A decorated engineer, strategic advisor and advocate for change. Ahead of International Women’s Day on Saturday, create speaks with Mona Shindy, whose career offers a blueprint for navigating complex challenges in any industry.
For Captain Mona Shindy, the certainty of knowing that one and one is two always provided a source of comfort.
Emigrating from Egypt with her parents when she was three years old, Shindy described her upbringing as “tumultuous”, with her father dying when she was young and her mother being left alone to support four children.
“I always enjoyed putting facts and ideas together in different ways to solve problems,” Shindy told create. “I got real satisfaction working through challenges to discover something new. The certainty of evidence, data and the laws of physics provided a sense of reliability.
“In a sometimes unpredictable world, where things happen based on opinion or power, engineering offered a pathway I could trust – where I felt I had some control over what I could achieve through my own hard work and logic.”
The origins of a decorated career
After graduating from high school, Shindy pursued a degree in electrical engineering at UNSW.
“Two years into the program, I was looking for financial support,” she said. “I initially took on a sponsorship with Telecom [now Telstra] but later switched to an undergraduate sponsorship program with the Royal Australian Navy.”
Key to this switch were the naval adventures of Shindy’s older brother.
“He sent home postcards from his overseas travels. His stories seemed far more interesting than my initial work placements in telephone exchanges.”
Beyond the appeal of adventure, her brother was also working with more advanced technologies.
“That was a key driver for me to transition into Defence,” she said.
In exchange for financial support during her final two years of study, Shindy committed to three years of full-time service.
“That three years of giving back turned into an over three-decade career.”
A varied career in service
As with most naval engineers, Shindy’s career began with shipboard training, primarily serving on Adelaide-class frigates. She eventually worked her way up from assistant engineer to deputy weapons electrical engineer and finally to head of department as a weapons electrical engineer on an Australian warship. Interspersed between the sea postings she also tackled a myriad of roles ashore in support of these warships.
In the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG), Shindy oversaw ship maintenance, seaworthiness assurance and upgrades.
“I was involved in testing and evaluation to ensure platforms met requirements, conducting trials and working on capability acquisition projects,” she said. “This involved setting requirements and collaborating with contractors to bring new capabilities into service.”
As part of the Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD) program, one of Australia’s largest naval projects designed to upgrade Australia’s maritime defence capability with three cutting-edge ships, Shindy was stationed in Washington, D.C., for more than two years – representing both CASG and the navy.
“My role involved managing foreign military sales acquisitions and integration issues,” she said.
Because the Australian Navy had acquired the US Aegis Combat System, Shindy managed configuration and integration issues for different systems that would be placed into the new AWDs built using the Spanish Navantia F100 frigates base platform design.
“We needed to integrate the combat system with various weapon systems required for our strategic needs, designing bespoke interfaces for the US Aegis Combat System.”
Tackling complex challenges
On such large scale naval projects, budget constraints, scheduling and part availability are par for the course.
“To ensure projects were successful, we used systems engineering approaches and parallel processing where we could, through research or the use of alternate technologies, and getting creative with how workarounds were pursued.”
Often, answers lie in being collaborative, adaptive and flexible.
“There were plenty of times that problems of part unavailability were solved by asking if a sister ship had the part so we could move further along with what we were trying to execute.”
Finding these solutions requires effective team cultures, guided by leaders who are skilled collaborators, and who listen and learn from diverse perspectives, Shindy believes.
“People see things differently based on their experiences,” she said. “By creating a supportive and inclusive environment, where people feel safe, heard, valued and respected, as well as confident to contribute, we achieve the best results.”
A unique insight
Diverse perspectives can also chip away at hard-wired societal constructs within institutions such as the navy which are detrimental to longevity, creativity and innovation.
Take recruitment and retention challenges for example. Addressing these issues requires a keen understanding of the deterrents.
“For women in the early days, there weren’t career structures that catered for the opportunity to have families or spend time with children before going back to sea. Scenarios where the culture involved having key decisions being made after hours or around drinks, wasn’t necessarily compatible with people who provide care.”
Understanding that perspective as a female naval engineer, Shindy was able to contribute to organisational governance improvements, accommodating the needs of all people so the workplace functioned better.
“The navy I joined over three decades ago is a very different navy today in terms of policies, processes, and even design of ships. Simple things such as having a proper place to sleep on a ship, which had previously never been designed to accommodate women.”
Learnings from resistance
Throughout Shindy’s career, she has witnessed resistance to those who try to affect change.
“In big, traditionally homogenous organisations such as Defence, there’s an inertia that needs to be constantly worked on to ensure change comes to fruition as efficiently as possible.”
This is something she knows full well via her tenure as the Chief of Navy Strategic Advisor on Islamic Cultural Affairs.
“As with many of these roles, no matter how well intentioned leaders are when they establish them, the responsibility for the outcomes sits solely with the minority person who’s appointed to make things happen.
“Such roles require great mastery around emotionally charged office politics, understanding and addressing biases, dealing with the media and communicating with different stakeholders – many of whom are scared of changes to the status quo.
“That’s a lot to do besides the complex tasks of keeping warships afloat, properly maintained and seaworthy. It was challenging.”
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The backlash that ensued generated much learning on how this could be approached better in the future.
“The navy has since looked at different protections, risks and resourcing to have a much greater chance of success and ongoing improvement.”
A colleague of Shindy’s likens the work involved in diversity, equity and inclusion as keeping a camp fire alight.
“If one person is doing all the work, and they leave or are overburdened, the camp fire can go out pretty quickly. So organisations need to make a conscious effort to put that camp fire in the center of where all key organisational decisions and policies are made, and give the responsibility for keeping that camp fire stoked to everyone.”
“This way, everyone is constantly aware of difficulties and challenges at play, while simultaneously benefitting from the warmth generated. I think the Defence Force learned a lot through that experience.”
While having a diverse perspective has proven to be a strength for Shindy, she encourages other engineers from diverse backgrounds to understand that they have additional hurdles to overcome.
“Don’t jump to frustration or anger when things don’t go exactly how you anticipated,” she said. “Rather try to have empathy and forgiveness so actual learning happens through your presence among a largely homogenous group.”
For this cohort of engineers, reading the room while respectfully and gradually sharing more and more of yourself is the key.
“True inclusion takes time, resilience and a willingness for a minority person to educate while doing their day job. Critically, it also requires all organisational leaders to equitably share development and access opportunities to help develop careers for all staff in their charge.”
As Shindy has done throughout her life, she opts to look at bias through a scientific lens.
“Understanding the science behind unconscious, affinity or confirmatory bias allows people to not take things so personally. Be prepared that things will not be as smooth as you consider to be reasonable, but stick with it.”
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Mona is correct. True inclusion takes time and like her I have seen many changes in the last 30 years.
However, my work is in defence and it seems to me that there is a LONG WAY TO GO until the defence force is inclusive.
why does the RAN accept quotations listing the man hours to do a task. It accepts quotations for draftsmen and areas of a ship are referred to as manned spaces.
how far have we come? In my view NOT far enough.
Hey “Name withheld”, there is a little verse you might remember:
“As you wander on through life brother (or Sister),
no matter what your goal,
Keep your eye upon the donut,
not upon the hole.”