In this episode, we welcome multi-faceted inventor and author, Dr. Arlyne Simon to the podcast. Arlyne is juggling three successful careers at the same time – as a biomedical engineer, an award-winning children’s book author, and the CEO of an invention education company, Abby Invents.

Arlyne works as a platform architect in the Health and Sciences Group of Intel Corporation. Prior to her work at Intel, she was a senior R&D engineer at Becton Dickinson. Arlyne received her BS in chemical and biomolecular engineering from Georgia Tech and her Ph.D. in macromolecular Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan.

In addition to her responsibilities at Intel, Arlyne is the author of a series of books chronicling the adventures of young inventor named Abby. The books also serve as the basis for the curriculum of the education training company, Abby Invents, that Arlyne founded and now helms as the CEO. The company aims to inspire kids everywhere – including those from backgrounds that are underrepresented in STEM – to use their imagination and see themselves as inventors.

Growing up on the Caribbean Island of Dominica, Arlyne was inspired by her father, who was an engineer, her mother, who was a teacher, and her stepmother, who had a deep and abiding love of reading and books. Her strong family support allowed her to dream big and believe that she could achieve anything. She credits her family – as well as her graduate school advisor and mentor – with having the fortitude to persevere through the ebbs and flows of her academic journey, when she sometimes was the only woman in the lab, and she was one of very few students of color in the whole department.

In this episode, Arlyne shares how the right role models and mentors have shown her the way to success and how critically important it was to see herself as they saw her – a brilliant engineer and inventor who can hold her own in a field that has been traditionally male and White. She also discusses how she is now carrying this torch forward, ensuring that the next generation of children, regardless of their backgrounds, have the representation they need to see themselves as curious adventurers and inventors.

Highlights include:

• Inheriting a passion for learning, understanding, and caring (4:29)
• A student and a teacher (8:00)
• Discovering chemical engineering, then pivoting to biomedical engineering (11:40)
• The benefits of attending an all-girl school (14:03)
• The culture shock of finding oneself in a slim minority (18:37)
• Meeting the perfect mentor and discovering the process of inventing (20:44)
• Finding out that publishing is not the only coin of the academic realm (25:17)
• Learning to fail and to keep going (27:42)
• The long and winding road to a patentable invention and a provisional application (32:11)
• How being the only woman in the lab inspired a pivot to writing children’s books that break down ethnic and gender barriers to STEM inventing (42:27)
• Why representation matters at every level (46:21)
• Gaining recognition for the book series, even though it had to be self-published because it was rejected by traditional publishers (48:40)
• Kids ask the best questions (53:20)
• From inventing to entrepreneurship (58:25)