Women in Tech series: Frankie Targett
Winning Oxfordshire’s Young Engineer of the Year award in 2017, Frankie is a force to be reckoned with. Creating a lasting impression as a Vodafone graduate, the submarine engineering team created a permanent role for her in the team and the rest is history.
For International Women’s Day, she tells us why she’s thrilled to be working on the largest subsea cable in the world, bringing greater connectivity to communities that have been previously underserved.
What most people don’t realise is that the majority of the world’s internet traffic runs through cables lying on the ocean floor. It’s the job of Frankie and her team to keep them running and she couldn’t be happier about the work they do.
“I always fancied myself as bit of a ‘Scotty’ from Star Trek,” she laughs.
With an interest in maths and physics, as well as engineering, she remembers being in the minority at university.
“Walking into a lecture hall of men can be quite overwhelming”
She recalls how one in 15 of her peers were female.
“Walking into a lecture hall of men can be quite overwhelming, but luckily for me, we had a lot of female lecturers that were really good at their jobs, and they were just such positive role models that I didn’t come across anyone treating us any differently.”
Within the industry she believes there is still room for improvement, but as part of a WhatsApp group with other women in the industry, she’s positive about the impact they can have if they all work together.