So I guess that's... 21:41 When I was looking for a job, it took me a while to feel interested to work again. So I was doing volunteer work and different, all nerdy things, but sort of at my own will, [laughs] for the, for my gap year. 21:53 And then eventually... Could I have... I think I might have... It might have been strategic actually. I wanted to work specifically on this software that's used by robots worldwide. 22:04 International Space Station has robots using this software. There are, like, robots in Antarctica using this software. I wanted to be part of that because every other robotics company handled their job requirements. 22:17 [laughs] So I was like, put a little life hack there. Smart. [laughs] Yeah. Inspecting the storms. 22:23 And, and so it turned out to be technically a startup, but I was not searching for startups in Silicon Valley because I probably would've been very turned off by that. And actually I'm a bit like, ugh, don't know 22:38 if I wanna move to... I was a bit... Yeah, I was a bit sussed on Silicon Valley. So- Where did you, where did you move from to move to Silicon Valley? Were you still in Europe at that time? 22:45 Well, I- Or were you back in Australia? Yeah, I had been in... I sort of ex- I was a bit baseless. My things were either at my family's or in Switzerland where I had last been living prior. Right. 22:55 And where were your family at this time? They were in Queensland? Yeah, they've always been in Queensland. We lived overseas for a few years as a child, and I wonder if maybe that's where I got it, whatever. 23:06 Definitely, like, from my... I, my dad has no interest to travel the world as an explorer necessarily, but my mom, that's just, that's her dream. So I... So the fusion is then I just... 23:18 Like, I've been to maybe 50 countries now and it's, as an engineer, so. Well, I don't work in 50 count- I've worked in maybe seven or eight countries at most. I think that's still pretty phenomenal. 23:29 So you moved to Silicon Valley and did you... I'm assuming you didn't have much of a perception of what a startup in Silicon Valley was like at that time, as you say, but you- I did have enough to be wary, so I did know. 23:40 And I remember there was a, another person in the interview, she made me feel like... I remember explicitly, I remember thinking she's happy enough here. She's not like, she's not in the background like signing, [laughs] 23:54 "Get out of here" once a year. "Get out." [laughs] Like twice. [laughs] So I'm yeah, this is okay. And it was a small enough company that I felt in like a bubble from the rest of Silicon Valley. 24:06 And I've, that's been my, that's been truly, that's been my experience with startups is that small enough companies mean you can be in bubbles from the bigger tech industry because of these like little mini cultures that they're so wholesome when they're small companies, right? 24:23 [laughs] So yeah, accidentally in a startup. And then after that I went... So then I had another gap year 'cause [laughs] just travel, travel some more. 24:33 And coming off the end of that gap year, a friend that I had met was working at a startup and that was how I got into my next role at the bioprinter company, Inventia. Yeah. And so you moved back to Sydney for Inventia. 24:47 And when do you think throughout all of these different roles, 'cause I mean, you say like a small startup in Silicon Valley, but when I mentioned the work that you were doing on Ross, my partner was like, "Wait a minute, you mean like the robot operating sy- [laughs]... 24:59 operating system that's, that's used globally?" And I was like, "Yes, that one." He was like, "I don't know if that's like a small startup." And I was like, "No, no, I've listened. It sounds like it was five people." 25:08 [laughs] It wasn't It's like, exactly. It used to terrify people because I mean, to this it'd be the equivalent is kind of like the Apple stores and everyone is relying on the, the App Stores to be alive. Mm-hmm. 25:22 But the App Store developers, that team, I don't know- Mm... when things were smaller scale, that team could have only been five developers making the App Store. 25:30 You know, we were kind of doing the equivalent for robotics. And so it's like, oh yeah, everybody uses all of our software, but it's not necessarily that we make all of the software. It's- Mm... 25:38 an open source ecosystem that we keep alive. But since we leverage so much of the community, you don't need a huge team. I mean, the team has definitely grown, but at the time- Mm... 25:49 yeah, we were five, five software engineers. I didn't study software engineering, [laughs] so for me it was like I went in as an intern and I learned software engineering on the job, which is hard. 25:58 Did it feel like when you were there though, that you were doing something that was really large? Or was it- Yeah... just kind of like a really interesting job where you were super curious and learning a lot? 26:06 No, I sought it out. I knew they were respected engineers and- Mm-hmm... that's why I wanted to work with them. If any of them were to be listening, then hello- [laughs]... and I really enjoyed it and [laughs] 26:19 I learned, they know that I learned a lot from them because when I got there I didn't know heaps about like actual... 'Cause software, software engineering itself is a craft that I didn't appreciate. Mm-hmm. 26:30 You, you appreciate it when you compare yourself to experts, which actually like, that was a bit rough for me to be comparing myself to experts so much better than me. 26:41 But I learnt at the same time I was kind of getting into rock climbing and after a few years of being not great at rock climbing, I found myself then like accidentally kind of progressed up the levels and I was like, oh, [laughs] this is how careers work. 26:57 [laughs] Like you just keep showing up. [laughs] Just keep showing up and doing the work. Yeah. 27:01 So you, you move back to Sydney and you start to work at Inventia and do you think it was around this time, there's a really beautiful line on your website that basically says, "I'm Deanna. 27:11 I use robotics and electrical engineering to improve lives." When did that start to kind of... It, it feels like there was this moment in your career potentially where impact started to become- Mm... 27:21 more and more prevalent in the work that you were doing, which I'm assuming also kind of led you to all the extra work that you do now. Yeah. But when did that start to creep into your vernacular? 