What does it take to spend nearly forty years at the sharp edge of electronics engineering, while also reshaping who gets to walk through the door? For Dr Carol Marsh OBE, the answer has never been about choosing one path over the other. She has built a career defined by both.
Dr Marsh is Engineering Director at Celestia UK, an SME behind the world’s first Ka-Band Electronically Scanned Phase Array Antenna Gateway. It is the kind of innovation that quietly reshapes an entire industry, built on decades of technical grounding that began with an HND in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Edinburgh Napier University in 1985.
From there, her career reads like a map of Britain’s engineering landscape. She moved through senior design roles at GEC Marconi Avionics, BAE Systems and ECS Technology, before taking up research and leadership positions at Algotronix and Leonardo. Along the way, she earned a Doctor of Engineering in System Level Integration, a qualification awarded jointly by the Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Heriot Watt and Strathclyde in 2011, making her an alumna of five Scottish universities.
Her career highlights include:
- Engineering Director at Celestia UK, delivering pioneering satellite gateway technology
- An OBE awarded in 2020 for services to Diversity and Inclusion in Electronic Engineering
- Induction into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame in 2023
- An Honorary Doctorate from Edinburgh Napier University in 2023
- Named Strathclyde University’s Alumna of the Year in 2022
- Winner of the Novi STEM Leader of the Year Award in 2023
Technical achievement is only half of the story. Since 2005, Dr Marsh has volunteered as a STEM Ambassador, using her own path into engineering to open doors for others. She has taken on leadership roles across some of Scotland’s oldest and most respected institutions, serving as Vice President of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, Trustee of the Institution of Engineers in Scotland, Trustee of the Edinburgh Trades Funds and Deacon of the Incorporation of Hammermen of Edinburgh.
She is also Past President of the Women’s Engineering Society and a former Vice President and Trustee of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, roles that placed her at the centre of national conversations about who studies engineering, who stays in it, and who ends up leading it.
It is this dual commitment, to precision engineering and to widening the field around it, that makes her such a natural fit for the Novi Awards judging panel. Judges are chosen not just for what they have achieved, but for what they can recognise in others, and few understand the shape of a promising engineering career better than someone who has spent decades building one while pulling others up alongside her.
Great engineering rarely happens in isolation. Dr Marsh’s career is proof that the strongest technical legacies are the ones built alongside a genuine commitment to the people coming up behind you.
The Novi Awards celebrate the achievements of exceptional women in business and leadership. Nominations may be closed, but the door to entry is still open.
