Kirsty Lewis – FCDO

Posted by Nina Raoult

14 December 2023

Kirsty Lewis took us through her super-varied career, both in and out of academia and the military. She studied Physics at Imperial. Although she enjoyed the subject, she found the environment to be quite hostile and male-dominated. Therefore, after her degree, she decided to travel, including teaching in Japan and living in New Zealand. On her return, she worked as an engineer at WS Atkins, studying traffic modelling with fluid dynamics. Again, she found this environment to be male dominated and as most of the admin jobs were performed by women, she found that she was expected to do these jobs herself.

She then studied for a Masters at Reading. Here she started to find more balance and a passion for meteorology. She joined the Met Office in 2001 in the weather forecasting team and, through the military element, travelled a lot in this capacity. Although she enjoyed this, there came a time when she wanted to travel less. She moved to Exeter, taking a demotion, to the new consultancy team.

She now works for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). She has found her varied background has been a huge asset – for example, allowing her to communicate more effectively with non-specialists. With her military background, she has an insight into the national security implications of climate change and therefore been able to set up the Climate Security group. She has since obtained PhD, had a child and become a Fellow.

Kirsty also gave us the following recommendations:

Life is short, but it’s also too long not to do what you want
Don’t let other people define your career path
Important to take time to do things you want – life experiences are key and will make you a more well-rounded person
A PhD alongside work is a good way to do it (having a child during is harder!)
Apply for different positions – even if you feel underprepared. Even if you don’t succeed, you will still learn lots

We then had an interesting open discussion. We discussed the issues around the decision to have kids. How this is not always discussed. Nevertheless, it can be a hard discussion for women and leaving late has its own risks. We discussed strategies for dealing with male-dominated environments – such as finding allies (including yourself) and picking your battles. And finally, how to balance being confident, and not too apologetic but also being yourself.