If not you, who? Career fears and sustainability
Episode two of the new Auto Trader podcast Women in the driving seat, hosted by Editorial Director, divorced mum of two and award-winning motoring journalist Erin Baker is released today. The series aims to rip up the rule book on the female-empowerment narrative by sharing personal as well as professional experiences, examining the space where both collide, and the challenges, fears and successes happen.
Episode two spotlights sustainability and explores topics such as the impact of politics on climate and nature and the need to zoom in and out on the topic of sustainability as well as the struggle to balance the lingering sense of urgency with the need to sleep or…watch the real housewives of Beverly hills.
All episodes in the series feature a Pit Stop – a quick fire round covering the professional and personal including; Lark or owl? Circuit or circuits? Phone by the bed or phone downstairs?
Join Erin as she puts two adaptable and forward-thinking women in the driving seat to ask “if not you, who?”
Podcast preview
Erin Baker:
“People think a career has got to be linear but […] it’s a wiggly route. By a series of quirks of time, talent, luck – all sorts of different things. That’s what’s important to get out to girls about careers, you’ve got to get out there and see where your horizons take you.”
“If not you, who?”
Lucy Siegle:
“Whether you’re a sustainability writer or an ecologist or ecological scientist, we all work in crisis discipline, we work well in a crisis, one thing I have noticed this week is that my writing is on fire!”
“We have this sense of urgency the entire time, so any time you’re asleep or watching Real Housewives of Beverley Hills (…) you do think you should be working.”
“I see the automotive industry from a cultural point of view, it is part of the fabric of the UK.”
“I don’t just look at [the car industry] in terms of can it decarbonise, can it not decarbonise. I think there are interesting things to say about that. But culturally, it’s very important what engineering talent is coming through, where people will work, how agile they are and how the auto industry ties into the energy transition.”
“Car consumption is very interesting in and of itself because people do give it a bit more time a little bit more attention and that’s interesting to me from a behavioural science point of view.”
“The automotive industry dovetails into pretty much everything that I am interested in and everything that sustainability needs to articulate.”
“One of the events I’ve done with BMW really wasn’t focused on automotive at all but was about decarbonising supply chains more generally which I’m really interested in.”
“Decarbonising tier 1 to 3, that’s how we do it – that’s how brands and business have been taught to decarbonise, and the car industry has a lot of learning for that because you have a lot of components. Some of the work that’s gone on in decarbonising supply chain in the auto industry is world leading.”
“We live in a world of untruths about the planet and our survival on it. It’s a lot more tenuous than people understand.”
“I’m a little bit over constantly tweaking and changing my language and more into being authentic and saying what I believe to be true based on the science and the evidence.”
“It’s not a political choice, sustainability, it’s a necessity to keep us alive on the planet.”
“[Your career] will take you wherever it lets your personality go. We all still have the fear.”
Yelena Estepa:
“Sustainability has always been integrated into my education. [..]I think now especially it’s always going to be part of our education to consider sustainability.”
“As an engineer, I’m aware engineers have the potential to make a huge difference, for better or for worse. And that’s why being educated on sustainability early on helps us understand how our decisions can impact things in the short term and the long term.”
“Are we doing our testing in a sustainable manner? […] We get the data, we analyse it […] everything is being considered and being put into the plan.”
“Sustainability is everywhere, wherever you go on site. When you enter one of the gates you’ll see the beehive – we have millions of bees on site so we can support biodiversity. We have living walls all around and we have solar panels that basically power the whole site. We have 9 football fields of solar panels.”
“It isn’t just about building electric cars, it’s about our operations. How do we make it so that everything we do, producing the car, operating the factory, is being considered? Always work towards next step to make it better. For me as a graduate, I’m really proud to be a part of it.”
“Turn fear into excitement.”
Auto Trader’s new podcast Women in the driving seat releases new episodes every Thursday.
Notes to editors
About Erin Baker
Erin Baker is an award-winning motoring journalist and Editorial Director of Auto Trader. She writes a monthly driving column for Vogue, is a World Car of the Year judge, consults for Goodwood and hosts She's Electric, a national roadshow bringing women and electric cars together. Erin is passionate about narrowing the gender gap, both in the automotive industry itself and between car brands and female consumers, through more targeted language, marketing and experiences. She is a divorced mother of two boys.
About Lucy Siegle
Lucy Siegle a freelance journalist and broadcaster specialising in climate and nature since 2004. For nearly two decades on Prime-time TV and for major media brands, she has championed ecological issues and sustainability, making them relatable and relevant to all audiences. But before all the glamor, Lucy worked briefly in a textiles factory in South London.
About Yelena Estepa
Yelena is an Engineering Graduate Trainee who works at Whole Vehicle Quality in Bentley Motors, where she started three months ago. Prior to that, she completed a year long placement in Production at Bentley Motors, a three-month internship in Process Development at LISI Aerospace, and graduated in September 2024.
A 22-year-old mechanical engineering graduate, Yelena is the youngest and bravest in her family – moving to the UK alone when she was 18 during the pandemic. She describes her life as a constant adventure of relocating and chasing new opportunities, always with her “whole life” in tow, dreaming of a place to call home with her partner of eight years- and maybe a cat too.
About Auto Trader
Auto Trader Group plc is the UK’s largest automotive platform. It listed on the London Stock Exchange in March 2015 and is a member of the FTSE 100 Index.
Auto Trader’s purpose is Driving Change Together. Responsibly. Auto Trader is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive culture, it aims to build stronger partnerships with its customers and use its voice and influence to drive more environmentally friendly vehicle choices.
With the largest number of car buyers and the largest choice of trusted stock, Auto Trader’s marketplace sits at the heart of the UK car buying process. That marketplace is built on an industry-leading technology and data platform, which is increasingly used across the automotive industry. Auto Trader is continuing to bring more of the car buying journey online, creating an improved buying experience, whilst enabling all its retailer partners to sell vehicles online.
Auto Trader publishes a monthly used car Retail Price Index which is based on pricing analysis of circa 800,000 unique vehicles. The same data that powers the Index is used by the Office for National Statistics to make the UK’s official measures of inflation more robust, as well as the Bank of England to feed the broader UK economic indicators.
For more information, please visit: plc.autotrader.co.uk
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