THE ASSOCIATE
Ezster Gulacsy’s educational background is, for want of a better phrase, pretty astounding.
She grew up in a city in south-east Hungary, and when she was 16, won a scholarship to spend a year at high school in Pennsylvania, USA. She returned to Hungary to finish her exams, applying as she did so to various US Universities: “You can imagine my surprise when I got the FedEx package with an acceptance letter and a generous financial aid package from Harvard! FedEx was practically non- existent in Hungary at the time, so people in our street were gossiping for a while about the strange car that made the delivery!”
The next four years were spent in Cambridge, Massachusettes, studying Chemistry. “Although I was originally quite interested in pharmaceutical chemistry,” she says, “during my last year I became interested in environmental and water chemistry.” This led her to pursue graduate studies at the Department of Environmental Engineering at Berkeley, University of California. “Before that however, I was lucky enough to get funding to study oceanography at the Bermuda Institute of Oceanographic Sciences.”
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It was here that she met the English man who is now her husband, hence her eventual arrival in the UK almost ten years ago.
Based on all that, it comes as no surprise to say that she is now an Associate at Mott MacDonald, and in charge of a team of seven consultants. “I’m based in Cambridge, but at the moment I spend about 50% of my time on projects in London. I manage a team of consultants of various levels of seniority, who report to me. We work on a wide range of projects involving energy modelling, energy and sustainability strategies, building benchmarking such as LEED and BREEAM and consult on potential health effects of construction materials. I am also a chartered engineer and member of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers.”
“My upbringing may be regarded as peculiar in the UK, as in Eastern Europe, chivalry is still alive, whereas in the
West some of those customs are now regarded as outdated or anti-feminist, but I consider them quite the opposite.” This is a factor that impacts upon how she views women in the workplace. “I have always been aware of cultural differences about how women are treated in different countries,” she continues. “Having been to many places and having experienced quite a handful of these cultures, I think I am reasonably open to the different ways women are treated in different countries – as long as that treatment is positive. In my professional life, again, I have not been treated negatively in any open way, but I do think there is a lot of unconscious bias that favours men in the workplace.”
With this in mind, we go on to discuss that in the workplace, men in managerial positions are often regarded as strong, respectable leaders, whereas women are sometimes accused of being hard-faced or heartless. “I have met many male managers who could
In order for a woman to be a good manager, I don’t think she has to turn into a pitbull.
Women in Flooring: Tomorrow's Flooring
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