WE Local Europe Advisory Board

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Meet the 2025 Advisory Board

The WE Local Europe Advisory Board is made up of SWE leaders from across the continent who guide the strategic development of the conference. Meet the leaders who make WE Local a success!

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Marwa El Hefnawy

Marwa El Hefnawy is an experienced LTE and 5G wireless system engineering leader and strategy planner with expertise in modem roadmap definition and wireless ecosystem.

She received her B.Sc. degree in electrical and communications engineering from the German University in Cairo with the highest honors. Marwa completed her bachelor's project at Stuttgart University in Germany. She pursued her M.Sc. studies at Ulm University and received her PhD from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) under the supervision of Prof. Gerhard Kramer. During her PhD studies, she worked at NTT-Docomo Euro Labs, where she had a research focus on 5G. Afterward, she worked at Intel, then Apple, on 5G topics and beyond. Marwa’s hobbies are painting, reading novels, and playing sports. She is also a long-standing Global ambassador for SWE.

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Kasia Austin

My name is Kasia Austin. I have been in Motorola UK since my graduation in 2006 (M. Eng in Robotics and Automation). I started my journey with Motorola Solutions in the Integrated Network Solutions team and stayed in an engineering role supporting customers in EMEA for almost 7 years before I moved to a training organisation. I have used my engineering and customer support experience in leading the TETRA training portfolio (design and development) and information architect roles. About 4 years ago I moved to the presale role, where I am supporting and consulting customers and responding to technical requirements for our customers to take full benefit of our training and products. I am an active member of Motorola Solutions Women Business Council. I am extremely passionate about women in engineering and in the SLT positions. I am a fan of innovation and evolution. I joined SWE in May 2022. I hope to bring to the table my experience, engineering, creative and analytical mind.

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Andra Groapa

Andra graduated from the University of Manchester with a Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, and from Cranfield University with an MSc in Computational Fluid Dynamics. She is currently working as a CFD Analysis Engineer for Red Bull Powertrains in Milton Keynes, UK. She presented at WE Local Berlin 2019 about the Future of CFD and Virtual Reality in Engineering Applications and, after an amazing experience there, she decided to get involved in the SWE mission and help give a voice female engineers across the world.

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Aysegul Yamaner Celik

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Charley Cooke

Charley is currently a final-year undergraduate student studying a Bachelor of Engineering Honours Degree with a focus in Biomedical Engineering at Munster Technological University, Ireland. She had the opportunity over the course of her degree to complete a Co-Op in an operations role for a medical device company, broadening her knowledge and skills. Charley has a passion for promoting Women in Engineering and is currently serving as Treasurer in her own university Women in STEM Society.After being introduced to SWE through her scholarship with Corporate Council Partner Johnson & Johnson's WiSTEM2D programme, she applied to the Collegiate Poster Competitionfor WE Local Munich. Charley was selected to attend WE Local Munich 2024, presented with the Best in Show Award at the competition, and saw firsthand the community of SWE. Following on from this, Charley is eager to grow her involvement in SWE as she transitions into her graduate career.

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Eva Ribes-Vilanova

Eva is a 25+ year professional, passionate about solving challenges with a focus on RF & µWave designs and systems. An engineer's mind with a love for people and society.

An accomplished technologist and strategist serving aerospace/defense, communications and automotive customers around the globe. She has coauthored papers for international conferences in the field of electronic design for wireless communications and model-based system engineering.

During her time with HP/Agilent Technologies /Keysight Technologies, Eva has developed her professional career in three countries, Spain, The Netherlands and the UK; and in various roles, r&d, application engineering and product management.

Eva holds a telecommunications engineering degree (equivalent to an undergraduate and master’s in electrical and computer engineering in the American system) from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.

She became acquainted with SWE through its conferences. She is a tireless advocate for STEM outreach and diversity & inclusion initiatives, and SWE's mission really resonates with her!

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Jane Odonovan-Cowhey

Jane is a 4th year Biomedical Engineering student studying at Munster Technological University in Cork, Ireland. Jane had previously taken part in the prestigious SWE Local Munich Poster Competition back in 2024 with her project 'SpineSure', a novel way to detect scoliosis. She looks forward to expanding her SWE network and becoming more involved in this community. In her free time, Jane loves to spend time cooking, reading, or playing music.

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Lucille Michelet

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Marta Stas

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Neslie Attar-Goode

Neslie is a 25+ year professional from Motorola Solutions, which is leading the way in public safety telecommunications. She graduated in France, with a Microelectronics and Automatics Engineering master degree, but has always worked abroad, first in England and for the past 18 years in the United Arab Emirates.

She started her professional journey as an intern and has developed her career from system integration, to system engineering, before reaching engineering management and leadership positions. A couple of years ago, she decided to tackle a new challenge in the Services sector as a lifecycle consultant.

