Christina Brugger: Flutist, Engineer and B2B Product specialist

S3E3: Christina Brugger is an Engineer by training and an accomplished flautist.  She is now a self-employed B2B Customer Insights and Product Launch Specialist at Insight Sprint and Founder and Coach at Keys to Impact, an academy to support women in STEM find their voice and navigate in male dominated environments.

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Unexpected Career Podcast, where we share stories of real people and the twists and turns they have taken along their career journey. I am Megan Dunford, and as someone who found myself in the payments industry, largely by accident, I'm fascinated by how people's careers unfold and how they've gotten to where they are today. It's also why I'm passionate about reducing the pressure on young people, about going to university, what to take in school, and on getting that right first job today I am speaking with Christina Bruger, a flute player and engineer who built a career in technology and product. And today Christina is a B2B customer insight specialist and product launch consultant. She's also the founder and coach of the training Academy. Keys to impact.

Christina: 0:50

Hi Megan. Hi, Christina. How are you? I'm good. What about you?

Megan: 0:56

I'm alright, thank you. Thank you so much for joining. I'm really excited that you agreed to do this. I just think a, your journey is really interesting and what you're doing now is really interesting, but also the decisions you made in the beginning are both practical, but I think inspiring at ways you've kept different aspects of your life and interest. And not let go of all of those. So I'm really excited to dig into it and have this conversation. So thank you for agreeing to do it.

Christina: 1:28

Thank you for inviting me.

Megan: 1:29

Let's jump in. I always start right at the beginning of when you were small. Did you have an idea of what you wanted to do when you grew up?

Christina: 1:42

Yeah, and actually when I look back, it's a really funny thing to do because it has absolutely nothing. Well, there are some threads in it, but it's really rather random. Because when I was small, I really wanted to be an air hostess. We are just completely out of the blue when you think about what I do now or even the kind of journey that I've gone through.

Megan: 2:04

What do you think appealed to you about being an air hostess when you look back on it?

Christina: 2:09

I think it's actually the fact that, number one, they're very helpful people. Mm-hmm. I probably enjoyed the thought of helping people while it's traveling somewhere the second bit. And I'm now in hindsight interpreting that into it. I don't know if it's a very small child. I had this ambition, right? Mm-hmm.

Megan: 2:30

But

Christina: 2:31

the fact that I get to travel everywhere. I am curious about different cultures. So maybe there was something very early stage that already sparked it to be like, I wanna get to know the world. Right? So maybe that. And then the third bit, I think it's fascinating what kind of energy and presence they need to have. And again, I'm in hindsight interpreting that. Yeah. As a very, very small child, I think I wouldn't be able to, but I probably was impressed by how they were walking through the plane and how they can calm down people. How they also present the brand of the airline.

Megan: 3:06

That's so cool. That isn't what you ended up doing. So when you were making decisions at the end of high school, secondary school, et cetera, did you decide to go on to university and if yes, how did you decide what to take at university?

Christina: 3:23

That's such an interesting question it was not that I was torn between lots of different things at the time of finishing my A levels. I just knew I'm doing this. I actually questioned my choice very shortly after several times. Mm-hmm. But I stuck to it actually because I always enjoyed physics and maths and complexity. I was drawn to engineering and I decided on that rather than physics or anything else, purely because of role models. Mm-hmm. My dad was an engineer. My grandpa was an engineer and it's not the woman. But it was just a an ability for me, therefore to see what the world looked like as an engineer.

Megan: 4:08

Mm-hmm.

Christina: 4:09

I think I wouldn't have even understood and connected the dots between engineering and enjoying physics and maths if I hadn't been able to actually speak to people like that. And understand and explore. Okay. That's actually what it means in real life.'cause it's so fundamentally you never get an exposure at all to engineering. You don't in the school, go to a factory. No. and go like, oh, interesting. You also never see anybody design any product. You have just no idea how that world works. Yeah, I, I picked it because I. Had some people I could see in front of me, and I think if they had been physicists or if they had been, you know, doing research in maths, if they had been programmers, whatever else, I would've probably gone that direction because I could see and could connect the dots between what I liked doing at school and then what these people did in real life.

Megan: 5:07

I think that's so interesting because just as you said, you had those role models in your family and were able to make those connections and we are so influenced by what we can see. And of course when you're that age, that's primarily just our parents, maybe our parents' friends. And so. We don't have any idea all the different things you can take in school or all the different jobs that are out there in the world. And it's one of the things I just find so fascinating about people's careers because in some ways They're not necessarily random decisions, but we make these big decisions and feel like, oh, I'm making this decision to go on this path. That will be my path forever. But we have so limited information. And society also kind of does that too, of like, oh, you need to take something that's gonna lead to a job et cetera. But you don't know everything and so much changes as well. So, yeah. I think that's really interesting that's the way you made your decision, but also just how aware you are of that too.'cause I think lots of times people aren't always making those connections for themselves of how even they ended up somewhere or how they made that choice.

