Donna is a Mechanical engineering graduate currently studying a PhD in Gender Equity in STEM at Loughborough university. She is passionate about seeing more young girls in STEM especially black girls and those from ‘disadvantaged’ backgrounds. She created an initiative called SiSTEM with her sister Dr Abigail Otchere, birthed from their own experiences as women in STEM. They want to form a network to support women in STEM and improve retention and the uptake of women by inspiring from early years to working professionals and changing the narrative on STEM.Donna is dedicated to improving the retention and the uptake of women in STEM by inspiring early years to working professionals and changing the narrative on STEM. She is passionate about increasing black female representation in STEM and closing the gender and race gap in the STEM field. She wants to use her platform and her story to inspire the next generation and wants to see more black women and those from low socio-economic backgrounds in senior roles and positions of leadership. Her story of SiSTEM, highlighting the importance of sisterhood has been previously featured in the award-wining E&T (Engineering & technology) magazine, has spoken as a panellist at Thames Water.She featured in the GTA black women in Tech Voices in the Shadow V3 book and was finalist for the BTA award Inspirational Woman of the year 2024.