Name: Yetunde Dada
Role/Occupation: Director of Product Management at QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey
Country: South Africa
I had the privilege of interviewing Yetunde Dada, a mechanical engineer and IT architect, who also happens to be the Tech Whizz and Innovation Consultant at Engineers without Borders - South Africa (EWB-SA)… she sounds like a magician!
Dada's engineering journey started in grade 11 when she was part of the prestigious Space and Aviation Camp hosted by the University of Pretoria and MIT. On this camp, she visited Aerosud, a company that designed and manufactured parts for Airbus. One of the design engineers said that as an engineer you get to question why things are made the way they are. This encounter with the design engineer made her consider engineering as a potential career where design was at the heart of it. Dada would go on to study Mechanical Engineering, followed by an Honours degree in Technology Management while working in the Aeronautics Service Centre at the CSIR. Throughout her diverse career, she keeps "problem-solving skills and ability to grasp new concepts quickly at the heart of everything" she does.
Yetunde is intelligent, thoughtful and community-oriented. She believes that life can only be considered a success, if it is a life of purpose and empowering others. She believes "that we have to do so much more to help others around us. The quote underneath my matric yearbook photo is, “If you do not make a difference you are obsolete.” I want to live a life of purpose."
She is creative and design (particularly technical design) is coded in her heart. When speaking about design, she says, she "assists projects in a design capacity. Some of the projects that I’ve been able to help in this way include designs for a reversible vending machine and a solar dehydrator for food preservation in rural communities."
Yetunde displayed all these attributes during her interview, in which she covers her engineering journey, duties at EWB-SA, approach to her career and community, being a woman in the engineering space and also imparts some sagely advise to aspiring engineers. Her advice to aspiring engineers is to "never stop learning. This means that it’s okay to be acknowledge that you don’t know everything. Drop the arrogance that’s typically associated with being an engineer and open your eyes to possibilities everywhere."
Yetunde Dada was interviewed by Dhruti Dheda, the founder of the African Steminist on behalf of Engineers without Borders- South Africa. The full interview can be found here.
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