Christina: 6:20

Because for me, I also, like I said, I doubted it shortly afterwards because as you know, I have a very much a passion for music. Mm-hmm. I always did that and, I still play the flute and, when I went to university, in a way I was really lucky because I didn't get into the very top. Firstly, I decided to come to the uk. Mm-hmm. I should explain probably why I did that because Germany, where I'm originally from is a country of engineers. You would think, well, why wouldn't you study engineering in that country? Right. Actually, what I wanted to do is study general engineering, so not have to go and say, I wanna. I don't know, engineer cars or engineer planes or whatever else. But have a much broader view because I was aware of I've already narrowed down into engineering rather than something else. But yeah, I don't know the different aspects of engineering. So why would I choose right now? I wanted to do general engineering, and they don't do that very often in Germany as a general foundation. And I always enjoyed English as a language in school, so I was like, perfect combination. I'll come to the uk. I did not get into the top. Universities I did apply to Cambridge, but I found it very, very difficult. Some of the maths and then speaking that in English, I just couldn't do it In those interviews I was like, oh my God. But in hindsight, I was really lucky because actually what that meant was that I went to Leicester where I didn't know that they have the Philharmonia orchestra as the second home almost. They come there very often. concerts. And so they have a music scholarship where I then had lessons with the second flutist from the Philharmonia. Wow. And it was really amazing for me to be able to keep that alive. I also had lessons with a local teachers. I had a lot of lessons. I had a lot of opportunities because they also didn't have a music department, so they didn't have these opportunities being occupied by music students. So I played a lot of flute concertos with the orchestra, which you would normally not be having the opportunity. So because of that, I was able to do a lot of music at the same time. But it did occur to me very soon after I went to uni. My life in school had been so much about music.'cause I was part of this top orchestra. I played in a quartet. I just practiced a lot. And I played a lot. And suddenly I was stuck in these lecture theaters going like, oh my god, I'm, I'm learning. I mean, this is interesting, but also mm-hmm. Oh my god, where's my flute? Like, this is not what I wanted, was it? And it slowly occurred to me that I. Because I never had a role model in music actually make a choice here and then throughout my life it's come back several times. But now I've landed at a point where I'm very thankful because my parents actually never even gave me that option by letting me see how it could look like as a professional musician.'cause I could have had I'm, but now convinced I have the talent to have been in it. Actually, they were very rightly telling me, you know, financially implicitly telling me, never telling me explicitly to you must not become a musician. But they just didn't even show me the options. In a way they, they showed me a lot of this is what you can do, and made it really easy to go and study engineering and to follow that pathway. Mm-hmm. in hindsight, I had a lot of doubts right then. I had a lot of doubts in between all the time because it's just something I love, but it's make a lot of like financial sense not to do it.

Megan: 9:58

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a difficult career path music, but like you said, you've in a way accidentally got an opportunity to really keep it alive in your life by going to the University of Leicester. So that's, really amazing. And you know, I know you still play, so that's also really amazing that you've been able to keep that as a big part of your life. So after university, having decided to stick with engineering what was your first job at a university? Like how did that come about?

Christina: 10:35

It's a actually really interesting journey to that because I had more exclusion criteria than inclusion. I literally was like, I do not wanna work on, and I had a whole list'cause I don't like. Necessarily like defense applications. I'm not really into cars. I didn't really like working on planes either. I didn't like power plants. There was just a long list of things I didn't like to do. And that left me with well, what is it actually that I wanna do? I have no idea. So I went to, careers fairs. I. Did a lot of interviews with different companies. I ended up having five job offers or something like that at the end. But what I settled on was actually a company that wasn't well known. It's still by now, it's a FTSE100 business. They're called er. They actually make, at the time that they said, improving the quality of life and saving lives or something was their mission. And they make all these hidden things like fire detectors, medical equipment process safety in factories like uv, disinfection of water, spectroscopy. Where you can then measure all sorts of substances. So basically. A lot of really fascinating applications and always doing good.

