GET TO KNOW KATRINA...
Katrina Jean-Laflamme is one of the co-founders and the Chief Operating Officer at Ukkö Robotics. Ukkö Robotics is on a mission to change how we grow today's food and provide farmers with tools to help them be more efficient in their everyday operations.
Katrina has a passion for regenerative farming and realized in her journey that our job as farmers is to educate people on how things are done or can be done so that we can move food forward together. She graduated in mechanical engineering at Polytechnique Montreal University and worked on various public transport HVAC projects, industrial robots, farm automation, and marketing. Being involved with these projects gave her valuable experience and taught her that everything can be learnt no matter how hard it seems at first.
Q & A
QUESTION 1)
Q: What is it like to be a woman in bioscience?
A: I think it is an exciting time to be a woman in Bioscience. There are endless possibilities of where to be and which project to work on.
QUESTION 2)
Q: Who or what inspired you to become an engineer?
A: My father was an aerospace engineer, so since I was a kid, he inspired me to become an engineer, but my partner Daniel Badiou inspired me to make a difference in regenerative agriculture.
QUESTION 3)
Q: Would you say that through your career, things have become better for women working in the bioscience industry?
A: Absolutely! More and more female leaders are emerging and talking about their career history, inspiring the next generation of women to specialize in Bioscience.
QUESTION 4)
Q: What are the biggest obstacles you had to overcome?
A: The lack of experience/knowledge was a big obstacle when I started UkköRobotics. I didn’t know much about business at the time and the same about farming, so in the first years, I familiarized myself with the new environments and most of the time, I didn’t know where to start. With the years, I realized that there is not only one good path, and you need to try and go one step at a time.
QUESTION 5)
Q: If you had the option to give advice to a youngerversion of yourself, what would that be?
A: Fail fast, constantly learn new skills and get out of your comfort zone as often as possible.
FAVOURITE QUOTE
"You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."
- Maya Angelou
CONTACT INFORMATION
LinkedIn: @Katrina Jean-laflamme