At 16, Michelle drew a 10-year plan for her life; who she wanted to be, and where she wanted to be. At 24, she bought a house, eight years earlier than the average person in the UK. She has two degrees too.
“I have a Bachelor of Engineering (Chemical Engineering) and a Master of Science Advanced Chemical Engineering,” she says.
Hers, even at a relatively young age, has been a life of milestones rather than monuments.
“I have always known that I wanted to be an engineer since I was 16 years old. My economics teacher was going through the highest-paying careers and he mentioned finance, medicine, and engineering. I went with the latter, because even at 16, I knew I wanted nice things,” she says.
"Keep going when it’s hard, tough, and when you don’t want to go."
But nice things cost money, and money demands work.
“I have always been someone for whom doing the task is not enough. Reaching the goal is not what fills me, it is knowing that I have something to reach. Everything I do has an Excel sheet behind it, and ticking things off my checklist and getting better every day is my biggest driver. I work in the restricted business area at Rolls Royce, meaning once I enter, I have no access to the outside world. Half of my work week now is spent working from home, and it balances my life, I spend two or three days in the office at the operations site, ensuring things are running smoothly. I am also a director of a STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] charity, supporting students who want to go into engineering from eight to 22 years old.”
Hard work alone does not a woman make, so she took to the gym. “I never looked back,” she says. “I started taking my health and faith quite seriously—and that faith is my cornerstone. The gym is an affordable form of therapy.”
God is important to her, her act of pure faith, the conviction that there is a superpower pulling the strings of her life. It is what has kept her sane through the oldest of humankind’s shortcomings: comparison. “Your circle becomes smaller as you are at different stages of life. Half of my friends are married with children, and as a woman, the older you get, you have more societal pressure to settle down and build a home, necessitating having to explain to people that I have a different path. I have accepted that my life does not accommodate for that, and my faith holds me: just because you say this is the right time doesn’t mean God has said it. I believe in God’s timing,” she says.
When you compare someone to a Rolls Royce, you mean they are best in class, because both are made to manoeuvre in style and comfort. That’s how Michelle has run her career so far. “Keep going when it’s hard, tough, and when you don’t want to go,” she says. “Those are especially the days you should go, and this applies to every aspect of your life. What you do when things are difficult is what pays off the most. Success is on the other side of consistency.”
Michelle is taking the first step in moving back to Kenya to make a difference.
— Eddy Ashioya