Megan: 11:57

Mm-hmm. And

Christina: 11:57

that piece really appealed to me. And the other thing that joining them allowed me to do because I joined them on what was called the Future Leaders Program. And I basically was able to rotate through different roles. So not only did I get exposure to many, many different industries'cause they are operating in so many different industries. But I also was then a project manager, then a product manager. In six months iterations always at different companies and I got to lead my own team from the start, like a little team, I don't know, three, four people that'd been pulled together to, look at the new process to calibrate fire detectors. And I was just like, okay, how do I structure this? I have no idea. But it was really fascinating too. To think on my feet all the time'cause they're all SMEs sized businesses. And yeah, so I really enjoyed that aspect.

Megan: 12:49

Really amazing for your first kind of grownup job out of university. To get exposure to different companies and roles and different kinds of products and the learning must have been incredible. That's such an amazing first job. And on top of it, a mission driven organization as well, what I like about actually what you said too about the list of exclusion being long, is that clarity of there are things you don't wanna work on. Some of those are specific products but some of that was also being really in touch with your values from a very early age. And so to find something that was value driven that's amazing.

Christina: 13:28

Yeah. I'm still vastly very. I don't know if mentally attached is the right word, but I like that company still. They exist and I'm still in touch with lots of people who work there. And I think at the time it almost felt like, am I making myself get stuck between a rock and a hard place because I have all these really picky exclusion criteria. But in hindsight, you're right. That was actually helpful. And that's okay. Like in that situation, I was almost like, what's wrong with me? That other people just have this image of yeah, I'm gonna work for JLR and that's it. they just go to the career stall and they talk to these people and I was like, I don't even know who to talk to because I don't wanna work here, I don't wanna work here. I also don't like this comp. So yeah, I think it's, uh, yeah, in hindsight it's a good idea. I would advise anybody who's picking their career path to go like, okay, if you really don't know, write down at least what you don't want to do, because that, yeah. Cool.

Megan: 14:29

Yeah. And sometimes it's an easier list at least to start with. It's easier to be clear of oh, I don't want that than what you do. And my, I think you sort of touched on that lots of people. I think that's maybe not helpful to do, or it's not the right thing to do, but actually being really clear on what you're, are looking for. I mean, I think sometimes it means it could take a little bit longer to find the right thing, but then hopefully that means then you have a really great experience and you are in a place that then you can. Really, truly grow and learn, which if you end up in the wrong spot, can have completely the opposite impact.

Christina: 15:10

I have also realized the other thing that made me then pick Hammer was the fact how they interacted with the candidates. there's a huge, depending on the scale of the companies of course, but there's a huge almost system behind it and process of interviewing graduates and treating you like, one, one out of a million, it's just the machine. And if you end up interacting with somebody who's not even part of the company properly and who doesn't understand the context to such an extent that they are only there to take notes on your interview answers, and to then relay that back to the company, there were certain experiences I made with other companies. I was just like, no way. You're just treating me as. One out of so many people like faceless, how am I even trusting you? With my first job and career. Mm-hmm. Like, I'll never do that. Yeah. So, yeah, that's probably the other thing.

Megan: 16:06

You're so right. It's that experience and the process and how they treat people through, the recruitment process is an indication of the culture and the type of business. So, yeah, that's a really important, thing to be on the lookout for sure. So I know you're doing something quite different now, so maybe take me a little bit on the journey from that first job to what you're doing now.

