Engineering Equity with Automation | Poggy Murray Whitham | TEDxHeriot Watt University
In 2025, I was named one of the UK’s Top 100 Manufacturing Professionals, but just one year earlier, I was pushed out of the industry in which I’d spent a decade building my career.I had to leave engineering to be recognised by it.I spent my time in engineering not just designing systems, but surviving them. Despite commercial success, I was told my DEI work was a distraction and that I was too disruptive. That I didn’t belong.But what if we stopped trying to “fit in” and started redesigning the systems themselves?This talk reframes inclusion as a systems challenge – one that can be tackled using the same tools we apply in engineering: safety, efficiency, productivity, and continuous improvement.Because inclusion shouldn’t be an afterthought, and it shouldn’t be improvised.It should be engineered. Poggy Murray Whitham is a professionally accredited engineer, Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute, and multi award-winning DEI professional and researcher. Formerly a senior manager in automation engineering, Poggy was named one of the UK’s Top 100 Manufacturing Professionals – an honour that came only after being forced to leave the industry – alongside being nominated for a National Diversity Award as a positive LGBT role model.Now Programme Manager and part of the leadership team at EqualEngineers, and Co-Chair of InterEngineering, Poggy combines lived experience as a Black, Queer, Disabled, Neurodivergent professional with technical, strategic insight to drive inclusive change across the engineering industry, working with companies across the country and speaking regularly at institutions such as the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Government and Public Policy, and Imperial College London. Poggy is also pursuing a Doctorate in Business Administration in DEI in Engineering at Heriot-Watt’s Edinburgh Business School. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
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