E-lesson: Women in Power Engineering: Interview with Senja Leivo

Senja Leivo is the Senior Industry Expert at Vaisala in Finland. Her professional focus is on condition monitoring of power transformers. At Vaisala with her 22 years of experience, she is responsible globally for identifying the strategic trends and new monitoring needs within the industry by bringing customers’ voice to the new product development.

As part of her expert role, she is member in CIGRE working groups and Vaisala representative in other international research collaboration on transformer condition assessment. Contributing member of CIGRE working group D1/A2.77 and the former WGs D1.52 and D1/A2.47. Regular member of CIGRE SC D1 2020-2022

Senja holds a Master of Science degree in Materials Science and Engineering.

Mazana Armstrong is the Senior Manager of the High Power Lab at Powertech Labs, a subsidiary of BC Hydro. She has 25 years of professional experience in operations, maintenance, design and testing of high voltage electric power systems, specifically electrical aspects of 69 kV to 500 kV transmission systems. Mazana holds a B.Sc. from the University of Zagreb, Croatia, and an M.Sc., and a Ph.D., in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia. She is a registered Professional Engineer with the Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia.

We will talk to Senja about her career as a woman in this predominantly male field. We will also talk about:

• Transformer diagnostic and monitoring technologies that Senja works on
• The most demanding projects that Senja participated in/on
• How to attract young engineers to work in our industry – personal experiences
• Membership in international technical organizations like CIGRE, how to get involved, what would be recommendations for younger?