Christina: 16:34

Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of. That first company that I worked for, I worked with them actually quite for a while. So I stayed in that future leaders program. Really enjoyed it, getting exposure to different industries and roles. And then I had the opportunity and it was good timing and luck in a way and, some of the, which I'm now in hindsight looking back, good internal reputation that I had built, but I didn't know at the time was basically there was a new chief innovation additional officer who came into the company, into the headquarters.'cause these were 45 to 50 small SMEs size businesses, manufacturing in these niche industries. Really good. Well known in each of their industries. Legislature protected. But with the internet and iot coming and slowly things getting more connected and software driven, and also in the B2B world that suddenly starting to come in, that people were expecting more like a B2C user experience. They thought, well, we have to get our companies on that journey as well. So that's why, they'd then hired someone really brilliant leader originally, also from Germany. Mm-hmm. so there was a connection, a female leader and she then came in, I was her first team member. We both were defining my role as we went along. And I've in the very beginning, helped her what she called stock take, so understand what these companies were actually already doing, where were they on their digitalization journey and also on their innovation journey. These are like slightly different skills and we wanted to drive both. Then she sent me on quite a few different courses. I became a trained scrum master. I had really good digital product management training because I then had a task to bring those skills back into those businesses. And I ran internal webinars and I built up an intranet of tools and stuff that they could actually go into. I was able to leverage my network of having been in some of these businesses and going like, oh, I remember this person. I remember this. And so I I had some champions there and that's how I also helped to spread that. And that role then evolved from taking that knowledge and the tools to those different companies into actually, doing what we called digital growth sprints, design sprints with these companies. So going for three months or so with these on a journey to say, you have a new product development idea. Here's how we can validate it. Here's how we go out to the market and speak to the users and do the insights. Come back, create a really solid business case. Like here's how we would even build a team. If they've never actually built software before, like E has. What kind of talent you would need. So we would get them to a stage where their board would then be able to discuss, do we want to invest in this? And what are the stages? And throughout that, obviously I learned a lot. I enjoyed it a lot. And I realized though, this is like an internal consultant role almost. I wanna be action driven again. Yeah. And also it's very early in my career, I do want to, you know, show myself sometime that I have driven something. So I then joined one of the subsidiaries in the fire industry. And there I started out with one team member and they were on the journey of having connected their fire panel to the cloud. But not really knowing how do we sell it now they're like, what do we make out of the software? it started a bit earlier already in that internal consultant role, but my fascination with customer insights started at that point because I really did an in-depth insights project that I said to the company. Well, the fact that we don't know how to sell it and who to sell it means we don't know our users or our customer, and they'd always been selling to engineers. So the the middleman almost who's installing the fire panel into the building. And if you're wanting to sell a subscription or something that's then continues to renew, you need to understand. Who's the end user as well. Yeah. Because ultimately even if you sell to the maintenance engineer, they get paid by the end user. So you have to understand, go back to the first part of the value chain. So I did a lot of insights and went to visit like the. The basement of UBS and the Nissan factory in lots of really interesting places to understand how do the facility managers operate the fire panel. And from that identified lots of pain points, created a whole process of us actually going through that as a team in the company and deciding which of these. To make sense for us to address and how do we address them and build all of that into this cloud software that over time. Then really became an intuitive tool for facility managers to interact with their fire panel. And based on all of that work, we then built a business case and it became much, much more clearer what the benefit of that would be. And I was then able to add more people to the team. And by the time I left, I had Five people or something like that, is a really, nice, like muscle in the business to develop digital products. And it makes me happy because that product actually, it was a huge shift for the company to go. Or we recreate something for the end user now. I think in such a different way. And it actually came to the market. It's now being sold. And I'm like, oh my God, this is amazing. I, it took a long time because fire industry, right? It's like the hot thing in the fire industry right now. So yeah, I did that. And then I decided I like software development, so I wanna see how a SaaS business runs. And that's why I joined a company, a PropTech business or property technology. And because it was related in some ways, I knew buildings, so I was like, okay, makes sense. They're called LandTech. They are based in London and at the time they were really scaling massively. I joined and the role of a product manager. But very soon after took over one of the teams basically, was then responsible for new product development or innovation or incubation as we called it, because they had something like Google Maps for property developers and wanted to add other services on. So my team then did property finance, and explored that and we created an intuitive way including a calculator and then adding a whole service as in actually hiring property finance brokers who reported to me. And it was a tech enabled service that we then launched, and still exists. It's called Land Fund. And then another team of mine, they then looked at land owners and the opportunity there, and always it came back to what do our users need? Mm-hmm. Like that's where the center part of all of these new product developments came from. It was always a really good structured process for creating those user insights, analyzing them, creating. Opportunities from them going back into the team, into the company and saying, which of these do we want to create a solution for? And then doing that. And so I did that there. I also had an intermediate role as a chief of staff which I really loved.'cause got to see a lot of the experience of interpersonal dynamics and power dynamics in C-Suite, and facilitating workshops there. And then at the time. The business. So it was scaling fast, but unfortunately, when they hired a lot of people it just slowed the business down, which meant that smaller startups were starting to bite at the heels. And that meant that I could not continue in creating new products.'cause the investors said, well, we need to fix our core. if these small startups are coming, then what are you doing in the main part of your product and why are you. Into all these other things. So they said you can go back into, the main product team. But I decided actually it's time for me to go and, look at something else. And that's how I then joined a startup. So I went from FTSE100 smaller and smaller into one of the SME size into like a scale up and in a startup. And, they were in the oil and gas, industry. And looking at a new way to detect gases by using spectroscopy. So my knowledge from Hammer came back. And, I was there as the VP of product. Unfortunately, that business, again, they were in that big slow moving industry, whereas quite startup. So they were not able to raise funding at the time that they thought they could and had to let lots of people go. And at the time when that then happened for me. I thought, well, do I want to look for another role? And actually decided no, I will do what I always wanted to do. As in like, set out by myself and I always thought this is gonna happen maybe in 10 years, not now. But I noticed throughout my previous jobs that. This piece of doing user insights, customer insights, market research, however you call it, as it's actually people call it in so many different ways. This is always overlooked and there's not many people out there that do it really well. You get big agencies that do it, but maybe not necessarily in the way that you needed at the time, like on the ground. and also for a lot of money. And maybe if you're lucky you find a freelancer, but I just was like, I see this as a problem for all the businesses I worked with. Why don't I offer that as a service? And that's what I did. And yeah, since then, have worked with, various different industries and businesses to help them get more insights into their customers in markets to then make product decisions and that's been really interesting.

