Potenza People: Meet Amy Maharati

Since graduating from the University of Manchester, I have always worked in the automotive industry. Although my degree was in electrical and electronics engineering, I went to my first graduate role as a software engineer. I didn’t know it at the time, the great amount of software that is involved in a vehicle. Since then, I’ve always enjoyed developing embedded software for automotive applications.  It gave me a great joy when a software you develop translates to the real world.

I consider my strengths to be my resilience and my weakness to be the tendency to doubt myself. In fact, the best piece of advice that I’ve ever received is “you’ll never know if you never try”. It’s simple, but quite true and powerful.

Other than work, I’m also passionate about empowering young students, especially girls, to go into STEM subjects. I think it’s a subject that is greatly misunderstood as “difficult” or worse “only for boys”. I grew up with my parents who are both engineers, so I never really seen it as a gender-based occupation. And I’d like to spread this awareness.

What I like about working in Potenza is the chance to work with a wide range of people from different backgrounds. In Potenza, I also feel that my input for suggested improvement is heard, which makes me feel valued. What motivates me at work is to solve problem.

Now for the fun bit, getting to know Amy outside of the working environment:

When I was young, I wanted to be a teacher (not sure I’d be good at it, though).

My favourite subject at school was physics.

My spirit animal is a good old cat, probably orange ones.

I like different types of music, I follow my mood of the day. When I like something, I tend to repeat it until I’m tired of it, haha.

My favourite food is probably Korean or Japanese. But my comfort food is my mom’s nasi goreng.

My favourite time of the year is autumn, it’s not yet too cold and the trees are beautiful.

My favourite place I’ve been to so far is Jordan and Japan.

I am a morning person, who also likes to sleep in.

In my spare time, I like watching sports (emphasis on watching), I follow tennis, formula 1 and football.

I like travelling and I’ve been to 30 countries so far.