From the very beginning, BT’s managing director of IT, Rachel Higham, had a passion for STEM. From helping her father and grandfather (both engineers) fix cars and VCRs to wrangling with the creative maths problems set by her accountant mother, it was in her blood.
“We had a chemistry set I used to make a mess of the kitchen sink with every Saturday. And we spent a lot of time as a family exploring the Lake District where we lived, so I developed a keen curiosity in the natural world.” Being surrounded by STEM-literate people made it all the easier for Higham to spend her early years building registers on the family’s first apricot computer or coding basic games on the Commodore VIC 20, but she acknowledges that isn’t the case for all kids growing up today.