Megan: 26:41

That's so cool. As you said, you were getting, started at a really large organization that was made up of multiple companies and have gotten smaller and smaller. But I also think it's just so fascinating, you went from much more physical products to software. And then completely different industries as well, so you've touched on so many industries there are definitely like connections between some of them, but I think that's really interesting because a lot of people I've spoken with or that I know feel stuck of oh, well I've always worked in payments or I always have worked for a bank, or I always worked in oil and gas, or whatever it is, and it's hard to then see how you could do a role in a different industry or do a slightly different kind of role and just even your evolution from engineering into product side to really, understanding your customers as your main focus in helping people do that, I think is really cool.

Christina: 27:48

I know what you mean. it's very easy to see yourself as in I'm part of this industry. How would I move out? Or I've been in this role, how would I move? The interesting bit is that if you are very aware of where your strengths are. These are completely independent industries. Mm-hmm. And I've learned every time, like every time I change jobs, every time I've been in a new environment, in a new context, and I add to my learning of what it actually is and how I would describe it. And for me it's being very. Structured and analytical and being able to create processes and being able to analyze very complex environments. And what is interesting to see, because I didn't mention the other part that I added on to my business as I help women, become more confident, assertive, and gain influence. And that has also now created its own little business and it's growing. Mm-hmm. Again, like for me it comes back to actually understanding the complexity and breaking it down and making it simple for people to then see and follow. And it's fascinating'cause you can say, well that works in engineering and technical environments where you have to. Break down a complex system and you need to understand it to then be able to create something like if you were writing software, it's all about understanding the pattern and how you would then solve it. You can apply that similarly to like a group of people. When I'm facilitating a workshop, I'm going, I need to understand the whole company strategy and how they break that down and how I create a process. Or I do market research and I go and do that, or I understand the human psychology. Actually to me it became so much so that it's like it doesn't matter what industry I'm in, it ends up me doing some sort of analysis, some complex thing. So yeah, to your point, I think if you get down to what it actually is that you do really well, then you can literally jump industries quite easily.

Megan: 29:50

What you were just saying there about transferable skills. Leads into my next question, when you look back on these very different roles, companies, industries, what are those common threads even if you think back to, university or wanting to be an air hostess, what are those things that you see that kind of tie it all together in retrospect?

Christina: 30:14

Hmm. I think what is really interesting is that there, there's so many different personality tests. They put people on a scale and so on. But, what I think about is like this for me, like the red thread, if you have to draw that between a task and people mm-hmm. I'm in these environments which are mainly I would say dominated by people who like to look at the task. A lot of engineers are like that. I'm stereotyping now, but it is the case that, you know, they love solving problems. I enjoy the people aspect a lot. So what has been interesting is being slightly different in my thinking in those environments and that piece being almost a red thread because that was my value add when I go into a company. And my talent in that moment, or my way of looking at things is very people focused. That allows me to create an amazing team that works together, that solves a problem that allows me to navigate the complex stakeholders between like, if you are creating new products, there's so much research that shows mm-hmm. That too. There's so much adversity happening inside the organization.'cause they're like what are you doing here? I don't assess you, maybe I don't buy in what you're doing, but also are you threatening what I'm doing? Mm-hmm. There's just so much stuff happening. So again, if you're able to navigate that and do it diplomatically that, that's important. And then that whole element Of doing the customer insights. I love doing it because it's all about humans. Mm-hmm. It's not, yeah, fine. I need to understand the application, but the really fascinating bit comes, if I can tell a business, did you know you have two personas? And they both have the same job title. Right? But one type of human way of thinking in this job title is, say more strategic. But then you come across the other type that is much more, I'm here to tick box. And I can point out to them, these are the sort of behaviors. These are the sort of triggers for one that's for the other. So if you are now launching a service or a consultancy or whatever else and you want to sell to this market, you need to be very good at diagnosing because you treat them differently. Mm-hmm. And that helps you close the lead. Ultimately, so basically what I love doing is taking that very human understanding whether it's that example which is about those, whether it's the facility managers where have literally gone as far to understand, okay, if you are in that position, what's your background? do you know that particular site or have you just come as a temporary worker or you need to coordin like you can go into such a human element of how do you feel in that situation that if you understand that bit and you connect it to the business. It becomes gold, but people don't spot it. And that's the thing that I love doing. It's like you think so differently that piece of insight can be so helpful. And that gives me a lot of, enjoyment when I do that. Yeah. So I think that's obviously now after quite some years of doing it. I don't think, if somebody asked me five years ago, I would've been able to pinpoint that's that red thread. Mm-hmm. But I think it really is that the fact I'm thinking differently, I'm focusing on the people quite often. Yeah. When actually I should be focusing on the business and the financials.

