Delft Female Impact Community: Annual Event Inspires Delft Women in Engineering
The Delft Female Impact Community once again brought together its powerful network at the annual alumnae event on 10 October 2024 at TU Delft. With a full house of close to 200 alumni in attendance, this year’s theme, ‘Women for Water’, shined a light on one of the most pressing global challenges — access to clean water.
Water is a basic human right, yet many societal challenges revolve around its scarcity, quality, and management. To tackle these complex issues, inspiring keynote speakers Doris van Halem, Professor of Drinking Water Quality and Treatment at TU Delft, and Marjolijn Haasnoot, environmental scientist at Deltares and Professor in Climate Change Adaptation at Utrecht University, presented their ‘water work’.
Both women are outstanding leaders in their fields, using their research and expertise to address critical water-related issues and create lasting, positive impact on society.
In their presentations, they delved into their innovative ‘water work’ and shared how they are helping to solve some of the world's toughest water challenges. Their stories are a testament to the power of female leadership in science and the transformative impact women can make in addressing global problems. Furthermore, initiators Didi te Gussinklo Ohmann, Elsemiek Meijs and Floor van Wingerden informed the audience about the community’s growth, the purpose of the Delft Female Impact Fund, and the execution of a qualitative study on leadership and entrepreneurial challenges of female engineers.
If you think something is worth it, even by the risk of losing your job, just do it.
Doris van Halem
Empowering discussions for real change
In the afternoon, a series of interactive roundtable discussions were held with all participants. These discussions were designed to spark personal reflection and collective action, starting with table hosts sharing their stories of impact, followed by open dialogues on how we, as female engineers, can become more confident in asserting our ideas and contributions, how we can strengthen our networks, mentor each other, and create opportunities for success, and how we can bring men into the conversation as allies for gender equality in engineering.
Today, we touched on how to find opportunities for growth. I think the most practical thing I learned today is how to build a strong team by focusing on networking skills. This is especially important for women in engineering, as they need to develop real skills in networking and collaboration. The takeaway from today is that we, as engineers — especially women engineers — must learn to navigate and succeed in a male-oriented environment.
Participant