About the Frontiers Champion
As a Frontiers Champion,
Dr Boksun Kim has passion to improve the quality of life of people, in particular, in less developed countries. This Frontiers Champion funding will allow her to expand her existing project on
Mentoring future women graduates in STEM in Africa, also funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering.
The Champion will recruit fifteen women STEM professionals, who are based in Sub-Saharan Africa and each will mentor five women graduates in STEM in the region. After that, she will conduct two different types of community building activities. First, she will host webinars to investigate challenges for women graduates in STEM to access job markets in the region, and provide the mentors with training on work ethics, empowering and issues on sexual harassment at work. Second, she will organise two networking events:
a) an online conference where the trained mentors will present their mentoring case studies and share their experience with the other mentors
b) an in-person conference in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, where mentors gather and celebrate their success, evaluate their mentoring programme and draw action plans for the future.
The Champion aims to develop a sustainable system whereby the trained mentors become mentoring champions and their mentees become subsequent mentors, who will act as role models for future graduates.
