The BIG BANG
When Michelle Dickinson was still a teenager and working two minimum-wage jobs, she became known as “the fix-it girl”. If your toaster wasn’t working or your car was playing up, she could help you out during her lunch break.
She developed such a big reputation in the retail centre where she worked that her boss called her into his office one day. “I thought I had done something wrong,” Michelle remembers. “He said, ‘I think you can do more than folding T-shirts.’
“He didn’t know what it was that I might do – something outside of my little box and outside of his, really. But he said, ‘I think you need to meet some people.’”
It’s no exaggeration to say his intervention changed her life, steering her on a path to university and sparking her mission to get kids excited about STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). That day, the journey from fix-it girl to Nanogirl began.
Michelle’s boss introduced her to an engineering lecturer who immediately
