STEM careers, told through human turning points.
Diverse is a Society of Women Engineers interview series centered on the people behind STEM careers. Recent conversations move from Survivor resilience and student space research to ethical AI, communication, mentorship, and support networks for women engineers.
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Diverse is a Society of Women Engineers interview series about the careers, choices, and support systems that shape people in STEM. It has a calm center. The show tends to begin with a person’s route into engineering or science, then follows the experiences that made that route complicated, meaningful, or unexpectedly useful. Technical subjects are present, but they are usually tied to lived consequences. A conversation about student space research becomes a story about designing an experiment that must work when the designer is also the operator. A conversation about AI becomes a discussion of responsibility, privacy, incentives, and social good. A career pivot from journalism to engineering becomes evidence that clear communication is not a soft extra, but part of the work. The interviews also make space for identity and confidence. Eva Erickson’s episode links engineering, hockey, autistic representation, and Survivor endurance into a broader reflection on doing hard things. The women in STEM conversation centers mentorship, ambition, and the value of finding people who understand a drive to grow. Episodes from the WE25 setting bring in practical workplace themes, including networking as an introvert, advocating for ideas, and translating technical knowledge for different audiences. The show is especially strong when it lets guests connect a specific challenge to a transferable lesson. It does not rush those moments. Instead, it tends to recap, validate, and widen the point so the story lands as advice rather than only biography. That makes Diverse feel useful for students and early-career engineers, but not limited to them. Senior professionals, mentors, educators, and STEM allies can also find grounded reminders about leadership, visibility, and community. Its best episodes are not about presenting STEM as effortless inspiration. They are about persistence, context, and the people who help turn skill into a sustainable career.
Made for: Diverse is for students, engineers, STEM professionals, mentors, and allies who want career stories with practical takeaways. It especially suits people interested in women’s experiences, leadership, communication, representation, and community in technical fields.
What sets it apart: The show pairs Society of Women Engineers access with a patient interview style that lets guests connect technical work to confidence, identity, and impact. It feels less like a news briefing and more like a guided career conversation with room for the messy parts.
Welcome to Diverse, a podcast by the Society of Women Engineers. SWE gives women engineers a unique place and voice within the engineering community. On Diverse, we highlight incredible thought leaders and personalities in the STEM community and discover who they are at home, at work and in between.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Engineering becomes legible here as technical work shaped by communication, responsibility, mentorship, and the people expected to carry an idea through.
Diverse: a SWE podcast treats engineering as work done by people, with careers, identities, and communication habits shaping what gets built. Presenters including Larry Guthrie, Sam East, and Karen Hording use interviews to connect technical practice with the less visible…
Microgravity hardware meets Survivor hunger, and you get the career debrief behind both.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
An engineer's Survivor run becomes a clear look at grit, burnout, and adaptation.
Eva Erickson's path from Brown University to Survivor 48, along with her time on the men's club hockey teams at Georgia Tech and Brown, gives the discussion a sturdy backbone.
Eshika Mahaja's story moves from early discouragement toward mentorship, structure, and intelligent solutions in healthcare and life sciences.
Diverse follows a SWE conversation on how women and allies carry a passion for STEM across borders while building a broader global mindset. From Abuja, Nigeria, Ambosadade Wole speaks with Banisha Prija and Eshika Mahaja in an episode shaped by support, ambition, and belonging.
Purdue One frames microgravity as a hands-on mission shaped by mentorship and graduate pathways.
Purdue One anchors the episode with a clear account of how Abby Mezzi and Dr. Stephen Collicott connect spaceflight to hands-on research in microgravity.
Lisa Thee turns responsible AI into a set of blunt, usable workplace rules.
Lisa Thee frames responsible AI as a practical workplace discipline rather than a slogan. Recorded live from the WE25 Diverse podcast studio in New Orleans, the discussion keeps returning to a blunt point: AI is just a tool, and trouble starts when company incentives drift away…
A newsroom veteran's deadline habits make a plainspoken case for clearer engineering communication.
The episode frames clear, concise communication as a practical engineering skill, with Larry Guthrie and Paige Feigert using newsroom pressure as a useful comparison point.
Christine Hawkins turns authentic leadership into a practical case for stronger engineering innovation.
Christine Carney Hawkins makes authentic leadership read as a working method rather than a slogan. As a senior staff R&D engineer in the Peripheral Intervention Business Unit at BD and a SWE Life member, she returns to the tension between stereotypes and success, and her idea…
Manufacturing change, from tools to events.
Mining engineering talk with field memory.
Field notes from fluid power engineering.
This episode discusses strategies for women engineers to say no at work without damaging relationships, using the BIG framework (Breathing, Intention, Gratitude).
Cassie Gruber discusses her journey from art and philosophy to leading sustainability at Jabil, focusing on the circular economy and how women engineers can drive change.
Host Larry Guthrie interviews Paige Feigert, a research and technology engineer at Spirit Aerosystems and former TV news producer, at the WE25 conference in New Orleans.
Christine Kearney Hawkins, a senior staff R&D engineer at BD, discusses authentic leadership in engineering.
Claire Mulford, an engineer who has helped recruit, explains that ATS portals like the SWE Career site parse resumes into form fields and often categorize them poorly, so applicants should "mimic the system." Catherine Chamberlain, an LA aerospace electrical engineer, describes landing about one interview from online applications in three months before using AI to tailor her resume.
Eva Erickson traces her engineering path from a Minnesota lake cabin and a penguin-like sea kayak to animal physics, centipedes, and seal whiskers.
Diverse, a Society of Women Engineers podcast, connects Abuja, Nigeria with India as host Ambosadade Wole speaks with Banisha Prija and Eshika Mahajan from SWE's Global Women Engineers Affinity Group.
Purdue One puts Abby Mezzi, a Purdue master's student in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, and Dr.
Lisa Thee says a 2017 AI project moved from about 70 percent accuracy to 99 percent and helped recover 130 known missing children.
A journalist turned engineer discusses the importance of clear communication in engineering and her career transition.
Julie Dougherty, an engineering associate and process project leader at Corning Incorporated, explains how her "almost 20 years" in manufacturing engineering shaped her style at SWE's WE25 conference.
Dr.
Jayshree Seth discusses her career journey from diamonds to diapers, her role as 3M's first Chief Science Advocate, and the capstone volume of her Heart of Science trilogy.
Archivists Troy Eller-English and Mary Mann discuss the history of the Society of Women Engineers ahead of its 75th anniversary celebration at the Cooper Union.