27:30 Well, it was established by that point. It was established by that point because it needed to be established in order to stay as an electrical/software engineer. 27:40 Because otherwise I s- I started to lose interest in these professions because I was not connected to the impact. And that was in undergrad. 27:50 In undergrad I started drifting away from like, well, just drifting more towards medical engineering specifically, which is a different discipline and like it's not, it's not the one for me. 28:00 And people think that I'm a medical engineer because when I was at Inventia I was working on a skin printing robot that's used by surgeons to- Mm... treat burns patients. And- Mm... it, it is a medical device. 28:14 The bioprinter that is part of that is a biotech startup in itself, but I was the roboticist. I wasn't the- Yeah... biomedical engineer. That path exists, but I wasn't clear on that until... 28:29 Well, and so, and so then in my final year, like I, I, it all became clear. I saw the... Like I made a brain control car with applications for people with paralysis and I was like, ah, cool. 28:39 This is all doing like control systems and stuff that I like. That's cool. 28:42 And then I, I did, between my undergrad and masters I had a time for a project, like a, a graduate project that I did on a USB stethoscope for applications in Mozambique diagnosing pneumonia in children. 28:57 This is again like electronics and all my sort of stuff. And so that was when I was like, ah, I'm actually only interested in the things that can help people. Ah. 29:06 Like [laughs] it was that early in my career that I started to be fussy. It wasn't early enough, thankfully, that it, I was fussy with my degree choice at the beginning- Yeah... because otherwise I maybe... 29:16 My sister I think went into development just because it was clearer that she could help people in that, in that industry, you know? 29:25 And so that was a time in my career that I was like, ah, look at me, I'm actually just observing myself. I'm not interested in the jobs that don't have that impact on society that I can then feel... 29:36 You know, part of me it's like a little life hack that I use that it bothers me that people don't understand why I'm so enthralled by my technical, the technical aspects of my job and I find it hard to explain that to people in a way that they get excited about my circuits or my software. 29:54 So at least this way they can understand, they can like join me in the excitement of my job because of the impact that it has. Right. 30:02 So it's like because of the outcome you feel like you don't have to explain the part that you're s- also deeply interested in, which is the technical side of it. It's, it's a bit disheartening. 30:10 This happened enough times and I was like, I don't want this to happen anymore, that I would come home and like be really excited about some achievement that I had made at work as, you know, designing circuits or something and my mom would be like, "Oh, good for you, honey." 30:26 [laughs] It's like that sounds so awful to me and I'm like, oh- [laughs]... why can't other people... It's just hard for people to be excited for s- for somebody that they cannot identify. You can't... 30:37 The closest thing would be like- You can't relate... yeah, you just can't relate. And so- Yeah... 30:42 either you, you rely on somebody having the experience themselves of being excited about something else that they could be like, "Ah, yes, I have a, an equivalent experience that I appreciate- Mm-hmm... 30:54 you're, you're enjoying that because of this." But best, easiest still to just give them a, get a, get them excited about the impact. Got you. 31:01 But I mean, in saying that, one of the things that I find so infectious about a lot of the things that you put out there is your deep love for your role and your job- Yeah... and what you do every day. 31:11 [laughs] Well, I mean- Mm... um, that's the tr- that's the reason people are like, "Why do you bother to tell people about that?" Your job is I could, I could spend... 31:21 For context, I don't know if we've covered this, but I, I work part-time. 31:24 I have worked part-time since I worked at Inventia, and it's because I think it's not as fulfilling a life for me to spend all of my time being an engineer and none of... 31:37 Not having enough time to tell people about the things that I work on. And that's because I like being an engineer. If I didn't like it, this equation wouldn't make sense. 31:48 It wouldn't [laughs] it would be if I liked it less, I'd be more happy doing it all of my time [laughs] which is like- I get what you... No, I do, I do get what you mean. Yeah. So it's like I'm, I'm desperate. 31:59 I'm like, I'm a cult leader pretty much. That's what I was. [laughs] That's how I feel. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, have you tried this Kool-Aid? It is amazing." That was one of the rules that I did when I was in Sydney. 32:10 Once you realize what you want in life, you can actually be pretty direct with people, and that helps, like, orchestrate it. So, so I got... 32:21 You know, constructing my life in Sydney is an interesting, I guess, case study for this. I ended up working part-time in Sydney because I was talking to my friend Zach. 32:29 I was on the phone and I was like, "I just really want part-time work. Ugh, how do I find it?" And he was like, "We have part-time engineers. Come work with us." Sold. So there we go. 32:38 Part-time, part-time work I founded by, you know, whinging to my friends. [laughs] And, um, well, and maintaining those network. 32:45 I hadn't spoken to Zach for, like, three or four years since we were repairing equipment together in Central America. 32:51 [laughs] So you maintain the connections, but also know what you're looking for and sort of put those feelers out into the world. 32:57 And the other things that are important to my life is, you know, being around maths is important to me, and teaching is important to me, and inspiring people, and supporting young women is- Mm. Those are important to me. 33:10 So then, okay, I've got... I'm working three days a week. I explicitly wrote to universities in Sydney. I was like, "Can I teach your engineering students one of the maths subjects?" 