Neslie has always been passionate about optimisation and knowledge sharing enablement. During all her career, she has been a strong advocate for STEM and women as leaders in general, is a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion champion and is co-chairing the SWE EMEA chapter of her company.

Aside from work, you'll find her engaging in environment projects from climate change awareness to ocean sustainability, and helping her children's school with their francophone program setup. Her friends and colleagues would say that she is passionate, energizing and generous.

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Nuria (1)

Nuria Jornet

Nuria has more than 19 experience working in R&D, developing large format inkjet printers in HP. She has worked as chief engineer being responsible of product technology during complete product life cycle, from architecture and definition to delivery to market. Currently she is working as R&D project manager, managing a team of Software Systems engineers in Barcelona, where she enjoys building strong, collaborative, and diverse teams.

Nuria holds a bachelor’s degree in Telecommunications engineering from Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya and a Masters in Bioinformatics and Biostatistics from Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. She is passionate about science and technology and enjoys learning and growing in these areas. Nuria’s hobbies are hiking and being around nature, cooking, and playing chess, where she is open to supporting female beginner players.

She decided to get involved in SWE initiatives after participating in the conferences and seeing the collaboration and growing opportunities the organization offers.

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Salma Alarefi

Dr. Salma M.S. Alarefi holds a BEng in Telecommunications and PhD in Computing and Electronic Systems from the University of Essex 2013 and 2018, respectively. Salma is an award-winning teaching fellow in Electrical Power Systems at the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Leeds. At her current post she is a Student Success Lead and Fellow of the Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence as well as the Leeds Engagement Excellence Scheme. As a STEM ambassador, Salma is actively involved with promoting young girls into STEM and supporting female engineering students. She is also directly involved with prompting equality, diversity, and inclusion in higher education institutions, whereby she works closely with minoritized groups of students to help develop and enhance their sense of belonging.

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samidha anand

Samidha Anand

Samidha Anand is an Engineering Manager with 15 yrs experience in designing & integrating Exhaust Systems for small to medium sized diesel Engines. She pursued her B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering in India & moved to the UK in 2007 to pursue MSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Northumbria. She has been a SWE member since 2016 and has managed Caterpillar’s participation at the WE local Europe since 2018.   She is passionate about STEM & D&I and is involved in various campaigns at her workplace. This includes being chair of an internal SWE grp at her employer , serving as a committee member of an internal ERG grp, STEM committee member etc. She was awarded by Women’s Engineering Society as one of the Top 50 Women in Engineering in 2021.

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Shanthi Siemes

Shanthi Siemes born in India, received her Bachelors and Master's in Electrical Engineering from India and PhD from National University of Singapore. She started as a CAD Engineer in AMD, 2002 in Dresden, Germany and worked in the Design Electrical Verification Department of GlobalFoundries for the last 20 years. She joined Infineon on July 1st 2024 and is the technical lead for Design Electrical Verification. She was a core team member of GlobalFoundries women network and now joined the core team of the Infineon women network. She is the founder of SWE Dresden Affiliate and has organized women conference, speed mentoring event and SWE conference in GlobalFoundries Dresden. She is married and has 2 sons and enjoys hiking, yoga and traveling.

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Tania Mahmood

Tania Mahmood

After graduating with a BEng (Hons) Mechanical Engineering degree, Tania undertook a two-year technical graduate scheme at AVEVA. Since completing the graduate scheme she is now working full-time role as a Cloud DevOps Engineer at AVEVA.

Most recently Tania participated in this year’s Commission on the Status of Women 24 (CSW) as a UN UK women delegate (volunteer) which has been a wonderful and enriching opportunity. She has also co-led for several years one of the largest Employee Resource groups at AVEVA (Women@AVEVA).

Tania's proudest achievement to date is achieving an EngTech accreditation from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and winning a gold medal for a science project in the energy category by defeating participants from 69 countries.

She is very passionate about STEM and love supporting the next generation wherever I can, to enthuse them towards a STEM career.

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Tutku Kilicaslan

Tutku is a senior Industrial Engineering and Business Administration student at Koç University in Turkey. She served as Secretary, Social Media Leader within Koç University SWE and selected as President for FY17. The same year, she was selected as the mere SWE Future Leader outside of the USA. Within the scope of SWEFL program, she is invited to the Collegiate Leadership Institute at WE’17 Conference in Austin, TX. Currently, she is a member of the Global Ambassador Program for 2 years. She, so far, has attended four WE Local Europe Conferences and two WE Annual Conferences. She is also doing her summer internship in Cummins, one of Corporate Partnership Council members. Besides these, she is blogging about traveler student life and taking ballet and Spanish courses.

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