I met Adya through Instagram (her handle is @thedesicareerwoman, make sure to check her out!) when she was wanting photos as she is an Instagram influencer. Initially our photos were supposed to be at a place where there were 8 different backgrounds to taken some fun photos in front of but due to COVID, we had to change gears. We decided why not try some photos at a sunflower field? Mind you, Adya lives up in Seattle and I'm in Olympia so we were hoping to find something that is midway. Thankfully, Adya found Maris Farm and we planned for about an hour there.
Never did I expect Adya to be who she was when talking to her over Instagram. I have never worked with an Instagram influencer before and felt like the pressure would be on to perform on my part to make sure that she liked the photos considering the world could be seeing them. I'm just a small town attorney who does photography on the side - I try to keep things lowkey since I'm self-taught and like the creative aspect of it. Well needless to say, Adya was beyond my expectations and I enjoyed getting to know who she was behind all the photos, posts, and cameras. Now it's time for you to get to know this powerful, kind, intelligent and influential woman.
To start out with, Adya is only 25 years old and has a Bachelors in Industrial Engineering. If that doesn't tell you that she's beyond intelligent and a badass, I'm not sure what would. Specifically, her current job is as a Quality Analyst in Manufacturing. From my very brief research, this means that she ensures that the processes used to design, test, and produce products will be done correctly. Some other fun facts about her is that she currently lives in Seattle but has grown up in Singapore, California, Australia, Scotland, Texas, and Indiana. Although she has lived in the U.S. since 2008 (off and on) she is an international student. Despite this, she completed three internships during her three summers at Purdue University, graduated from college, and has a very solid career.
While in college, she didn't always want to be an engineer. Instead, she found it while changing her major 3 times and found that being an engineer matched her personality and what she wanted her future jobs to look like. She essentially worked backwards to find her current employment.
While that is a lot of work in and of itself, she is also an Instagram influencer. She currently has over 8,700 followers on Instagram and she doesn't post the typical "let me show off all of my nice things" posts that you see with a lot of influencers online. But instead, she posts about her life as a REAL woman. Her entire Instagram is focused towards inspiring and empowering woman across the globe. She promotes STEM programs and careers for women which, if you don't know, stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. She is trying to break the social media standard that all women need to be a size two or smaller in pants and instead promotes embracing the curves that good ol' mother nature gave you!
And don't let the fact that she's an influencer intimidate you or make you think that she's not personable because WOAH, she's by far one of the more personable people I have met. Not only was she kind from the get-go, but she was incredibly easy to talk to. And I think that is attributed to not only her kindness/good heart, but also to her intelligence and just down-to-earthness.
When you look at her Instagram (which I encourage you to do) you will see that it states, "6-3 Woman In Manufacturing 🛻 | 4-10 Content Creator 🎥 💡 | 24/7 Inspiring Others." I'm sure you're wondering what I was wondering myself: how does she do all of it successfully??? I specifically asked her this during our conversations at the photoshoot because my understanding of an influencer is that although it looks easy, it's not - and she confirmed this. She talked about how much work goes into it but that greater good balances out the work. With everything she has going on, she balances her work-life by scheduling everything. She is a huge fan of scheduling her time to ensure she covers everything regularly.
Adya has chosen a career in Manufacturing which is a heavily male dominated profession. According to the United States Census Bureau in 2017, women only made up one-third of the manufacturing industry workforce in the United States. So although women make up nearly half of the working population, they still remain severely underrepresented in the manufacturing industry. One small fact that I found out of this study is that there was a higher percentage of women working in manufacturing that had a bachelor's degree or higher compared to the men. This made me think that employers were, and maybe still are, requiring a bachelor's degree from women and may not necessarily require that of men.
I further found this article https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201208005232/en/The-Gender-Gap-Women-Fill-Only-33-of-Manufacturing-Industry-Jobs-26-of-Industry-Leadership-Positions that found that in a survey in 2020, only 1 in 3 manufacturing professionals and 1 in 4 manufacturing leaders are women. This just shows that not much has changed in 3 years which, I'm not expecting huge jumps in numbers but maybe a little better than only 25% of the leaders in manufacturing being women.
And although Adya grew up around the world and spent a lot of time around engineers, with a good support system, she did not feel that she had many mentors. And when looking at these statistics, I think we can now deduce why. Putting women in a position that they haven't been before, many feel resistant to it. I know I have felt the resistance of men to me in my own profession. She feels that women in her profession have a hard time getting promoted and that a significant barrier that she has experienced in her career is being assumed weaker and/or unable to do the work. Let me remind you - it is 2021, she is only 25, and she (with I'm assuming several other women) are STILL experiencing this shit. How is this still happening???
When I asked Adya what was one thing she wished more people knew about women in her profession, she said that even though they are mechanically minded, they are not to be assumed butch/lesbian/un-girly just because they wear khakis to work. And this is true - our society tends to classify a woman based upon not only her career, but also her dress. Not that it's bad to be any of those things, but to assume someone is a specific way based upon how they dress is unacceptable. She indicated that the toughest thing about this society in regards to women is actually women being competitive with other women.
"The world is out for us but we need to have each other's backs."
This couldn't be more true. Like Adya, many people's biggest inspiration is their mother. We have to remember that this is another woman that we are looking up to, aspiring to be, so why tear down others? We are all wanting the same goal (or I would at least hope so): to be equal. We want to be taken seriously. We want to be considered equal to men. We want to be paid the same as men. We want to not be pushed down and made to feel small based upon our sex. We want to not be harassed in the workplace or even on the streets. We want to know that if we work just as hard as our male counterparts, we at least stand a chance. We want our voices to matter.
As I've stated previously, Adya was such a pleasure to get to know and photograph. Not only was she a perfect model to photograph, but her personality made it so easy and fun. I cannot wait (and hope) to work with her in the future.
My final question for Adya was what advice would she give to other women. Her response was beyond perfect:
"Work your way up the elevator, get to the top floor, make space for yourself there. Then send the elevator back down, and while it brings another woman up, make another seat for her there."
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