33:22 And they, they like when engineers teach those subjects because they bring actual experience to motivate the students with real examples, because it breaks my heart when they, like, don't enjoy the maths subjects. 33:34 I just love them so much. So that's how I spent some of my time off. And then the re- some... 33:41 Then also I spent time working with UTS as one of their, like, official STEM ambassadors because I wrote to them and I said, "I'm an engineer willing to talk to young women. What have you got for me?" Nice. 33:53 And I'm still working out the kinks in promoting myself in this way because people can be a bit suspicious of somebody who is available. It's just, it's not very common that engineers would save time for that. So- Mm... 34:08 it's a bit like in dating when you're, like, too available. Um- [laughs] But they, but when there's, when, when somebody is at the same time... 34:16 What happened at UTS is that they were looking at the same time for exactly that. So I had to push, though. I got... It was, it was not the first email that I landed in that position. 34:24 It was like the second or third of like, "No, no, no, I know there's value I can bring to your community." Sort of- Mm... muscle your way past the bouncer. 34:33 [laughs] Going back to that, 'cause y- you say, like, you wanted to use your story to inspire the next generation, which I loved, and it sounds to me like the other reason you thought that was so important is because potentially you, you're really cognizant of the fact that you kind of happened to this career that you adore almost by chance, and you're wanting to make sure that that doesn't happen to other people, because it's something that you've had great success, not just career-wise, right, but, like, lots of personal success- Yeah... 35:04 in loving your career. Yeah. And it feels like you kind of very genuinely wanna give that back. Yep. And the easiest way I've found to do that is to convince... Is to, like, play the social impact card. Mm. 35:16 It's a lot easier to get people interested in careers that they themselves... It's relatable. People want to make an impact. Mm. 35:23 And all engineers are making an impact, but not all engineers can explain that impact [laughs] to, to people that don't care about technology very well, just because of, like, some of them are... 35:35 This is the challenge of engineering as a whole, is that it is a very abstract field. And so the way to, the way that I have found to communicate the impact is through stories that I acquire- Mm... 35:47 myself concrete examples of using technology to help society, as opposed to a hypothetical thing. You flip through career books and it's like, "This degree could lead to..." 35:56 Imagine that there was a degree listed in a career book that was, "I work in education, healthcare. There's occupational therapists and teachers, and also, like, space robots." 36:05 [laughs] What is it that you get listed as, and when it's, when it can be applied to everything, you, you come up empty of like, "Oh, I don't know. I can't see myself in that," because it's just kind of everything. 36:17 Whereas medical engineering, you're like, "Oh, I can help people with that." And so did you find... 36:20 And this is just a, a question through listening to your experiences, but did you find that when you were studying mathematics as an example, that there wasn't a really clear path for where that degree could go- No... 36:33 but you've now discovered that path and you're basically sharing where that degree can go? 36:38 Yeah, I chose, I chose pure mathematics [laughs] almost like by definition, maths is taught as an abstract concept because it is, it's pure and it can be applied to lots of things, and that's the strength of mathematics is... 36:52 And the strength of learning mathematics is that you learn to think not of a... You don't think of a bus [laughs] of like, you don't think of a bus as a bus, but you think of it as a vehicle. 37:03 And even then you could abstract it to just a rectangle with wheels. A- and, and you don't think of things as concrete instances, but as abstract instances, which is... 37:12 I've been thinking about that, not just because I've been reading books by mathematicians who also are like, "How do we explain what we do to society?" 37:19 [laughs] But, but to- But I've been told by engineers that I work with, they're like, "How are you so good at abstraction?" And I was like, "I didn't even know this was a thing." 37:28 But apparently I've been training it through the fact that maths is, and I don't mean arithmetic, but, you know, conceptual maths that you need to apply. 37:37 Before you can apply it to, to a problem in society, you have to figure out what abstraction to apply to the problem so that maths can, like, sit in there. 37:47 So people think of, like, three plus four as mathematics, but it's like, three what plus four what? 37:52 And you have [laughs] some, some translation, like linguistical translation has happened in someone's mind to arrive at that calculation, and that's, that is the, the, the process of applying maths, whether it's three plus four or solving some differential equation, that's the same process of... 38:12 So it's taught abstractly because it is an abstract skill. It can then be applied in concrete instances the same as electrical engineering is also an abstract skill. Electronics is an abstract skill. 38:25 But if you show someone a job ad of you could do electronics that's inside an escape room, like that's a concrete application and it's more exciting. People are turned off by things that they don't, 38:35 they, they can't see themselves in. And, and people say, oh, you have to... What do they say? You can't, if you can't see it, you can't- If you can't see it, you can't be it. 38:44 [laughs] And I mean, I don't technically think that's true because I have done things that I can't see, but it's much more enjoyable process to just see it [laughs] and see someone else who's done it, and then you're like, "Oh, okay, I'm not actually... 38:58 I don't wanna be a trailblazer, if I'm being honest." Like, [laughs] I'd much prefer to just like- Ah, lazy walk in the park... someone else's, like a someone else carved this out for me. 39:10 Well, I mean, unfortunately, you are a trailblazer. So going back into that kind of idea of trailblazing, how do you think about trailblazing in the sense of the roles that you've held in startups? 