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"I’m living proof that female engineers can now achieve whatever they want to achieve," says Vina, who was one of the first women to graduate from the South-east Asia Skills Enhancement Programme (SEASEP), which is funded by Lloyd’s Register Foundation in partnership with TWI Ltd (part of The Welding Institute).

SEASEP aims to empower women engineers to enter traditionally male careers such as welding inspection and non-destructive testing, and Vina benefited from the Foundation’s 100% funding for women engineers to study to become welding inspectors. “The welding sector is very, very challenging for women,” adds Vina. “Few women choose this as a career, because welding inspectors are almost all men. But welding is a vital skill if we’re going to improve our safety record.”

Over 124,000 people are injured at work every year in South-east Asia’s fast-growing economies. One of the keys to getting this number down is driving up skills in safety-critical areas such as welding. Many failures of plant and infrastructure can be traced back to incorrect application of welding, welding inspection, degradation in hostile material environments and fatigue.

Following graduation, Vina worked as an engineer before making the move into education and is now a lecturer in mechanical engineering at Jakarta State Polytechnic. “It’s important that women in Indonesia know that they can do whatever they want – and I’m doing my best to help them,” she says. “Teaching is my passion, and in a few years’ time I want to be able to look around the industry and see my students not only improving safety, but also being great role models for generations of women to come.”