Megan: 33:48

There's two things I love what you just said there. One is I've seen that meme, you've probably seen it on LinkedIn and other places about the danger personas because a lot of them are just very surface level, demographic based. There's these memes that show two people who demographically look the same and they're famous people, so, you know, they're completely different because you know who they are because they're famous. And what you were just saying about actually really understanding on a human level, just because they have the same job title, maybe they're the same age. What have you? Doesn't mean they're the same. And then just the recognition of, once you know that, what are the little indicators that let you know which kind of person they are. That other level obviously is so important and so needed. And just the fact that there's a meme about it means that it doesn't happen a lot, that people go to that level. But the other thing I really love what you were saying is about. Being different and not doing the task thing that they should be focusing on. Bit is people are uncomfortable with being different or not, matching what everyone else is doing in the role or in the company or, showing that difference within a job. But actually. As you just said, that's kind of your superpower is coming in and bringing that other element that other people might not see'cause they're very focused maybe on the task instead of the people side. And then understanding the value that brings and how that can really be the best thing that you're bringing to the table is the piece that's different.

Christina: 35:29

And that's why I'm saying this now in hindsight with quite a lot of reflection because it does take that amount of confidence to go and say, actually no, that is a thing that I bring. And the red thread was that I was different. And that's okay. Even if I felt really challenged in those situations and I felt like I'm out of place. Why am I even here kind of thing. But to your point, what I find as well now in hindsight, and that's a lot of what I then teach when I work with woman. How you package that as well. Like there's one element of recognizing it to yourself. Mm-hmm. Go like, this is my superpower, here's my difference. Like actually looking at it black and white, and even identifying it, and like you said, it's not actually even back to the personas. It's same logic applies here. It's. How you look is how you think. And it's, yeah, like that particular focus for me. Okay. On, on humans for example. So then recognizing and be really clear for yourself, like it's not, the fact that I'm a woman in an environment of men maybe is a way of thinking that I have may, goodness knows what else may be my background. Second thing is then how you are clever about the storytelling about it. I don't think I actually went to my manager ever and said, did you know like I'm super people focused, which is why I'm being value to the business. No. I had to learn how to create a business case. Like those are fundamental business skills, right. But I can still use the business case to justify what I'm doing. So I'm now selling my own services, I obviously don't go and say, Hey, by the way, because it's too much of a leap of a company to go and say, yes, I wanna employ someone to understand on a human level. They wouldn't. So I have to package it, and that's why I said I'm calling it different things depending on what the business actually needs. Sometimes it's pure market insight. And you would go like, well, buzzword, but I still go and do those human level insights. So over time, basically I have learned that storytelling has such a big impact. Even if you understand your strength and you are okay with the fact you're different, you need to sell it to people who also think differently. Yeah. And otherwise you'll not be able to go where you want to go.

Megan: 37:53

Oh, that's so true. How you package it and tell that story is so important. And as you said in your own journey, the first step is recognizing it, knowing, well, these are my areas of difference and my superpowers, my strengths, what have you, and then how do you package it?'cause you're right, you can't just go in and be like, well, I'm really good at people. They're like. That's nice. We need this thing. And it's then about telling the story. So they pick you to do it and then the way you do it is the part that differentiates as well. Yeah. That's amazing. What do you think, 16-year-old Christina would think about, what you're doing now? How would she feel about where you are right now?

Christina: 38:36

She would probably just be like, what the hell? I don't believe that you'll been, I think, yeah, 16-year-old Christina would've no idea that the world even exists in this way. It is all a journey of, expanding your horizon and then also learning more and more. What you are actually capable of. Because I feel like in the whole career journey so far, and I'm sure there's so much more to come, it's expanding the world to understand how much more there is.'cause you always think like the world is your bubble. I I mm-hmm. At least for me, you know, like whatever, I could see that was the world. And then you go and explore new things and you're like. Oh, that's how it could also be. And, but in that process, you also find out so many things about yourself that you suddenly realize, oh, I'm actually capable of this also. So yeah, 16-year-old Christina probably would've gone like, I don't think so. You can tell me what you want to tell me, but no.