39:20 I know you've been at Inventia and Vexev now, and both times, from my understanding, you were maybe the first roboticist in those businesses. First at Inventia and second at Vexev. And it's kind of- Right... 39:35 so to answer your question, like accidental trailblazer or like reluctant. You know, I, when I was younger I used to get like, I, I think we have a pretty narrow definition of, or like idea of leadership. 39:52 At least I used to. So when I would get awards for leadership, I'm just like, [laughs] joke's on them. [laughs] I, I, I'm actually not a leader at all. 40:01 Um, and I start to see, I, I would refer to myself as like reluctant leader, which is kind of like, oh, if no one else, why doesn't this mentoring program exist? Like, this should exist already. 40:14 Has nobody else done this? Okay, fine, I'll do it. And I feel like that's- [laughs]... that's the, that's the moment I end up blazing trails accidentally is like, "Ugh, really nobody else has-" Done it... 40:25 done this before? It should exist. So I, I can get into trouble with that actually, because in, I learnt a lot when I was at Inventia. I, I signed up as a roboticist, but lots of other things needed to be done. 40:42 Zach and I were working on the skin printing robot, which is a spinoff, clinical spinoff from a bioprinting startup. So we were a, a startup in a startup, and the robotics work didn't make sense. 40:55 We didn't also have funding [laughs] and like all these other things that I was like, ah, I, I figured was just like accidental co-founders, and I needed actually some help to like pull myself out of it at some point because what I enjoy doing is robotics, and somebody has to do it. 41:10 And one of the big lessons that I learnt with thanks to a wonderful coach that I had through a Startmate fellowship, her name's Michelle Gleeson, and she just gave me a heads up of like, you don't have to... 41:26 You know, people say in startups you wear all these hats, and she was like, "You don't have to upskill as a recruiter just because the team needs to hire someone." Mm-hmm. 41:34 Like maybe my leadership was kind of getting me astray of that's someone else's job already. There are other ways- Mm... around this. And it felt like an extension of a lesson that I learned when I... 41:46 An extension of a lesson that I had previously learned. 41:48 So when I was working on Ross, I remember since we were a small team and lots of things had to be done, I developed this mantra of like, just because it can be done doesn't mean it should be done. And that I- Mm-hmm... 41:59 as a perfectionist, I really had to come to terms with the fact that some of the code should be left imperfect because it comes at the cost of like time spent on something else. 42:10 And being in this very resource constraint startup with Zach, and the resource was us. [laughs] Like I had to, I had to realize that, you know, just because I can do something doesn't mean that I should do something. Mm. 42:26 Doesn't mean it has to be done by me. And- Mm-hmm... that is an optimization problem that, you know, I'm well-suited mathematically to solve in the sense that like, okay, we've got a few engineers here. 42:38 Only one of them can write code for the robot. [laughs] Mm. 42:42 You need to carve out time for yourself to actually do your specialty, but it was hard for me to do because we needed so many other things to be done, and I take initiative. 42:51 I put these other hats on and, you know, you step up- Mm... and do what, what needs to be done and you forget that you've left a hole as well, uh, a very Deanna shaped hole sometimes. 43:01 [laughs] Well, yeah, I was gonna say if you're the only robotics engineer- [laughs]... 43:04 and you're stepping away to do things that other people could potentially do, then I can see how that would be super effective- Well, and it's not-... effective to the problem... it's not, I've simplified it a lot. 43:13 It's a complicated situation to be in. There are times that, you know, my first task was to write a grant with Zach that funded us- Mm... 43:21 working together because, you know, sometimes that does come before actually the robotics work. So it's a, it's a, it's not just a thing of discipline. 43:30 Like when I was wrestling with perfectionism, it's a thing of discipline, but sometimes when it's like, oh, maybe somebody else- Should be doing this. It's not just discipline, it's also like all of... 43:42 There's a lot of other things in the optimization problem in terms of resources that need to be allocated and it's, it's just, there's a lot of project management growth that happens when you're [laughs] 43:56 only a, a few people trying to do a really big thing. Yeah, exactly. 43:59 I think it, it is a important point for people listening to thinking about going into startups, and particularly people with a specialty or a technical background, is also respecting that you've been hired for that craft. 44:10 And so while, yes, there are times when you do have to put on different hats, you're kind of not doing the job at hand justice if you're not utilizing the skillset that you're actually there to utilize. I think [laughs] 44:23 for me, the, the demon to come up against is people pleasing and being good at all of the things. And don't you get a pat, a pat on the back when you solve those other problems, you know? Like, wow- Yeah... 44:34 what a- It's a quick win. [laughs] But, but seeing things as zero sum. So I started tracking where my time was going each week, and if you start that timer, you can only be timing one thing- Mm... one category of thing. 44:49 In, in any moment, you can only be working on one thing. And I work part-time, I work six hours, and it is limited time. So- Yeah... 44:59 an hour spent, you know, reviewing a, a contract to buy a robot is an hour I cannot spend programming the robot. Mm. And this is, to see that in numbers was, um... 45:11 It, it helped shift my behavior and it's helped me delegate. Delegating lives close in my emotional self to asking for help and, like, being a burden on other people, and it's... You have to... 45:26 I need the data to remind myself. I'm like, "Well, I'm a burden on myself [laughs] too." I'm getting in the way of myself. And there are other people. By then we had an operations team at Inventia- Mm-hmm... 45:38 and they were very well-suited for that sort of work. So seeing- Mm... actually that not just that you can leverage someone, but, but learning how to leverage other people. 