IWD2024: Inspiring Women of Spectris - Yumiko Sakamoto

To celebrate International Women’s Day on 8th March, the companies in the Spectris Group are coming together to show own commitment to diversity, inclusion and belonging. For the next fortnight, we’ll be featuring ‘Inspiring Women of Spectris’, sharing their stories and their advice for women and men to support achieving the goal of true inclusion. Today, meet Yumiko.

1. Please summarise who you are, your role and where you’re based (which part of Spectris and where in the world) I am Senior NVH Technical Specialist working in VI-grade, part of HBK, in Japan. My career started at B&K and then HBK. I transferred to VI-grade last year. My main task is solving customer’s challenge in NVH (Noise, Vibration and Harshness) with not only with our product but also with engineering services.
2. What sparked your interest in NVH, and can you share a bit about your journey leading up to your current role? My background is acoustics. When I joined B&K at the time, I started my career as Application Engineer for NVH Simulator, it was just released to the automotive market. Since then, I was getting used to the world of NVH. Because NVH Simulator is a tool to capture the big picture of the vehicle NVH, it was very good for me to learn many things related to it. I am in VI-grade now and have been able to work on the major NVH measurement tasks with several customers.
3. What do you enjoy most about working in NVH and your specific role? It is always very good to listen to the customer. ?Learning customer’s challenges always inspires me and I really want to support them solving the challenge.
4. What’s been your greatest achievement during your career? It is still hard to feel that I have achieved something. My task is not measurable. If I can know that a vehicle in the market was developed with the services we provided, then I can feel some kind of achievement.
5. What advice would you give to a woman starting their career today? I hope they do not feel there are limitations to their future. But instead know that actually there are some people at around and over my age who will support them.
6. What is the best piece of advice you have ever received? Listen to others (customer, colleague and so on). Do not talk too much first.
7. Reflecting on your career path, what pivotal moments or experiences have shaped your passion for NVH and engineering? From the very beginning of my career, I worked with many overseas colleagues. Time and language differences made it difficult to communicate with them but it was very crucial experience to learn the way of communicating with people from different backgrounds.
8. What skills do you think will be essential for the next generation of women leaders? I think most of the women are already ready to be leaders. Just a matter of “old” business style.
9. Who is your role model and why? My ex-boss. She was my first female boss and non-Japanese boss. She helped me a lot when I saw any challenge in my daily work. But the biggest support was her presence in the organization. I was able to believe that women in the engineering world was possible.
10. In what ways do you hope to inspire others who are considering or currently pursuing careers in NVH, based on your own experiences and insights gained along your journey?? I am still wondering about the answer to that question and how to inspire others, but these days I want to help prevent young women from feeling any limitation on their potential.