Humans of TU Delft: Andrea Mangel Raventos

“I got into research and I really enjoy it, but I realised I was missing more of a global vision on topics like climate change and climate action. When you’re a researcher sometimes you’re just working by yourself in the lab. And then if you walk around the 3mE building you notice that most of the professors are male.

There’s a lot out there about trying to get girls interested in science and technology, but I don’t think that’s the problem. If you look at the percentages at TU Delft, like look at bachelor’s students, it’s almost 50/50. I don’t think it’s that girls are not interested in science or technology, but there are too many system barriers that keep them from getting into leadership positions.

I found this project called Homeward Bound, an Australian initiative that is trying to give women the tools to be better leaders. They are trying to give us a jump start and get more women involved, especially in all of the global problems that we have right now. They are aiming to build a network of 1,000 women from around the world over 10 consecutive years. This year they chose a group of 95 women and I was one of them.

The women are at all stages of their careers. It’s a very inspirational network with a lot of mentoring involved and cross-generational topics. It’s funny because you would think that most of the late-stage women would be giving more advice, but it goes both ways actually. It’s a very dynamic and diverse group of women.

‘We want to make sure that people understand how urgent it is to act’

The programme is for a full year, but the last three weeks everyone will be together in Antarctica. There will be workshops every morning and a science symposium where everyone will talk about their work so we can enable more collaboration. But it’s also meant to show the urgency of climate action. The poles are the places in the world where change is happening most quickly so we want to make sure that people understand how urgent it is to act. It’s also a test for all of the participants, it’s about resilience and how we put into action our newly learned problem-solving skills. It’s meant to take all of us far outside our comfort zones.

I’m trying to raise funds right now and that’s challenging. The organisation comes up with half of what every participant needs through donations and sponsorships. But since it’s Antarctica it’s still pretty costly. I need to raise approximately EUR 15,000 before I leave on 16 November. I’m also working with some partners in Costa Rica on a crowdfunding reforestation project because I want to make my trip CO₂ neutral. I hope we will soon have the crowdfunding platform online.”

Update 7 October 2019 Andrea Mangel Raventos started a fundraising website to fund her Homeward Bound activities: chuffed.org/project/homeward-bound-andreas-leadership-expedition-to-antarctica

• Andrea Mangel Raventos and Hanneke Stenfert both won this year’s Marina van Damme Grant.
• More about  the Homeward Bound initiative here.

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Heather Montague / Freelance writer