45:49 Yeah, for me, I need, I need the data to push me in that direction. 45:53 And then so, like, on that same train of thinking, if you think back to your varied career, you've done a lot of different things, but what would be the three key tips that you've learnt about yourself- Mm... 46:03 and the way that you work over the past X amount of years? Yeah. I have learnt that I'm not happy if I'm not writing code. That's not me. Mm-hmm. And, and so now I advise... 46:15 Like, I don't know if this applies to other people, but the equivalent as a question is, like, what is it that you're not actually willing to give up? 46:23 The thing that if it's taken away from you, just your life satisfaction or life work satisfaction just drops. Because if you know what that is, then you can design your life around protecting that. 46:33 A lot working in ambitious startups with ambitious people, I learned a lot about how maybe that's not how I see myself in the same way as them. 46:43 So Zach, for example, is, is to me brave in the, like, entrepreneurial sense, and we would apply for grants with these grand visions of what we were going to do with it. 46:54 I felt very uncomfortable [laughs] by some of that because I'm a bit more conservative. 47:00 And fundament- it was really interesting to explore that together because it comes down to, like, well, what, what are you perceiving as the risk of failure there? Because- Mm... if you... 47:12 There are some failures that need to be avoided, and there are some failures that are actually quite manageable, and- Mm-hmm... 47:18 distinguishing between them is how then you can start to train yourself to be ambitious, train yourself to be brave. 47:25 It's like, okay, well, actually, if I shoot for the moon and land in the stars, what does that actually look like? Explore that. 47:32 And working on medical devices, there's actually a framework for that, which is risk assessments, and you don't just think about the bad things that could happen, but you think about the severity and, uh, if you can survive [laughs] 47:45 when those things do happen. And that has been... That I use that in my, my actual life now to, to think not just about the things that could go wrong, but could I... To build resilience. Things can go wrong. 47:58 Will I be able to weather those storms, or will they be catastrophic? Because most things you can actually just weather. I think the other thing is spending time around people who... 48:12 When you originally wrote to me and you were like, "Hey-" Yeah. "... I talk to people at startups," my first reaction was, "Oh, no, no, I'm not in the operations team. You got me all wrong." Like, "No, no, no. 48:22 I mean I'm in the robotics team. I've made that mistake before." [laughs] But then the other thing was I'm not a s- I'm not, oh, I'm not really a startup person. I happen to work in startups, but that's not... 48:32 You know, I'm not the sort of we can do anything. I see myself more as... Or, like, when I, when I spend lots of time around startup founders, I just see that they have different mental strengths to me. 48:48 I don't see myself as a founder type, but not everyone can be the founder type. [laughs] And a team needs to be made up of a mix of the visionaries and also the people who are in the details making sure- Yeah... 49:01 uh, I ran the numbers. I'm not sure this is a good decision, everyone. And it was a bit tough for me to come to terms with that because I, I wanted to be like Zach. 49:12 I wanted to be, you know, the brave, let's go, we can do anything person, and to be the look before you leap style felt like being the wet blanket. But I read a great book at the time... 49:25 Well, I read it, at the time I read a great book called Quiet that was, oh, you know, it was like we actually need those skillsets that, that often show up in introverts, and I was like, "Is that me? Oh my gosh." 49:36 And that they are complimentary. And seeing the differences between these personalities then has helped me. 49:44 People say, "Oh, fake it till you make it," but it's easier if you know specifically what thing you're trying to fake. 49:49 So I'm learning actually to change the success metric of if I show up to this- And don't do well, that doesn't count as a failure anymore. 49:58 That's a skill that I have learned in trying to [laughs] bridge the gap between my personality and these other personalities, because I saw that those guys got more things done. 50:09 So my friends were going to a hackathon- Mm... and it happened to be in crypto software, and I was like, "Oh, wish I could go, but I'm not, you know, qualified for that." 50:20 And just, you talk yourself out of things because you're scared. 50:23 And when you get a glimpse into, I guess, how they were signing up for this hackathon, and they weren't even gonna participate, they just wanted the free food. 50:34 [laughs] And it was like, well, surely then it's not the end of the world if I sign up and do badly. Mm. Just getting this under-the-hood view of what this courage is, is based on. 50:45 It's not, it's not based on them having super mega skills. It's not based on them having super mega confidence. 50:50 In that instance, they're just actually gaming the system for free food, and it's like, ah, you can recalibrate then your sense of entitlement to be in different spaces that... 50:59 You know, people think, "Oh, how brave of me to go to a hackathon." And I learnt how to write crypto software on the flight over, and I, I won money at the thing, but it was- [laughs]... 51:10 the bravest part for me was to sign up in the first place and be like, "Ah, what am I doing there?" So like, I have learnt some, some hands-on skills for- [laughs]... keeping up with the, the courageous. 51:23 It's really interesting to hear you talk about how, and maybe it's a perception, and I, I'd be interested to know if it's still your perception, of, you know, people in startups mostly being entrepreneurial founder, wear-all-hats type. 51:35 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. When I think you, you kind of answered your own fear in that sentence when you said, you know, all teams need both people. 51:42 I used to always say that there was cogs and then there was the machine, and I always used to view myself as a cog, someone that came in and, like, got things done constantly, rather than being the machine. 