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The science of endless opportunities – STEM careers at DIO

Category: Training & Development

Career and Talent Development

STEM in Defence.

Sarah Young is passionate about raising awareness about the wide range of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers on offer with the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO).

My job title is private secretary to the chief executive of the DIO, but my role has changed so much. As private secretary, I make sure the chief executive is ready for meetings, do administration, read papers for him and offer feedback, but I’ve also been working to promote STEM careers within the DIO because of my own scientific background.

The DIO’s role is to support the military in terms of their buildings and the infrastructure that enables them to work, train and deploy personnel. Within that brief, we are not just builders. We have foresters, data experts, technology professionals who produce business intelligence tools every day to enable us to answer big questions, explosives experts and even archaeologists. All these careers involve STEM skills.

My degree is in forensic science, which I completed as a mature student. But while I enjoyed the degree, I knew I didn’t want to work in a laboratory. I worked as a biology teacher for four years, but I needed to do something where I could explore, deal with people and use my love of data. So, when the opportunity came up to work as a data analyst for the DIO, I took it.

One of the first things I asked when I started the job four years ago was whether there were many STEM careers available at the organisation. People weren’t sure what the answer to my question was, so I asked if I could have some data on this topic. I ended up being the one to do the research and compile the data on STEM careers and what the gender balance was like for these roles within the DIO. 

I found out that in an organisation of around 4,000 colleagues, there were about 1,000 careers involving STEM, but only 300 were filled by women. When I said I wanted to help improve the gender balance, I was encouraged to share what I learned with the wider organisation, and to start my own STEM Network.

As well as promoting a better gender balance, I soon discovered that the work I was doing fitted nicely into our promotion of social mobility. DIO has a social mobility network and a gender forum and I have been able to work with both groups. Under the social mobility banner, we work with schools in areas that are local to our offices, which are all over the UK. We have been able to tell students that there are 1,000 different things you can do so you don’t always need a degree because there are apprenticeships.

One of my struggles is that because this work has taken off, we are going to have to do a lot more work to be able to keep promoting STEM jobs in the future. But DIO has been incredibly supportive of all our promotional efforts, especially through volunteering opportunities. Covid-19 made it difficult during lockdown to get out there and work in the community.

I am very busy in my role as the chief executive’s private secretary, but I still wanted to find ways to promote STEM careers at DIO. One of the things I have done is facilitated the organisation’s participation in the annual Big Bang UK Young Scientists and Engineers Fair, which takes place every year at the NEC, Birmingham. It is such a great place to showcase these sorts of jobs to young people – the Army, the RAF and the Royal Society of Chemistry are all there and I knew that we needed to be a part of this too. But it can be hard to get people to give up their time to be exhibitors, so I talked to the event organisers. They suggested I make a video of people at DIO talking about their roles, so that’s exactly what I did, with the help of our brilliant communications team.

Soon, I had people willing to come forward and talk about their careers for the video and it has been great to showcase the opportunities that we can offer young people, regardless of gender or background. We have had people talk about careers in construction, engineering, ecology and data, to name a few. The video is available for anyone to watch on YouTube and Engineering UK, the organisers of the Big Bang event, released the video to schools, so they can use it for STEM days.

We are such a diverse organisation when it comes to the career paths we offer and I want to promote this to as many young people as possible. We have people from all walks of life who have worked their way up in the DIO and hopefully our video will showcase some of that. It’s so important to me.

I have even been able to further my own professional STEM education and development with the DIO’s support. Now, I have a masters degree in archaeology and anthropology, which is absolutely amazing. As a result, I’ve been able to join the RAF on some of their own work, as well as having the opportunity to join our own DIO Archaeologists on a dig The MOD maintains two percent of the UK’s land, so it is really important to document the historic sites for future generations. DIO are also involved in Operation Nightingale, which is a registered charity that helps wounded, sick and injured veterans recover by getting involved in archaeological investigations. This has been so rewarding.

We regularly get emails from schools asking if a member of DIO staff can speak to students on STEM days. These emails are always gratefully received and our volunteers can do all sorts of things to educate and raise awareness on school visits, such as mock job interviews.

My next goal is to take this further by creating a portal for DIO where colleagues can apply to take part in these volunteering opportunities. We need to get out there more as an organisation, not just in the West Midlands where we’re based, but through our offices all over the country. So many of my DIO colleagues are keen to do some volunteering so we can share the passion for STEM that we all hold so dearly.

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Defence Infrastructure Organisation

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