LITMIR.BIZ

      A pioneering electrical engineer; a founding director of a data communication firm, an educator and a mother, Else Shepherd combines the pragmatism of engineering with the aesthetics of music, holding formal qualifications in both disciplines.

      She was the 1992 Queensland Executive Woman of the Year!

      I’m an electrical engineer and director of an electronics company, Mosaic Electronics, which I established with a colleague in 1986. With a staff of twelve we design and manufacture specialist data communications products, and provide consulting in data communications, contract manufacturing and service. We don’t try to compete with the large national and multinational companies in the lucrative communications field with me-too products, but by identifying niches and using the very latest design techniques, we can provide a unique service. This has been recognised by Telecom, OTC and electricity authorities from whom we develop and manufacture new products, investigate future possibilities and present training courses.

      My role in the company is changing. Like all the classic high-tech companies we started under my colleague’s house where I designed printed circuit boards, ordered components, soldered, tested, wrote manuals, chased debtors, kept the books, did the cleaning and tried to keep up with the latest design techniques. Soon we moved to a small office which we painted ourselves, employed another designer and a part-time bookkeeper, and started to learn from trial and error about the tough business world.

      Now we’ve graduated to smarter premises with more staff, a manufacturing area and a general manager, which allows me to go back to being an engineer for a large part of the time. We tend to employ fresh young graduates straight out of University, still full of energy, who think they know everything and make me feel old, but who don’t realise how much guidance they need. I despair sometimes at the lack of responsibility of otherwise very intelligent young people. Even if wisdom doesn’t always come with age, a systems viewpoint and a sense of responsibility comes with the experience of years, and an insistence on doing the job properly the first time comes with having your own money on the line.

      Apart from jointly running a business, I’m a part-time senior lecturer at the University of Queensland, and a member of: the Faculty Advisory Committee for Electrical Engineering at the Queensland University of Technology, the Engineering School Assessment Committee for the University of Southern Queensland, and the Advisory Board of the Technology Management Centre at the University of Queensland.

      Sometimes I think all these committees just need the token woman and as there aren’t too many older female engineers around, I’m the one they ask. Wherever their agenda may or may not be I have my own unique perceptions and insights to offer and a genuine desire to contribute meaningfully to engineering education and to the development of excellence in universities. I suspect I’m not nearly as token as people might sometimes hope I will be.

      Teaching has always been a special love and my business partner and I both try to have a teaching assignment each year. Nothing keeps you up to date more efficiently than having to satisfy a class of some of our best brains who may well know more than you do! At times I kick myself for taking on so much work, especially the night before an 8am lecture, but there is no doubt the close ties with universities give us fresh viewpoints and continuous exposure to the most appropriate new technology.

      Last year I was appointed for a three year term to the Board of South East Queensland Electricity. I know Premier Goss was pushing for more women on boards, but his time I can’t claim to be the token woman because two women were appointed. I feel very honoured by the appointment and wonder how anyone can be expected to have adequate qualifications and experience for such a tough assignment. With corporatisation looming and talk of eventual privatisation of the electricity industry, this is proving to be extremely challenging.

      These days I can happily admit to being an engineer without expecting an adverse reaction. How things have changed in the last 30 years! I used to shrink from telling casual enquirers what I do because it was likely to embarrass them. Dinner parties were certain to produce hurting wisecracks and worried wives with thoughtless discussions on the evils of feminism.

      Back in 1962 when I entered the Queensland University as a first year engineering student, female engineers were virtually unheard of in Australia. With the benefit of a year’s schooling in Denmark (where female engineers were more common), supportive parents and just sufficient faith in my own academic abilities, I weathered the awful first year and went on to graduate with Honours. But the sheltered environment of a friendly University did nothing to prepare me for the hostile attitudes in North Queensland where I went to work after graduating.

      Marrying a Mackay local made married life comfortable and easy. Working in my profession was more difficult as I was expected very quickly to settle down and become a home-maker. “You’ll soon stop all that working nonsense”, said my father-in-law very early in the piece.