51:52 And I'm interested to hear if you still think that in a startup environment, there isn't space for the quiet achievers that are kind of, quote-unquote, "doing the work." 52:01 Well, again, it's like, it's a, it's a representation thing because dis- there are disproportionately many more cogs than machine drivers or whatever in a startup because it's like a pyramid. Yeah. And we- Mm-hmm... 52:16 but who we see, who we showcase are the people at the top of the pyramid, and it's, it's true that I have so much respect for the startup founders where I have worked, like John and Eamon at Vexev. We wouldn't be... 52:29 We wouldn't exist without them. That's like hands down true, and they should be celebrated. And it- they would acknowledge that they don't exist without us, like [laughs] actually implementing the things. 52:41 And, and so that a team of a mix of different personalities and a mix of different, like, disciplines, you know, 'cause I work with not just engineers, but, you know, all different skill sets. Mm. 52:52 That they exist doesn't mean that they're publicized. [laughs] And- Yeah... what you need to out-publicize is the media, who will showcase just whatever they think is the most interesting. And so then- Mm... 53:04 you find yourself only hearing about leaders of startups. You find yourself only hearing about things that go wrong. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. 53:11 So when I lived in Silicon Valley, I needed to listen to a podcast of just, like, women li- women living normal lives in technology. [laughs] And so this is kind of the equivalent in the different personality types. 53:24 It's like, ah, yes, did you know that people who like details are also necessary? But also it's the... You don't have to be quiet about it in the sense. 53:32 The book is called Quiet, but that's because I feel like people are... You know, I'm often standing back in a room listening, waiting to decide what opinion I have before I say something. 53:44 [laughs] I used to not like that about myself, that, oh, I wish you'd have more opinions, Deanna. But it's actually a good thing to collect data before you have an opinion. 53:53 And, and so now I, I do start to identify as a leader because I've collected enough data, now I have some opinions. I- [laughs]... 54:04 know how robotic systems should be made, and I'm at a pointy end of a pyramid now where I can- Mm... I can lead a robotics team that is... It's a sub- a subsystem of this bigger pyramid. 54:19 And so I still don't identify as a founder of a whole company, but there are other types of leaderships that are needed just in day-to-day operations. 54:31 And it can be the leadership of setting up a Slack channel to talk about [laughs] employee resource group or just like a women, a women in- Women in engineering, women in STEM, whatever- Women in STEM... like, groups. 54:45 It's, it's an interesting train of thinking because literally what you're saying is the reason I started this podcast, right? Yeah. There were so many stories of, of founders. 54:52 And I, and I, having worked in a couple of startups, I was thinking to myself, there are so many people working in these businesses that I just find so much more interesting than the founders themselves. 55:01 The founders are doing this big, scary thing and, and they're incredible- Mm... and we know that. 55:05 But I also find the skill set that comes together in order to make that big idea an actual reality oftentimes almost more interesting. 55:13 And you and I had a conversation about whether or not you were an operator, 'cause you, you kinda came at it from the idea that an operator works in operations. Mm. 55:21 Whereas I view an operator as basically anyone in a business that is not a founder, who is essentially making the wheels turn every day by doing their work. 55:29 And so to your point, leadership is not as binary to me as founder or not leader. To me, leadership is... So you're a technical leader in, in the ecosystem now. 55:41 I know that you don't see yourself [laughs] as a startup person, but you've got two for two, so you're in. [laughs] I mean, you can... Yeah, the, the leaders of companies, they can't lead all the things. Even- No. 55:52 And then, and then- Even a CEO can't lead all of the, the things. They need- Of the bits. No, of course. Yeah. I don't think we've mentioned, but we make an ultrasound robot that is- 56:01 Doing like computed tomography, like CT scans, but for ultrasound images so that we can build up 3D models of patient's veins, for example. 56:12 That's used by dialysis providers to give faster, safer treatment to dialysis, which is saving lives. People that will save lives. People... Vascular surgeons are really excited about that prospect. Doesn't exist. 56:27 And so maybe you've got the visionaries of, 'Hey, this, this technology doesn't exist.' Like, I like to work on robots that don't exist yet. 56:35 [laughs] Because we get excited about the, by the space race of like, 'Wow, could, could that really happen? Could, could humans really do that?' 56:43 And it's like all of the robots that I work on are robots that are doing things that humans can't do. Mm. 56:48 Someone has the idea of, yeah, we need a robot for this, and then they need to throw it to someone else of like, could you make a robot do that? Like would you mind? 56:56 [laughs] Would you mind just like sorting out the details of that? And there's still, that's not a cog situation yet. Mm-hmm. Mm. It's, that's, that's a pyramid in itself. 57:07 You need a leader at the top of that pyramid that's figuring out, all right, ooh, how are we gonna make that happen? [laughs] Eamonn's got some wild ideas. Like, let's... It's leadership all the way down even... 57:18 And it, it really is at every... Anywhere that there's... I feel like there's a word that I more relate to, which is just like initiative. I feel like if you take initiative and create- Mm-hmm... 57:29 a mentoring program or it's, okay, we're gonna do a hot wings challenge. If you take initiative to make something exist that didn't exist before, like that is a form of leadership that can be anyone- Mm-hmm... 57:41 in a company. And when we don't talk about [laughs]... A funny thing happened that at Inventiv that they set up a women in leadership program, but everyone was, was sort of looking around like, "Who are this for? 57:51 We're not leaders. Who are these leaders that you're talking about?" Because the word doesn't resonate with everyone. If you don't... 58:00 You think you have to be at the top of a pyramid, but you can be a leader at the bottom of the pyramid because- Mm... initiative is needed everywhere in a startup, and so everyone has to feel like they're driving. 