Sometimes parents don't realize that the news on TV can have a strong impression on their young children and even determine their career path. This is what happened to Charlotte, struck as a small child by images of the Gulf War and today a bomb disposal expert. “I really think it was these images that made me decide to join the military. Anyway, I don't remember ever wanting to do anything other than being in the military,” she says with a quick smile…
Camille Boutron, a doctor in sociology, is a recognised expert on the roles held by women in armed organisations and on their participation in conflicts. As these subjects lie at the heart of Wombat and that Camille says some of the things said by the women whose portraits appear on this website have guided her research at the Paris-based IRSEM (War College Institute of Strategic Research), I thought it would be very interesting to interview her. “I’m not used to being on the other side of the mirror,” she laughs. But she cheerfully answered my questions even if the day of our Skype conversation she was slowly recuperating from Covid…
It’s not because you fail at something once that you shouldn’t persist… and then turn out to be very good at the something in question. In Sam’s case (she prefers Sam to Samantha) it is the British Army where she will take up her rank of Lieutenant Colonel on 31 August. Currently the chief of staff of the Air Safety branch atJoint Helicopter Command, she was rejected the first time she tried to join the Army 17 years ago…
Hélène was planning to be a nurse. Instead she’s a welder at Naval Group, working on the components for the nuclear boilers of submarines. Two worlds that, on the surface, have very little in common! Except that in both cases you have to be a perfectionist and have a sense of thoroughness and a job well done because people's lives depend on you. How did she come to do this difficult job, practised by very few women, but which she finds thoroughly satisfying…
Marielle Roux happily admits that she “has always been interested in maths”, dunked in it by her parents, both maths and physics teachers. Attracted by information technology (IT), she did a Masters in that subject during which she had to do an internship. “I did it in the bank and that's where I quickly realised that Management IT was really not for me”, she laughs. So for the first decade of her professional life she worked in the space sector before moving into aeronautics. Today, at Collins Aerospace – Avionics she is Director Europe, Certification, Safety, Cybersecurity, and AI (Artificial Intelligence)…
When she was a little girl Lauriane wanted to “pilot a pink aeroplane.” Obviously, the Mirage 2000-D that she is piloting 25 years later is not pink, but she accepts that! The only female fighter pilot today on Air Base 133 Nancy-Ochey, this jovial young woman has just qualified as an operational pilot and will be leaving for her first operational mission in the next two months…
