F1 Academy Social Impact Lead Pilar Harris told Motorsport Week how the series’ Discover Your Drive career programme is welcoming young women into the motorsport industry.
F1 Academy wants to elevate female engineers, decision-makers and enthusiasts in the motorsport space and Harris plays a pivotal role.
Harris has a background in human rights and advocacy work and has experience working in women empowerment projects across the globe.
Her role as Social Impact Lead at F1 Academy is multi-faceted and best explained in her own words.
“My job is really to help develop the programmes, the experiences, maybe the events that help us bring more girls and women into the industry,” Harris told Motorsport Week.
“So we sit around a table and we go, ‘OK, if I were an 18-year-old young woman, what would it take for me to be interested,’ right? How do we turn on that light bulb for her?
“So a lot of what I’m doing is working in collaboration so that when we land and we’re here in the cities where we compete, we actually do have that impact.”
How does the F1 Academy Discover Your Drive Programme work?
The Discover Your Drive programme allows Harris to bring on a select group of STEM-focussed young women to undergo a work experience crash course at an F1 Academy event.
“I select a handful of students to come and spend the weekend with us wherever we race,” Harris explained.
“They usually come from a local university and I try and find students that have some sort of interest in STEM.
“So they might be studying engineering, aerodynamics, or maybe they’re interested in chemistry. Because I know then they’ll have a curiosity about what’s happening.
“Then over the weekend, they take a buffet-style approach to learning, where they spend a little bit of time with our marketing and content team, a little bit of time working with the F1 Academy racing teams, in their garages, side by side, really seeing what that work is like.
“They might spend time with our legal team, or with our hospitality team. It’s just such a range. And by the end of the weekend, what they take away and what the programme is designed to do is to help them open up their minds to what is actually possible for them in the industry.
“Beyond driving, as a professional, there’s probably more than one pathway that they can consider.
“But for all of them so far, they leave the programme going, ‘I had no idea.’ And that’s kind of the point, is to help young women see with their own eyes what’s possible.”
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