I chose this course, because I was good at science. I did some orientation tests in high school, and it turned out that scientific subjects were really one of my strengths. I looked for schools in different fields and there was ISEN in Lille, which offered this course. At that time, there were still schools specialising in electronics and microelectronics, with an engineering course in semiconductor physics, then in chips and chip design. So, I followed that course, which developed my skills and my taste for the field.
Your organization field and mission
We do reverse-engineering of electronic chips to perform chip security assessments against very high-level attacks, but also to extract data from secure chips, for example for digital forensics or to check for backdoors in components at the end of the manufacturing chain. We work with customers who are either chip manufacturers or integrators for security analysis, or forensic police, governments and integrators for data extraction from secure chips.
Please tell us briefly about your role in the company / at your organization:
We are two business partners at the head of the company: Olivier, who works on the technical expertise, and myself, electronics engineer CEO. I run the company, and I am involved in all the business areas (strategy, finance, human resources, customer relations, legal, contracts, etc) with a distant view of the technical side, although I don’t intervene specifically in this field, but rather in a supportive capacity.
Your interest in STEM
It is my business partner, because he has a level of expertise that I haven’t seen anywhere else. He’s recognised as an expert in his field. I’m the CEO, but he’s really the face of the company and he’s the one who carries the technical aspect. What’s very important to me in my career now, as in the past, is to work with people who are really competent and reliable in their field, whatever it may be.
Your studies
They need to have confidence in themselves and know that they can do anything. We live in a man’s world and in the technical field it’s even worse in the sense that we live in a patriarchal world, which means that we women have a certain position. In the smallest things, we don’t have the same place, the same path, the same importance, the same legitimacy, and that’s our position in the world. Things are changing, but we really need to educate our girls in the same way we educate our boys in terms of possibilities and potential. Being a girl or a boy doesn’t change anything, you should be able to do whatever you want. That gives you a great responsibility, but it also gives you great potential and infinite possibilities.
So, what I would say to girls is that if they want to do it, they can do it. Whatever the desire is, you have to let it emerge and you must not be afraid to be yourself and go for it without holding back. You have to persevere and be aware that you may encounter difficulties, the greatest difficulty perhaps being to be aware of them, because when you’re born into a world that works like that, things can seem banal, normal or acceptable.
You at work
As a company director, I look at a male and female candidate in the same way, and it makes absolutely no difference to me whether the person is a man or a woman. I hired a woman who was quite young, who was getting married the following year and who was planning to start a family. That wasn’t a problem for me, it was just a question of organisation. The important thing is the person, their personality, their state of mind and their technical skills, because our business is so specific that there’s no specific training. We don’t get a lot of female candidates, but we’re gender agnostic when it comes to recruitment, management and the way the company operates.
The company has existed for 11 years, our business is difficult, we’ve had failures, we have to create new methods and so on. We’re not in a business where we can sit back and relax with processes in place that work, we have to create new methods all the time. I’m very happy with what we’ve achieved, at the moment, we have a great team with a great dynamic, customers who trust us, who come back and who recognise our expertise. After 11 years, I am proud to have a company that is known worldwide in its field.
Trusting yourself and persevering.
Your point of view
In our society, women are mothers, more than men are fathers, and this is an obstacle to women’s careers. So perhaps there’s a technology that could have a positive influence on this aspect? Our working habits have changed in recent years as a result of the health crisis, with the possibility of remote working and meetings. This could perhaps allow women to work in part during their maternity/parental leave.
The same advice as mentioned above.
We’re seeing a decline in microelectronics training. There are hardly any schools in France that specialise in microelectronics anymore. So, we need to reinvest in microelectronics training. Then, beyond microelectronics, we need to raise girls’ awareness of empowerment from an early age. We need to tell them that they can do what they want, that they have no glass ceiling, no constraints, that they are no longer prevented from doing certain things. Today, the cards are dealt according to the rules of patriarchy, because that’s the way it’s been instilled for thousands of years. If we change this so that everyone knows that they can fulfil their potential as individuals, then there is no longer a set path to follow. So, we need to support this change in society, and we need to start at a very early age, because this also involves families who, sometimes without realising it, may be perpetuating limiting models for girls and women.
To finish with
Honesty with oneself and others; working to create value and contribute to society; kindness, in the sense of empathy, because I find that everything works better when you are able to have a kind exchange with others.
I intend to continue with my current business, I intend to persevere, and what I’d like is for us to be talked about in a big way, to have a major impact on society with what we do, even if it’s in the world of microelectronics.
I don’t know, but I’m quite opportunistic in the good sense of the word and I don’t have a career plan. Not everything depends on me and for me to plan what I want to do is like being locked in. I want to be open to all opportunities and make the best of them.