58:10 None of those cogs- Mm... are passively turning- Yeah... um, just 'cause it, it's, it's being cranked by a bicycle. [laughs] Like this feels like a, a hydropower jet turbine or something. 58:22 And someone's like, "Hey, would you mind getting that cog on the way?" [laughs] That's why I got the, the mechanics work now. 58:30 It sounds like, um, just from the beginning of the podcast when you were talking about when you're a kid, you were really interested in puzzles and logic and problem-solving. Mm-hmm. 58:36 And it sounds like you've kind of landed in that exact same position where you're in these businesses where you're, it's problem-solving, right? Like how, how do you make Eamonn's i- crazy ideas come true? 58:46 He throws you the ball and then really- [laughs]... what you're doing is you're just figuring out what problems you need to solve. Yeah, that's where I'm happiest. I... Some problems I enjoy more than others. 58:57 In a medical device product startup, sometimes the challenge is how do we get the customer's needs and the regulatory requirements? Those are... Somebody else loves that challenge. For me, it's like- Mm... 59:08 okay, once it's been decided we need this subject to these other constraints that we've already decided, and then it's- Mm... technically like how can we achieve this? 59:19 It's design around these constraints that we've already decided. That's the, that's the problem-solving that I like. And- Mm... and just like day to day, don't tell the robot, but I'm happy when things aren't working. 59:32 When there's a, [laughs] when there's a bug, when there's a problem solved, I set up like an automated- Yeah... test suite so we know when something breaks and I'm like, ah, here we go. My turn. 59:42 [laughs] Like you or maybe I referred to as like a, a private investigator, like doing sleuthing about like different podcast guests. That's my job too. 59:52 When I'm sleuthing through these logs, like, all right, I know, I know you've got something to tell me here. What's important, what's not important. That's... If you're a details person, like I- Mm... 1:00:05 I, I'm like known as being the, [laughs] as like debugger on whichever team I'm on because of that same affinity for details that makes it very hard for me to run a company. 1:00:18 It's that perfectionism, the double-edged sword. I'm working on the perfectionism, but brave not perfect is again, that, that mentality of, okay, how can I shift the success metric to be... 1:00:28 And just at the end of my day, I'll always consolidate, what did I learn today? [laughs] What can, what could I claim as a success even if... 1:00:37 And it's so important if you're a startup that's working on a product that's not in market yet. What- Mm... you know, what, what wins are you gonna take as your own? 'Cause- Mm... 1:00:47 at any point, the whole rocket ship might explode. [laughs] Like you gotta, you gotta celebrate the wins that you've got. But it is a skill that I have had to teach myself through, through the help of other resources. 1:01:00 You know, there's a great book- Mm... Whitney called Brave Not Perfect, and I got a lot of insight from that of like, okay, what if we make success defined as showing up and going home in one piece? 1:01:12 [laughs] Which- That's a great success. So then going into some shorter fire questions. The first one, how would you describe how you operate? So if we think about operating just as how you conduct yourself- Mm... 1:01:26 in your roles- Mm... and in your career. Yeah. I'll say asynchronous because I do feel like it's one of the newer... 1:01:32 It may not be the, the, may not be like the defining part, but I have learned that I don't think well on the spot. 1:01:40 I've realized that I work better when I'm sort of alone with my journal and I'm just sketching thoughts out to myself and not necessarily put on the spot in a big meeting. 1:01:50 So I've designed my meetings around that, that I have time for, you know, let me get back to you. I'll reflect on that individually. Yeah. I've designed, you know, code reviews. 1:01:59 I do like that and in a big part because I'm- On the opposite side of the world, of the world to the rest of my team, so my professional life is asynchronous most of the time. 1:02:11 But yeah, pausing, quiet reflection [laughs] is very important in my professional life as much as my personal life. So is your professional advice to young engineers out there, move to Portugal [laughs] 1:02:24 It's not- And work asynchronous. [laughs] Um, I will give people the advice that... Uh, look, the... It hits on advice that I do tell people, which is important to remember, is that not every job has to be your... 1:02:37 Not every job that exists in the world has to be your dream job. Only one of them has to be. [laughs] So it's like- Mm... I have only ever worked in statistical anomaly positions that very few people can say... 1:02:54 It's not, it's not common to work part-time. It's not common to work, for a roboticist to work in a medical startup. It's not common for a roboticist to get paid to work in open source. 1:03:05 It's not co- I've worked on engineering teams that were more than 50% women. Like, none of these things are common- No... but they exist. And what matters- Mm... 1:03:13 as an individual is that one instance exists, not, not that they're all like that. You only need one because you're one person doing any one job at any one time. So that's, um- Yeah... 1:03:26 that's what I like to remind people. Because it is true that not every job looks like mine. Or I won't argue with someone when they say that most engineers don't have the job that I have. 1:03:37 Most engineers don't have the personality that I have. Most this, most that, and it's like, yeah, that's fine, but the edge cases still exist. It doesn't- Statistical... are both right [laughs] that I'm- Yeah [laughs]... 1:03:48 that I'm a statistical anomaly, but then also I exist. [laughs] I can confirm that you exist. Yeah. [laughs] Can you give us a couple of your favorite resources? 