From struggling to keep a motorcycle upright to shaping how EVs need to operate, Blossom Fernandez MIEAust has built a career around a single question: Why does this work?
It started with a motorcycle. A Royal Enfield Thunderbird 500, to be exact. And at 52 kg, I could barely keep it upright at full fuel capacity.
But I wanted to understand how it worked, and that question – why does it work that way – turned out to be the thread that pulled me all the way to where I am now: an EV systems engineer contributing to international EV standards, and the 2026 Changemaker Ambassador for Women in Automotive.
Growing up in India, curiosity like mine came with friction. My father worked in military training and fitness, and when I told him I wanted to join the Air Force as a jet pilot, he was blunt about the risks – and pushed me towards engineering instead.
I had strong maths and science scores, so I followed that path even if I wasn’t sure what I was heading towards.
What I did know was that I needed more space than the options available to me at home, so when RMIT in Melbourne offered me a place in its Master of International Automotive Engineering, I packed my bags within a week. I had never been to another country; I didn’t overthink it and I just left.
Melbourne was a cultural shift I hadn’t prepared for. I was the only woman in most of my classrooms.
But I still leapt at opportunities. During a campus tour, I spotted the Formula SAE cars the university students built, one team running on petrol and one on electric. I walked up and asked if I could join, and they told me to show up and do the work.
Some of these students were undergraduates and I was a postgraduate, but they knew things I didn’t, which was confronting early on. What surprised me was how little any of that mattered to them. They wanted to know if you were competent, and that was it. No-one dismissed me because I was a woman or because I had come from a different engineering background, and it took me a while to trust that.
READ: Why the EV transition is more than just a change in drivetrain
Unlocking the network
My undergraduate degree had been in electronics and telecommunications, and now I was learning automotive systems, so to bridge the gap I took electives in EVs and hydrogen technology, building what I can only describe as an unusual cocktail of knowledge that, as it turned out, was exactly what the industry needed.
Through RMIT’s industry mentorship program, I met an engineer who asked if I would consider working in EVs, and even though I didn’t fully know what that meant at the time, I said yes. GB Auto created a role for me working on the retrofitting of diesel mining vehicles with electric drivelines. It was technically complex, entirely new to me, and exactly the kind of problem I wanted to solve.
When we started testing those converted vehicles at facilities such as Lang Lang in Victoria, one thing became clear fast: Australia’s EV standards were developing more gradually than the more established frameworks in Europe and the US. Where international models were adopted, their application was uneven, and this occurred when a clearly defined, nationally coordinated technical perspective was still emerging. From my perspective, the standards development process was shaped largely by established industry participants, with the rest of industry aligning around outcomes as they matured.
I found out that Engineers Australia could endorse engineers to sit on Standards Australia committees, and I applied without knowing if I had any real chance.
They returned with an offer and paired me with a colleague who had 25 years of experience. Rather than a one‑way exchange, the partnership was collaborative, and my background in mining safety, risk assessment and EV conversion brought a perspective that complemented his experience.
I quickly learnt the value I brought lay in having a different viewpoint.
Australia is working towards a more comprehensive framework for battery safety, focusing on establishing baseline guidance for handling, maintenance and repair activities, particularly where technician safety and electrical risk are concerned. However, when applying this framework, I found there was limited clarity around how to objectively assess vehicle operation.
There was no clearly defined testing criteria against which vehicle behaviour could be measured. Interpretation relied on benchmarking against internal combustion vehicle testing criteria.
Australia’s challenge is specific. Without major domestic vehicle manufacturers, our role in shaping international standards is more limited, and much of our regulatory approach is built around the adoption of overseas frameworks.
Mostly, this means aligning with European standards, which are adapted to reflect Australian regulatory structures. I have been working with the Society of Automotive Engineers Australasia to push for faster adoption of international standards where they are already fit for purpose, and for targeted, practical adjustment where Australian conditions genuinely differ. Mining environments, long‑haul regional travel and remote grid infrastructure all introduce real operating variables that warrant consideration.
One of the recurring challenges in this work is pace. In rapidly evolving technical domains, standards that take many years to develop can struggle to remain current by the time they’re published. A more flexible model, one that supports interim updates, would allow frameworks to remain relevant without requiring the process to restart each time the technology advances.
READ: Why increasing inclusion in engineering is making the world a better place
Keep showing up
I’ve sometimes been afraid of talking to people who were more experienced than me, not because I doubted my thinking, but because their time felt precious and I wasn’t sure I had earned it yet.
I dealt with that by treating it like exposure therapy, volunteering for everything, showing up to events where I knew no-one, and asking the questions other people weren’t asking because the technical ones were the ones I actually needed answered. I started training in martial arts around the same time, and for much the same reason. Learning to take a punch taught me something about being in an uncomfortable room.
You can either be comfortable, or you can grow, and I kept choosing growth even when it felt exposing.
That is how I ended up in the 2026 Women in Automotive Changemaker Ambassador program.
I met Kate Peck, the director, at a launch event where I was one of the few people asking technical questions, and when she asked what I wanted to represent. I told her that confining me to EVs alone would be too narrow. I wanted to represent STEM broadly, because that is where the gap is widest. I mentor university students, speak to schoolgirls about engineering careers, and pay particular attention to immigrant students – because I know what it takes to navigate a technical career in a new country with no roadmap.
Read Engineers Australia’s Submission to the inquiry into the transition to electric vehicles