Megan: 39:38

Related to that, if you could go back in time and give yourself advice, whether it's at 16 or just graduating university or what have you, is there a piece of advice you wish you could go back in time and give yourself?

Christina: 39:50

I think the one piece of advice for sure is that whether you wanna believe it at the time or not, but your confidence is everything and because of all the way that your brain works. If you don't. Believe that you're good at something, you are not going to be good at it. Mm-hmm. Like, you're going to continuously interfere with yourself. So, that realization and the fact that that's not the same as arrogance, just untangling that and going really deep into the psychology of confidence. I would love to do that with my youngest self to go and say, did you know that this is what confidence actually is about? Did you know that that's not the same as arrogance? And did you know that if somebody asks you, because I, for example, I topped the class, I would play that down. I would never say that. Mm-hmm. But if somebody asked me, are you good at this? I should be saying, yes I am. Because that then enables you to really, properly, confidently go for the next thing. And so, yeah, I think for a long, long time I held myself back by playing it down and being humble and not being confident. And only over the years when you see other people like also other female role models, which is why being part of chief was really amazing. And you see them doing really amazing things and seeing, oh, these people are capable of that. All I should try X, Y, Z, and then you're like, oh, I can also, and then it slowly builds it. But going back in time, I would try to untangle that a bit more and help my former self have more confidence.

Megan: 41:31

If you could go back and tell, younger me that as well, that would be really helpful. But that distinction between arrogance and confidence, and I think especially when you're young and especially young women. They seem like the same thing. So separating them out and they are two distinct things I think is really important. And what you were saying about like if you believe you're not good at something, you're not there's that saying, and I cannot remember who says it, but it's like, if you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. So why not it like you, you can that's. Really good advice and an ongoing journey probably for most people. But yeah, the better we get at that, obviously the better we will be.

Christina: 42:17

Yeah. And, on that note just to say as well, that learning isn't something that I was it's so dawn on me, it's because I played a flute. And when you play the flute at a really high level and you get to understand from really high level, these people who teach at that level mm-hmm. Who teach people who go into like principal flute and orchestra. You have to really unpack your mind and that high performance mindset really helps. So basically that's again, closing the circle Even if at the time when you come out of university, you are torn between things, don't let the other thing die because most likely. Whatever it is you're torn between different strengths that you have, and if you continue doing those other things, they will come back later in your life and really help you. I'm firmly of that opinion, so that's why I wanted to draw that back because I learned that piece about the difference between confidence and arrogance. I learned that from a really high performance. Flu professor that was not learned in business. Yeah. But I can apply the same logic now.

Megan: 43:27

I think that's a good reminder of actually these types of things we learn don't just come from our careers and our experiences in various parts of our life are valuable. Across all the different parts of our life. Things aren't, in silos and in boxes and so it is really worthwhile to do things and have interest outside of just our career, because they add so much value to our career, but our life as a whole. So I think that's also a good reminder and shout.

Christina: 44:02

Definitely.

Megan: 44:03

So we've done a lot of, looking back if we're looking forward, what's your vision and hope for the future, whether that's short term, long term, both.

