Powering Change: How One Engineer Is Driving Inclusion and Innovation

By Jacqui Murray, Deputy Challenge Director of the UK Government’s Faraday Battery Challenge

Jacqui Murray is the Deputy Challenge Director of the UK Government’s £274 Million Faraday Battery Challenge - making the UK the go-to place for researching, developing, prototyping and manufacturing batteries for Electric Vehicles.  It is the biggest challenge in the Industrial Strategy.

I used to tell people I was an engineer.  I found it uncomfortable to be described as a woman engineer – it felt like it singled me out away from my team.

That all changed one day in London in 2014.  I went to a Women’s Engineering Society Conference on Energy.  I must admit, that at that time, I wasn’t looking forward to being in a room with 250 women engineers.  I walked into a diverse, competent, inspiring bunch of people.

I remember thinking in the middle of the first break – what if being a woman engineer was an advantage?  What if being myself, the extrovert, emotional, passionate and sensitive woman could be something that made me a better engineer and someone who was easier to work with? And get better results?  Perhaps stupidly, I realised all the things I had been agreeing with on Coaching and Emotional Intelligence training, I hadn’t really been embracing for myself!

By the end of the day, I had signed up as a STEM ambassador to and pledged to be the forty-something woman that the twenty-something year old me needed.

Ever since, I tell my story in equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), focussing on the positive performance of a diverse team and the leadership that inclusion requires. I tell engineers to run the numbers provided by the Royal Academy of Engineering and McKinsey and share tools from these courses that I have found most useful.

My current Faraday Battery Challenge team is high performing, high profile, fun and diverse. We all speak about inclusion and always prioritise people.  I have stayed true to my original pledge, aiming to give others tools to build confidence and conflict competence.

I am proud to claim that since that date I have :

• A Member of the Wales WISTEM board
• Chair of the STEM Women in Welsh Industry subgroup
• Encouraged two UK organisations adopting enhanced paternity leave
• Been part of setting up a Gender Equality Network
• Helped my Primary School become recognised by Estyn as Best Practice
• Co-ordinated a Foreign Office UK-US STEM The Gap event
• Committee member and inspirational speaker at of the Sandhurst STEM Careers Event for 2000 teens in September 2019.
• Been a role model for the UK Electric Vehicles Industry while delivering a high performing and transformational programme on the road to zero in the UK

​And I continue to speak at events about how you can leverage emotional intelligence for success, recently at Williams and McLaren – both important actors in batteries for electric vehicles and Formula 1 teams I have supported since I was 15 and why decided to be an engineer. Just sometimes Karma rocks.