Jessica Sun
Jessica Sun, born in China, came to the Netherlands when she was 11 years old and strong as she was in mathematics, she chose the Nature & Technology profile at secondary school as one of the few girls at the time. When choosing her studies, she wanted to continue doing something technical but was also curious about how technical solutions were actually put into practice. To this end, she found the right mix in the Bachelor's degree in Technical Public Administration at TU Delft, followed by the MSc Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis & Management at the TPM faculty, which she completed in 2009. When studying in Delft, she was finally no longer the only girl. In 2011-2012, Jessica pursued an executive MBA at Nyenrode.
Jessica dreams of a world where engineering is not ‘boring, difficult and for men’. ‘Is that possible, a world where we together have, and make, a different image of engineering and technology? What would that world look like? I think quite beautiful.’
When Jessica started working after her studies, she was again guided by curiosity. For instance, she really wanted to know what the inside of a large system bank was like when she received a wake-up call during the financial crisis. In subsequent jobs, Jessica has been responsible for various organisational transformations at both corporates and start-ups/scale-ups. As such, she has been able to witness developments in technology up close over the past 15 years.
Now a mother of three, Jessica grew to realise that despite all the good and relevant things children learn at school, they have to deal with a sparse and not structurally embedded provision of engineering and technology in the curriculum. She found it difficult to merge this with her view that it is crucial that our children, and certainly the generation growing up now and soon to function in a technology-integrated world, get a really good foundation in this. All this resulted in an even stronger motivation to chase her dream and embark on a new adventure as founder of Let the Sun Shine and chairman of a non-profit where technology is made accessible and exciting to a wide audience.
Jessica still sees a number of additional courses that will enable her to gain everything she needs to embark on her new adventure later on: a lecture series on Strategic Communication at Nyenrode, the basic course on Intellectual Property at Leiden University/Leiden Law Academy and an intensive learning course on (e)Learning Design for learning professionals at Study Centre for Business and Government. With the help of the Marina van Damme scholarship, Jessica would like to take these steps.
‘It feels like something substantially different from what I have done so far. At the same time, I suspect that my analytical and creative abilities will take me a long way here too. And it feels insanely good to be able to do business like this from my mission.’