Dr. Danielle Lester On Sharing The Authentic Stories Of Women And Understanding The Built Environment

Dr. Danielle Lester is an academic in the built environment, a project management consultant, and documentary film maker.

Starting her career over 20 years ago in the UK as a Quantity Surveyor on large scale civil engineering projects, Danielle moved to Australia and worked on some of Southeast Queensland’s most iconic transport infrastructure projects.

After completing a PhD at the University of Queensland on Delusion and Deception in Megaproject Environments, Danielle became an academic and taught across the full spectrum of Built Environment disciplines, from Global Real Estate Markets to Civil Engineering Management at University of Queensland, New York University, Bond University, and Birmingham City University.

Danielle has most recently ventured into the world of media production to create more accessible platforms for women to share their stories. HerStory Productions aim is to put women in STEM front and centre on our screens, starting with Danielle’s first production, Tiny Solution to a Big Problem, where she documented herself building her own tiny house in response to the impact the current housing crisis is having, particularly on women.

Danielle is also the founder of collaboration agency Problem Shared Problem Solved, which brings together experts, professionals, students, and those who wish to collaborate on meaningful projects that have a positive impact on our environment.

Danielle discusses empowering women to share their unique experiences through the medium of documentary film making, and why systems thinking and a desire to challenge the status quo are powerful traits for social entrepreneurs.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Indio Myles] - To start off, can you please share a bit about your background and what led to your work in social impact?

[Dr. Danielle Lester] - My background is in the built environment, and early on I was in the public sector working in civil engineering. Recently, I became an academic in the built environment, and I feel like everything I’ve done during my time has been in the social impact space.

I've always advocated for women in construction engineering and helped young professionals develop their skills. Also, in terms of my research on Delusion and Deception, I was working on projects or doing things in social impact.

It wasn't until recently that I stepped outside of those incredibly structured environments of civil engineering and academia that I discovered social enterprise. Going along to the Impact Boom Reignite Retreat, I met all these people doing amazing things and making a career out of it. This made me take a real big step back and say, "I can do this, I can head in this impact-led direction now.”

It's what I’ve wanted to do naturally, but I had to find a way to turn it into a career. I wanted to be more entrepreneurial as opposed to just getting out there and trying to make change. It's a new space to me, but I'm excited to be in it.

Some of the people I'm meeting along the way are absolutely blowing my mind, and it's inspiring to just become involved and to learn about how people are navigating their social enterprises. They are having these ideas and completely committing to making them happen

As a behavioural economist and academic specialising in the built environment, what led you to landing on setting up the media production company HerStory Productions?

Basically, I started my life as an academic thinking I would be going into the classroom, making an impact and creating change acting as a disruptor. I originally wanted to change the way in which we teach construction and engineering.

The reality of being an academic is that you need to be publishing peer reviewed papers. I'm not going to speak negatively about academia, but that's what they want, and it's something I found difficult. Whilst I was doing my PhD, I was diagnosed with high functioning autism or ‘aspergers’ as it used to be called.

A few years later, I was also diagnosed with ADHD. I found that anytime I tried to sit down and write a paper, I would spend a couple of minutes looking through abstracts and reading papers, but then my brain would start to bounce all over the place. Half an hour later, rather than focusing on the topic of the paper, I'd come up with a brand-new idea of how I was going to create change using my research!

I realised writing papers was never going to be my thing, but I knew I had lots of stories and research I wanted to share. I wanted to try and find a different way of sharing these ideas, which was originally how I started thinking about filming a documentary, to put these concepts on the screen and let people see rather than read about what I'm learning and researching.

I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to apply for this grant funded by the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC), a group I've been heavily involved with my entire career. They have this grant called the Bright Ideas Grant which asks for women to apply with a business proposal for something they want to get off the ground.

Basically, I thought it's now or never, so I put together this proposal to set up HerStory Productions. I had a pipeline of projects lined up and stories to tell, and they liked the concept, and I won the grant. I thought now’s the time to put my money where my mouth is, and at the same time, I'd already started exploring the world of living in tiny houses.

I'd not long ago built my own camper van as a pandemic project, and I thought what a better place to go next than to build my own tiny home. I thought whilst I'm doing it, I'll film it as well.

I didn’t know how I was going to film this or what story I was going to tell. I decided that I was just going to build the tiny house, film it, and see what kind of stories and themes emerged in the end.

I had never built a house or filmed a documentary before, and I thought what better places to start? That's basically how HerStory Productions started, with me trying to tell my own story.

As the founder of HerStory Productions, can you share more about the goals of the organisation and how people can become involved and share their stories?

Our goal is to be able to share the real, true and authentic stories of women, warts and all. During the pandemic when we were all trapped inside our homes, there appeared to be a lot of shows coming out that were written and created by women.

They were real, true, and authentic stories bringing flawed women on screen to share their stories. It made me sit and think that this is amazing, because I had never seen this many women tell their stories on screen before. I had never resonated with something on the screen, and you don't realise this until a person who you connect with appears on the screen.

