We have a lot of woman power!
Many people can think that space technology is only for men. They can think that only men can be interested about space and work on it. My name is Suvi and I’m a sixteen years old summer trainee at Aurora Propulsion Technologies. I’m interested about mathematics, physics and chemistry. I think that space technology is for women and men. I think that everyone can be interested about space and work on it. I decided to interview four women who work at Aurora Propulsion Technologies so I asked them three questions.
- How is your typical workday?
- Why do you want to work at Aurora Propulsion Technologies?
- What have you studied? How did you end up studying that?
Banu Turkmen
Head of Business Development of Products
“Learning continues at all ages as long as you’re curious about things and kind to yourself to feed your spirit, brain and heart.”
1. She doesn’t have a typical workday but she spends her time for meetings, doing technology / event / literature search on the internet, networking with people in Linkedin, defining / designing / providing sales support materials and analyzing customer segments and value propositions. Her time is divided among tactical, operational and strategial actions.
2. She likes to work at Aurora Propulsion Technologies because it develops space technology which is interesting and serving to modern life on Earth. She also shares and appreciates personally the values like innovation and sustainability that Aurora has. It’s an inclusive workplace which gives her peace of mind and makes her happy to work for.
3. She has studied industrial engineering, operations research, data science and artificial intelligence. Industrial engineering was very popular at that time and only for the top percentile students. She liked to have really wide options of work places and functions as an Industrial Engineer. She thinks that operations research was a little bit wiser choice because she likes for example puzzles, problem solving and optimization models. She has studied data science and artificial intelligence because she likes working with data, making decisions based on data and using it in organizations to increase profitability. She thinks that learning continues at all ages as long as you’re curious about things and kind to yourself to feed your spirit, brain and heart.
Emmalotta Kittilä
Chemical Engineer
”I like to work at Aurora Propulsion Technologies because I’ve nice co-workers and an interesting work.”
1. Her typical workday starts with vacuum tests which take usually the whole workday. She has time to do other tasks like vulcanization, chemical safety and physical workspace organization during the vacuum tests.
2. She likes to work at Aurora Propulsion Technologies because she has nice co-workers and an interesting work.
3. She’s studying chemistry and will garduate in a year. She thinks that chemistry lessons in high school are the reason why she’s studying chemistry.
Jannika Vesalainen
Micromechanics & Team lead
“We build our environment together. We’re a small company so everyone gets their voice heard.”
1. She doesn’t have a typical workday because there’s many things that she can do during her workday. She spends a lot of time by the computer, going through Slack and emails, planning things and documenting. She has seldom the opportunity to do actual metalwork although she’s a micromechanic. She’s also a team lead which means that she has a lot of project planning, allocating tasks and doing the follow-up. She likes to keep contact with her team members and activate them to participate in developing our company’s procedures.
2. She likes to work at Aurora Propulsion Technologies because the work culture is being raised and developed together. She likes the idea that we can test different solutions and pick the one that suites us best. We don’t do things because it’s always been done in some way. We build our environment together. We’re a small company so everyone gets their voice heard.
3. She has studied nursing sciences and micromechanics. She loved her previous work and the patients so she worked for 20 years in different operating theaters and emergency units. She was also eager to develop procedures to make their work more safe and fluent. Eventually the continuous shortage of personnel drove her to reconsider her career. She has studied micromechanics in the school of watchmaking in Espoo and finally graduated in 2020. It felt like she has finally found her home.
Montserrat Corominas
Sales Development Partner
“Aurora hasn’t only a great scientific team but also an outstanding team culture I’m proud to commit to.”
1. She starts her workday focusing on her key customer tasks. Early morning is dedicated to customer work like acquisition calls and customer strategy. During the afternoons she conducts meetings and concludes wrapping up the day and follow up.
2. She likes to work at Aurora Propulsion Technologies because she thinks that shaping the future is a pioneer work and joining such teams is a place that she feels home. She thinks that being part of the evolution in high tech has been a key cornerstone of her career path. Aurora hasn’t only a great scientific team but also an outstanding team culture she’s proud to commit to.
3. She has studied financial mathematics but she wanted to part of the changing agent of her life-time and that’s technology. She initiated that journey with her Master of Science dissertation on the internet in London. She has been in the crossroads of technologies and business ever since.