Christina: 44:14

I love that question. And also now knowing that when I look back, I would've gone, what the hell? I have to take this with a grain of salt and I look forward.'cause I'm probably not imagining big enough, right? But, in terms of what I'm doing right now, I'm in the very, I still call it early stage of setting myself up by myself, as in, I've done this now for a year. I run two businesses essentially. One is that customer insights or however we call it. We've now understood that it's really back to understanding humans and then helping businesses apply that understanding. And I've enjoyed doing that a lot, so I will still continue. It's very much like a steady path, as in I see that as in taking on new projects. Maybe in the future collaborating as well with other researchers or other consultants or maybe also people who want to get into that field and then do some of that work for me. But I'm not really imagining at this point in time to scale it because it's a service based business is a very hard thing to do. It's interesting and I love doing it, but the passion for me lies in understanding the humans and delivering that piece of work rather than going, and I love leading teams, but I just don't have this ambition to do it for service-based business. To scale it like that. So I will still continue it. What the other business that's much more interesting to me. What happens, and that's why I'm saying maybe I can't predict it properly at this point in time. Because that's really all about helping women in tech and engineering and other male dominated environment. Back to that point about confidence. It starts with confidence. But it's also helping them actually understand to the point of storytelling how do I communicate in a most impactful way. It's helping them understand all the differences. And dynamics around power, and the signals that you send and all the things that are slightly in our way when it comes to the fact that there's an authority gap for women, when it comes to the fact that we take less risks, that we communicate differently. And a lot of these things when you are in male dominated environments are just hurdles in a way. Mm-hmm. It's basically helping them learn that and apply it in a really actionable way. I've basically, started this out of my own journey and then created an online course and created workshops around it. And it's now in a first corporate pilot, which is really amazing for me to see. That's exciting. Wow. That's so cool. But basically this is a. Firstly, a very much a mission of mine to spread it to more women, because very often that problem, firstly that problem is seen in those environments. Mm-hmm. The gender diversity isn't as high as we might want it to be. The women, a lot of them are leaving maybe the industry, like in engineering, it's almost like 50% or something is a crazy amount of women, leaving. So businesses are recognizing it and very often we put solutions in place that, quite rightly so, are about making the culture more inclusive and training the leaders. What I think is missing though, and that's why I am very, very passionate about it, is giving the women the tools to actually, right now, even if your culture hasn't changed,'cause culture change takes long time. Mm-hmm. or maybe your manager isn't like buying into it so much. What can you do?'cause it's ultimately your own career. And there's a lot of things you can do. So it's a, it is a very passion of mine to give it to more women and scale it more. And so it, yeah, it started with that online program and now with a corporate, I'm writing a book on it. who knows what happens next. I just, I want this to scale for the purpose of it helping women, and whilst it's doing that, because for me I'm a product person it's easier to scale a business, which is basically a product. So I don't know where that will lead.

Megan: 48:19

Well, that's very exciting. You're clearly very passionate about it, and it is an area. Where we do need to do something. So there is a lot of work to bring women into stem and how do you attract people into STEM degrees and professions. But as you said, maybe just as big of an issue as keeping women in those roles I'm really excited to see where it goes. And, you and I've chatted about the book and I'm really excited about that. And yeah, I think it's just, it's such important work and I imagine it's going to do great things

Christina: 48:57

thank you. I'm similarly excited.

Megan: 48:59

Amazing. Thank you so much. You know, as I said off the top, I find your journey really interesting and I've always loved how you keep the flute as such an active part of your life. Like you didn't abandon that when you, made a career decision to go into engineering. And then just that whole journey from really starting in a large company with really physical products to now running your own business and being focused on. The human aspect of products and really understanding customers and as well as them, how do you support women in STEM to build their careers and build that confidence and, go from there. So I think the whole thing is just really amazing. So thank you so much for sharing it, with, with me and the world soon. I really appreciate it.

Christina: 49:53

Thank you. I really appreciate it as well. It was a fascinating conversation and I truly hope it helps people who listen to take away that pressure of even if you're torn. See it as a gift that you have more than one strength or more than one interest. I keep both alive, maybe three alive. So don't worry about that aspect. And then the fact, like we talked about the industries. These are artificial boundaries we put in our head. Mm-hmm. Like the actual just ways of describing the world. They're not actual things that you can't go and jump because ultimately it's just you. What is in your head, the traits that you have, the strengths that you have, you can apply them. There's so many people who transition industry all the time, so that should not be worrying anyone.

Megan: 50:44

A hundred percent agree. And yeah, I think your story is testament to that

50:48

I absolutely love chatting with Christina and how reflective and self-aware she is, but also her passion to share what she's learned with other women in tech. It was hard to narrow down my highlights, but three of the things I took from our conversation were one, the power of storytelling. So much advice is about reflection and knowing your skills and strengths. But Christina highlighted a really important aspect that is often glossed over. It's all well and good to know your strengths, but you need to know how to package them so that people can clearly see how you can solve their problems. Two, it is okay to have multiple passions. While Christina decided not to pursue a career in music, she kept her love for the flute alive and still plays today. And as she shared, some of her biggest lessons have come from music, which really speaks to the benefits of having a range of interests. And third, your difference is your superpower. Having a different skillset or perspective can feel uncomfortable, but it can be your superpower. Just as Christina's focus on the human element has set her apart in the engineering world, and finally, Christina's advice to her younger self is powerful. Confidence is key, and without it, you can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Remember, confidence is not arrogance. Thank you for listening to the unexpected career podcast, please follow, share and rate on your favorite podcast provider. The unexpected career podcast is produced, edited and hosted by me, Megan Dunford. See you next week.