Kundai Dangare is committed to creating an inclusive workplace for engineers at Thales while working on exciting international projects.
My dad was a civil engineer and he’d take me and my brother to his workplace during the summer holidays. This meant I always knew engineering was an achievable route for me, but for so many other young people, having role models who look like them is important, so they know that any career path should not be off-limits.
I grew up next to an airport in Zimbabwe, so I was always watching planes take off and land. Some of my first memories are about wondering how it was even possible for aircraft to do this, which motivated me to pursue a career in aerospace engineering.
When I was in my final year at Leeds University, completing my aeronautical and aerospace engineering degree, I started looking at different graduate schemes and Thales was definitely a company that I was interested in. When it came to applying, I saw that I had similar values to Thales.
Clearly, it was the right choice to start working here in 2021. The projects have been interesting – I’ve worked in business data and project management and, before my current role, I was a flight test engineer. Now I’m working as a systems engineer on ships. There will be quite a lot of travel to the Netherlands and Poland to test ships.
I’ve only been in this role for about a month now, so there has been a lot of paperwork and reading to do, but I’m getting stuck into it. We’re working on an integration strategy to bring all the different systems together in a ship, creating test matrices and mapping out what we need to do. There’s a lot of planning and then, as the project develops, we’ll be travelling to do more integration and testing at the customer site.
Thales has been really supportive of my volunteering work, as well as my career progression as an engineer. I did a year-long volunteer project as an ED&I lead for the company’s Early Careers project. It was a group of graduates and apprentices who worked together to improve the working environment and culture within our early careers community.
I like to help people and talk to people and the opportunities to volunteer in the ED&I space at Thales fitted in with a lot of volunteering I’d already done at university, such as being a school rep. At uni, I’d organised events for Black History Month, so I was able to bring this energy with me when I started at Thales.
Within engineering, especially in the defence industry, it is so important to try and improve diversity. Within the early careers community, we’re young and open to ideas – and potentially we are the leaders of the future at Thales. If we start working towards improved diversity inclusion at this level, it can spread upwards through the business culture. This is where I feel I can make the most impact and add value.
The employee networks at Thales are focused on diversity and inclusion, such as the REACH (Race, Ethnicity and Cultural Heritage) network. I’ve been a speaker at different conferences, such as the Women in STEM conference, just to talk about the really good work we do at Thales and making sure people know it is a good place to work for everyone. We help everyone perform to the best of their abilities.
Allyship is really, really important, when people listen to each other and advocate for one another. At Thales, we do mentorship and reverse mentorship. I was a reverse mentor for the CEO, which was amazing. This allyship creates a ripple effect, encouraging people to find allies within their teams. It helps break down personal biases, especially unconscious biases, by allowing people from different backgrounds to share experiences.
Through my volunteer work, I’ve found that I’ve grown quite a lot. Engineering is something I’ve always wanted to do and for my managers at Thales to be supportive of my career and my volunteering work means a lot to me in terms of my own personal values.
