#7 – Lisa Winter, Engineering Project Manager at Mattel

Lisa Winter is a roboticist, rapid prototyper and an Engineering Project Manager at Mattel.
Selected Topics: Battle robots, being a maker, and asserting your authority as a woman in tech.
About Lisa: A roboticist since childhood, Lisa has 20 years of experience designing and building robots. She has competed in all U.S. Robot Wars and BattleBots competitions since 1996, including ABC’s BattleBots. Lisa was recently named one of the Top 25 Women in Robotics You Need to Know About by Robohub. She has been inventing and rapid prototyping connected devices since the beginning of the IoT movement. She’s currently an Engineering Project Manager at Mattel, developing a smart wearable baby monitor. At night she builds robots, and dreams of ways to help animals and the environment.
Reads SHE RECOMMENDS
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Fast Company Magazine
Wired Magazine
Books by Ray Kurzweil
TRANSCRIPTION
Note: The text below reflects constructive editing of the published audio for clarity and flow. Time stamps indicate a change of topic.
Erin Allard: In today’s episode, we’re in the Berkeley, CA workshop of Lisa Winter, Engineering Project Manager at Mattel and BattleBots competitor. Don’t miss this episode if you’re interested in building battle robots, nurturing your maker mindset, and why we don’t need to fear a robot uprising.
Erin: Thanks for joining us for another episode of the WITtalks podcast, I’m Erin Allard your producer and co-host.
Tammy Sanders: I’m Tammy Sanders, your co-host.
Lisa Winter: And I’m Lisa Winter.
Erin: We’re here in Berkeley with Lisa Winter, a lifetime roboticist. She’s going to spend some time with us telling us about how she got into robotics.
Tammy: And why we need more women in tech!
Erin: Yep.
[1:05] Tammy: We’re going to start off pretty straightforward and just give some context to listeners about who you are and how you came to be, just a bit about your life story that you think is relevant.
Lisa: I’m from Wisconsin, so very midwestern. Think lots of snow, dark winters where everyone’s staying inside. It gives you a lot of time to create stuff and to build. My parents are both artists so I have a lot of artistic background.
Tammy: What kind of artists were your parents?
Lisa: My mom’s a graphic designer and then my dad did mainly computers. He also did jewelry back in college and they both painted, so it’s really everything.
Erin: It seems like they’re not limited to any one medium, they’re just creators in the true sense of the word.
Lisa: Exactly, and before the DIY (Do It Yourself) movement, true hippies I may say.
[1:54] Tammy: Right on. You said growing up there were cold, dark winters, a lot of time inside to create, so what kind of things did you create when you were a kid?
Lisa: For example, as a kid I would say, “Hey, I want to play a game.” And my dad would say, “Well, why would we go out and buy one if we can create one?” So we had a whole day of, “Let’s invent something. Let’s invent the story, let’s do the art, let’s make it.”
Erin: That’s pretty amazing.
Tammy: Wow, it sounds like that creative spirit was totally nurtured in you by your pa...