It led me to start writing my own story and to start thinking about all the other women in my life who I had connected with either personally or professionally, incredible women who I think should have their own stories out there too.

Not only that, but I also wanted women who I had not met yet to develop their technical storytelling skills, so they can write, direct, film, and perform in their own productions and create their own platforms.

That's essentially what HerStory Productions aims to be. It's early days, but I've got this ‘anything is possible’ attitude about life. With my project management background and broad skill set, I believe that connecting the right people with the right projects is the way to create that platform to share these women's stories.

As the founder of Ps2 - Problem Shared Problem Solved, an agency facilitating collaboration on impact-led projects, can you share more about how the agency identifies opportunities for collaboration?

It might sound quite bizarre to the traditionalists amongst us, but I guess there might not be many traditionalists listening to the Impact Boom Podcast!

Once I started life as an academic, I realised it was not everything I wanted to be. Prior to academia, I started my career in real estate valuation. Then, I entered the worlds of construction management and civil engineering, so I covered the entire life cycle of the built environment.

These experiences made me realise I'm fortunate in the fact I have an incredible network consisting of experts from across the globe. If there was ever a way I could connect the right people with the right projects and the right projects with the right people, then that was something I wanted to do. Plus, I wanted to be able to create a way for me to work on the most interesting and exciting projects I could.

That's why and how I set up Problem Shared, Problem Solved, and it is as loose as it sounds; a platform that enabling other people to come and work with me. People can bring their own projects to me, or I could get out there and start networking.

I began meeting people either in the social enterprise space or at more traditionalist type events. I wanted to listen to what's going on in the industry and understand where we can become involved in and support those projects creating change.

How have your experiences as a neurodiverse woman in the built environment impacted opportunities for you to work on impactful projects?

My experiences are quite polarised in terms of fitting into the traditional and structured environments of engineering and academia. I've struggled, and I guess that's what led to my diagnosis during my PhD on Delusion and Deception. Every project I was working on just felt wrong, that’s the best way I can describe it.

One of the traits of female autism is a strong sense of social justice. It took me a while to wrap my head around the fact that those feelings are actually right! They were true, authentic feelings, and because things weren't going right, that's what gave me the courage to continually challenge and oppose these issues.

I wanted to continue to be a disruptor and to try and make change, because this was not right, and it shouldn't be like this. There are so many better ways we can do things, particularly in the public sector. Without getting into too many details, my biggest issue was seeing taxpayers’ money being wasted. I knew things could be done in a much better way, but saying that, on the other end of the scale, I'm a systems thinker.

I have an ability to be able to see the bigger picture and identify solutions. Having that ‘anything is possible’ approach to life means I'm more than happy to stand up and say to people, “I can see a way out of this, let's put our heads together and find the right people with the right skill sets to create change.”

How can changemakers identify opportunities to effectively redesign built environments, products and services to be more inclusive or sustainable?

It's about putting yourself in a space outside of your normal environment by connecting with groups you wouldn't necessarily normally connect with. That's when you begin to understand people's real lived experiences.

I understand there's nothing better than finding your tribe; finding a group of other social entrepreneurs was the most wonderful feeling where I thought, "finally we're all thinking the same!” But you need that ability to maintain contact with the more traditional thinkers and doers amongst us.

Think about these problems, how they still exist and what we can do to make the changes we need to be living in a much more sustainable environment.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across creating a positive change?

One of the women I met at the retreat, Jean [Darling], set up her organisation Cirque du Soil, which is an amazing initiative looking at the problem of waste. She began by addressing food waste.

Now, together we're looking at reducing construction waste through the lens of film and TV production, to understand how we can better achieve their sustainability outcomes. This brings together two of my favourite things, film/TV production and construction.

I've recently been working with a chap who has an incredible view on data modelling and analysis. I know there's a lot of work being done in this space now, and there's a lot of interest in impact measurement.

There's a guy I've been working with recently in terms of storytelling, data modelling and dashboard creation. His understanding of Power BI and how to bring together all the data we're working with is incredible.

These days, it’s about actually using data to present a different picture to audiences with more traditional mindsets, to be able to help them understand exactly what it is they're working with and looking at. This helps them make better decisions about sustainability within their own organisations.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our audience?

I'm not a fan of books which tell you how to do things, and I guess that goes back to my disdain for peer reviewed papers! For me, and how I've got to where I am now, it’s been about connecting with my true, authentic self. I've been doing that by reading, watching and listening to anything I feel that allows me to do that.

I've been reading some autobiographies to understand how other people and their lives have panned out. I've been reading a book by Sir Ken Robinson called Finding Your Element, which is all about how to work with your passion and make it a successful career. I've also been watching a lot of documentaries to try and figure out how to make my documentary. It’s a good, visual way of understanding how people have done things.

The biggest thing that popped up for me in the last 12 months has been the Impact Boom Reignite Retreat. I booked it at the start of the year just as I was starting to build my tiny house.

I didn't know what it was and what I was going to do when I got there, but when I got there, I found myself amongst the most incredible group of people who helped ignite my creative juices and get me thinking about collaboration and more exciting projects to come.