Finding My Place in STEM—One Conversation at a Time

I used to think inclusion was a policy—something printed in a handbook, pinned to a noticeboard, or mentioned at the start of a meeting and forgotten by lunch. But over time, I’ve learned inclusion is much more intimate than that. It’s the small, repeated decision to make space for people who have spent years learning to shrink.

On 12 February 2026, from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm, I walked into Inclusion in STEM 2026, an in-person networking event hosted by Onvero in partnership with the Royal Society of Chemistry. The room smelled like fresh coffee and warm pastries, but what I noticed most was the sound: a low hum of voices, confidence, hesitation, laughter—people practicing belonging in real time. The event was free and open to all, and that detail mattered. It felt like an unlocked door in a world full of passwords.

The Quiet Weight of “Almost”

I come from a background where STEM wasn’t presented as a natural destination. It was presented as a test. A gate. A place where you either “made it” or you didn’t. Even now, among people who look accomplished on paper—engineers, data analysts, scientists—many of us carry the same private fear: that we’re one mistake away from being exposed as an outsider.

For those navigating new countries, new systems, or simply the invisible expectations of professional culture, the challenge isn’t always technical ability. It’s translation—of our stories, accents, CVs, and identities into something the industry recognizes as legitimate. I arrived at this event with that familiar tension behind my ribs: hope, mixed with the instinct to brace.

Breakfast, Networking, and the First Real Turn

The day began with breakfast and networking, and I expected the usual ritual of polite introductions. Instead, I found myself in conversations that were unexpectedly honest. Maybe it was the early hour. Maybe it was the shared understanding that we all came because something, somewhere, still wasn’t working.

A simple line—“What brought you here?”—became a doorway.

People spoke about being overlooked for stretch projects, about physical spaces not designed for them, about recruitment pipelines that claim fairness while selecting for sameness. I realized the conflict I brought with me wasn’t mine alone. It was structural, distributed, and persistent—and naming it out loud made it lighter.

Listening Under the Chatham House Rule

The event followed the Chatham House Rule, and that changed the emotional temperature of the room. With fewer performative risks, people spoke with more care. During the fireside chat on the evolution of DEI, I felt the conversation move beyond slogans. DEI wasn’t treated as decoration—it was treated as engineering: something you build, test, and improve because lives depend on it.

Then came the accessibility talk and roundtable discussions on accessibility in STEM and widening access. The phrase “practical steps” kept returning, like a steady drumbeat. Ramps, captioning, flexible policies, inclusive hiring—yes. But also the less visible designs: mentorship that doesn’t assume prior social capital, interviews that don’t reward cultural mimicry, workplaces that don’t equate exhaustion with excellence.

A Face and a Future in the Same Room

One speaker, Steve Fuller, described working across recruitment, restructuring, coaching, and DEI strategy—yet what stayed with me wasn’t his résumé. It was his focus on widening access “from education through to executive leadership.” That timeline included people like me—those still trying to imagine the long game.

I left the roundtable with more than notes. I left with a shift in posture. I had arrived thinking I needed to earn inclusion like extra credit. I left believing inclusion is a shared responsibility—and that I’m allowed to be part of building it.

What Changed—and What I’m Taking With Me

By the end, the room felt brighter, not because the problems were solved, but because they were spoken about with clarity and collective intent. The “almost” I carried started to dissolve into something sturdier: direction.

If I’m admitted to the next stage of my education or career, I don’t want to succeed in isolation. I want to bring others into rooms like this one—where access is not an afterthought, and opportunity isn’t rationed by familiarity. Inclusion, I learned, is not a slogan on a banner. It’s a network of people choosing, again and again, to widen the path.

Reference / Source Link

[1] Onvero — Inclusion in STEM 2026: In-Person Networking Event (https://www.onvero.org.uk/event/inclusion-in-stem-2026-in-person-networking-event/)