Alaina Garibal is not an American in Paris, but rather an American in Figeac which is about two-thirds of the way down a straight line south of Paris to Toulouse. She's been there for 18 years during which time her French has improved from non-existent to affecting her English!

Alaina was studying mechanical engineering at California State University in Sacramento, when she met a young Frenchman, who was also studying engineering. When he returned to France “we tried out a long-distance relationship but in 2002 we decided it would be best if I moved to France,” she tells me via Zoom.

It was hard. She “didn't learn a whole lot,” in the French lessons she was taking in California, so when she arrived in Figeac, population around 10,000, having left her family and friends behind and finding that “even grocery shopping was a challenge,” she nearly gave up. She almost bought a one-way plane ticket back home. “But I didn't, and am still here all these years later,” she smiles, adding that today the family (they have two sons) would not want to move. “We can cycle to work and our quality of life here is really important to us,” she stresses.

Her husband is one of the people who played a decisive role in her career path. But the first was probably a young mathematics teacher. “I had real difficulties with maths in high-school, it was a subject I really couldn't get a handle on. But then I got this young teacher who was very patient, smiling all the time. He had a real way of communicating without tension, with no pressure and I went from hating the subject to loving it,” she explains. 

Another major influencer in her life was a young woman she met at Junior college. “There I struggled with chemistry. I made friends with another struggler, a girl who wanted to be a doctor and I thought that was so much more ambitious than what I wanted to do. So we motivated each other, kept each other going, struggled together and made it! She became a doctor and I became a mechanical engineer,” Alaina recounts.

Once she'd embarked on her mechanical engineering studies, a boyfriend at the time, surprised at her chosen subject, told her she'd never make it because she wasn't manual: she didn't spend her weekends taking car engines apart and putting them back together! That comment really annoyed her so she set out to prove him wrong. Today she advises younger women “not to let somebody tell you that you can't do something, because if a woman wants to succeed, even in a male-dominated sector, then she will.” 

She explains that she didn't have her mind set on a specific sector to work in, say aeronautics or automobiles. In any case, when she arrived in France her first task was to get a handle on the language as she clearly would not be offered any kind of engineering job if she couldn't speak French. She quickly found work with one of the principal employers in Figeac: Ratier-Figeac, a French unit of the U.S. giant Collins Aerospace active in both the military and civilian sectors. Collins in Figeac makes propellers, helicopter parts, equipment for aircraft cockpits and cabins and trimmable horizontal stabilizer actuator systems (they ensure the aircraft flies straight and prevents the aircraft nose from pitching). A perfect place for a mechanical engineer.

Except that Alaina's first job was as an English teacher! But 18 months later she moved to the customer support department, where English is the main language, and she's been there ever since. The company makes the huge propellers for the four engines that power the A400M military transport aircraft. This aircraft not only equips the air forces of the six partner nations of the A400M programme, Belgium (acting also for Luxembourg), France, Germany, Spain, Turkey and the UK but also of Malaysia. So far these countries have ordered 174 aircaft of which 92 have been delivered and are in operation. So that makes 368 propeller sets (or 2,944 individual propeller blades as each engine has eight blades!) to keep Alaina and her team busy.

“My job is generally face-to-face with the client air force. We provide training on-site and explain how to repair and maintain the propellers,” she adds. She learnt about them “on the job,” adding that “I spend a lot of time in the design office, asking questions, getting information, learning for myself and I also learn things from our customers.” Alaina remarks that “this is still a very new aircraft programme so things come up that had not necessarily been anticipated and so we have to be creative and find answers.”

Her favourite part of the job is the travel. “I spend a lot of time in meeting rooms but still try to find time to see places.” She's also learnt to adapt to different cultures. “In some places it's the norm to interrupt the speaker to ask questions and in others all the questions are posed by one person acting on behalf of the others. At first it can be a bit destabilising,” she says.