1:03:57 You've already said Brave Not Perfect, which we'll link in the comments, but are there any podcasts or other things that you tend to look at to be better in your role? I really grew a lot from the book Quiet. And- Mm-hmm 1:04:11 ... generally I get audiobooks from like library apps. People forget that you can get audiobooks for free. [laughs] And the other way- Mm... that I grow a lot is going to meetups. I move to- Mm... 1:04:25 especially if, if I move to a new city where I don't know anyone, that's kind of a hobby of mine. 1:04:30 [laughs] And it is possible to do because of websites like meetup.com that connect you with other groups of people who maybe have also, or also moved to a place by themselves, or they, they like technology. They... 1:04:44 You know, I, but recommendation, a lot of good books that I've read have come from book clubs from Meetup, like that's how I... 1:04:50 It sounds, it doesn't feel like it belongs as a suggestion, but truly as a resource that has... 1:04:54 That might be the single resource that has made the biggest difference to my life because of the opportunities that it's created. So I go to a conversation club- Mm... in, where do I live? 1:05:03 Lisbon, that because I've gone to that, now I, I also host those sessions. And because I see how easy it is to facilitate conversation, I now host a Women in Robotics niche version of that. 1:05:15 And so being exposed to so many different types of people and experiences through Meetup permeates into my professional life. No, I love that. 1:05:24 It's like collaboration and learning through meeting other people that are in similar life phases. It's kinda what you were saying before. 1:05:31 All right, and then who's another operator in the Australian or New Zealand startup ecosystem, which I know you're in Lisbon now. Mm. But who is another operator that you think is just doing phenomenal things or- Yep... 1:05:42 an unsung hero? Two badass women that I just need more of their energy in my life are Polina Nestorov- Wow... who went from like intern to pretty much running the operations division at Invento when I was there. 1:05:59 In a s- in a span of, I don't know, a, a year or two- Yeah. [laughs]... she just like jumped the whole ladder because she's... 1:06:06 That's why she, she actually gave me wording around, "Oh yeah, didn't you know that like startups are really great for just, I don't know, skipping rungs?" 1:06:15 Or they, they're such great opportunities for professional growth like that, and I, I'd never- Yeah... heard it framed before. And Alexis Yates at Vexxed who's chief of staff, and she... 1:06:28 Both of these women just like, oh, such a breath of fresh air. 1:06:32 I'll just say Alexis Yates is like lawyer turned chief of staff at, at Vexxed, and working with both of these women is just such a breath of fresh air that you can delegate something to them and they will just absolutely crush it and take care of it. 1:06:45 Yeah. And you can know with 10,000% certainty that that will be executed so competently. [laughs] Like- [laughs]... oh, they're really... 1:06:57 To me, that's such a valuable thing, especially when trying to carve out time to work on what is my, the thing that I crush at. [laughs] It's- Yeah... they're absolutely people that you want on your team. 1:07:09 It's like having the people around you that you trust to get it done right so that you can just completely delegate. And- We've got one more question. 1:07:17 And I know that you've had a f- a big couple of years, like what, two years ago you won Australian Engineer of the Year- Yep. Young version... which is massive. [laughs] Young, young version. 1:07:27 [laughs] But what's your vision for the future? What do you want from- Ooh. You, you're such a... You've traveled to 45 countries. You're running all these incredible programs to get women into, into engineering. 1:07:38 But what is your kind of lifelong vision and goal, and where do you wanna be? Look, I'm, I'm hosting a, the Women in Robotics circle that I'm hosting tonight is about dreaming. [laughs] So I might uncover something. 1:07:52 I think honestly, I did notice yesterday as I was preparing the resources for it, so we, we're just gonna browse different profiles. 1:07:59 There's a Women in Robotics, a list of women to know about that gets published every year. That's part of the exercise is just like browsing it, seeing what sparks, like, oh, what makes you go like, "Yes, I want that." 1:08:09 And I did notice seeing, seeing and hearing more examples of electronics and hardware. I'm like, ah, I do... I wanna get back into... 1:08:18 I used to be a real electronics geek, and admittedly writing software is a bit more portable, but that might be... I go through life patching these different deficits. Like, okay, there's not enough maths. 1:08:31 Okay, well, I'll teach maths for a while. There's... 1:08:33 And so I feel like at the moment I might have like a deficit in electronics, and so just in the short term, I'll, I intend to be patching a little bit of that, but who knows what that will turn into. Open up. That's... 1:08:44 Other... It's, it's a hard question to answer because at, at the moment I feel like m- more in the same would be great, but I know 1:08:51 from talking to older engineers, I feel like your taste does change as you get a bit older. For now, though... So maybe one day I'll be like... People are always asking me, "When are you gonna make your own startup?" 1:09:02 And at the moment I have no interest in that, and I would be very curious. [laughs] Check, check back in with me 10 years from now and, you know, maybe that's all changed. 1:09:12 I feel like we definitely, our tastes do change as we grow. Yeah. So anything could happen. I mean, I'd love to ch- check back with you in 10 years. 1:09:19 I feel like you've already accomplished [laughs] so much in your time on this planet. Well, Deanna, I just wanted to say thank you so much for coming on and sharing your life story and so many lessons. 1:09:29 I really appreciate the reflection prompts. I would do it- [laughs] I would do it again. And that's it for today. 1:09:35 Today's episode was recorded and edited by me, your host, Philippa Newton, with original music composition by Stephen Shouton and photography by Philip Limjoserio. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.
