Daveena Saranna is the EV Campaigns Manager for our very own Green.TV Media, and has been leading the increasingly large Top Women in EV campaign since the start of the year. After she was crowned as Cox Automotive Europe’s Barbara Cox Woman of the Year last month, we sat down with Daveena to chat about her role, and on wider insights into women in the automotive industry.
Why did you choose to pursue a career in the sustainability and automotive industry?
“Oh, this is a long-winded story, but I think it’s really important. When I was younger, the only thing I was good at in school was Geography. I was obsessed with geography, but really only the human side. And then, one day we watched Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. And I remember feeling so stressed, I literally made myself so unwell thinking about climate change. And I remember going out at lunchtime and everyone just kind of forgot about it and went back to their normal lives. And I was like, guys, how can we live? The planet’s going to end. Like, did we all not view the same thing?
I remember being so emotionally impacted by it. And then I think that speared my love not only for geography, but for sustainability, and climate change-related jobs, climate change subjects, and net zero.
After school, I then went off to do a course in Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick. The first two degrees I did were based around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. And that was really interesting, because it looked at all aspects of sustainability.
But, my family come from an automotive background, and when I was searching for work experience, it was predominantly automotive, and I realised I’d found a gap for reducing carbon emissions within UK transport, and it felt like an obvious marriage between the two.
Once I started working in it, I really enjoyed it, such as when working at Fully Charged, I enjoyed making sustainability and making transport really fun. And now, working at Green.TV, bringing in the gender and equality angle, I just really enjoy it. And, because I’m passionate about it, it’s merging all my interests together.”
You were just crowned as the Barbara Cox Women of the Year. Can you talk to us a little more about that award?
“It’s all been a total whirlwind. I had a nomination email through, and thought it wasn’t for me, even though it had my name on the email, and I had no idea who had nominated me, so I spent two weeks asking around – ‘Was it you? Was it you?’.
Cox Automotive, who run the award, are massive in the industry and they do run loads of great internal initiatives. I just never thought that I’m the award-winning type, or that I would be a part of it. So, I went on the day and they had an amazing lineup of speakers and panels. It was really informative, and it feeds quite nicely into what we do with Top Women in EV at Green.TV. But to win this highly-commended award was really validating. When there are lots of people recognizing your efforts externally, and enjoying what you do, and seeing the wider purpose, that’s both very rewarding and shocking!”
You took the reins of Green.TV’s Top Women in EV campaign back in January. How have you seen the campaign grow since?
“Of course, I didn’t originate this project, and only inherited it back in January. Since then, we’ve not only had an entire rehaul of the campaign’s structure, but also the addition of lots of new elements – like the in-person quarterly events, reinvigorating the mentorship scheme, and thinking about starting a podcast.
These are all valiant and noble efforts, but as a small business, we need to find a way to create an ethical and valuable service for the community whilst maintaining financial health. What I think was difficult but important was finding partners that will work with us and see the value in what we’re doing, even though when we started we hadn’t yet run a Top Women in EV event.”
What moment/s have you been most proud of since taking on the Top Women in EV campaign?
“There are multiple moments I was really proud of – including before my Top Women in EV work. I was really proud to do some of the panel hosting at the 2024 EV Summit as I was really new to the business, having only been there for a couple of weeks.
Doing a lot of filming for my own LinkedIn with different brands has been really cool too – I never thought I’d be somebody that gets press cars and gets to talk about what cars mean. But doing that in a different way, not just about the car itself, but also how it fits into your lifestyle, has been quite important.
Then, moving on to running the Top Women in EV events, getting out there, meeting people who say things like, ‘This has been really influential, I’ve learnt a lot, I want to come back’, I find to be the best moment of all. You can work as hard as you want by yourself, but when you’ve actually built a community compared to the beginning of the year when it was just online, I find it amazing. We’ve brought people together, we’ve got them into fantastic spaces, we’ve networked, and given them actionable insights. Running the events is my favourite part.”
What do you think needs to be done more to help women within the automotive sector?
“I think it starts from school age with the doctrines and the narratives that we instill into children. We need to encourage young girls to be excited about automotive and that’s not just for STEM roles, that’s marketing, data and insights, finance. Seeing how automotive fits into our wider lives, seeing how it fits into cities, and keeping that love for it alive and saying that there’s more to life than STEM.
There’s more to automotive than STEM too. If you’re not an engineer, you don’t have to be one to work in that sector. Are you good at operations? Are you good at communications? Are you a good team leader? Those are all really important skills. Then, going through to university, graduate placements are so important for young girls that need a break in automotive.
Also, when you’ve got women in your organisation, what are you doing to keep them there? A few organisations, like Kia and AutoTrader, were voted as some of the sector’s best employers. So what are they doing that works really well?
Some of it is small stuff like offering period products in your bathroom. That’s something a small business could easily do, but some of it is much larger gender equity work that again takes a lot of thought and a lot of care to make all employees feel equal. That’s what makes women feel like they have a voice and they’re in a supportive culture. So, it’s not just the practical things, but also how are you treated in the workplace? How do your colleagues stand up for you, support you, and uplift you?
Building that culture is really really important to make sure that women feel supported and they enjoy going to work and they feel like they’re not disadvantaged in any way.”
Have you found it easy to get men involved in the Top Women in EV campaign?
“I think, and this isn’t a blame game, that when we email out Top Women in EV invites, people assume it’s for women only. And actually, part of the restructuring of the campaign has been to bring men along in the journey and say we’re all learning together. We’re all learning different things, but we’re on the journey together. And, actually, the more that you can commit to this, the more you can understand the different challenges that exist for the women in your team or your business, the better employee or employer you can become.
I have heard some people say ‘why isn’t there a top men in EV?’, and I hate when people say that as a joke as it’s just a way to disguise misogyny. It is difficult – yes, we have a really supportive community, but outside of that, there is quite a lot of resistance. That just means we have to work harder and better in the services that we offer and people we engage with, which thus far has been fantastic. And our partners are really supportive too.”
What do you think about the way cars are generally marketed and reviewed towards women?
“There’s definitely more work to be done. I mean, I work in automotive and I’m starting to love cars, but 18 months ago, two years ago, I literally did not care. I think a lot of women, and men, just want a vehicle to get them from A to B in the most cost-efficient, sustainable, and comfortable way.
If all of those three things can be done together, amazing. And when I’m doing those reviews, that’s what I have in mind. How do I view this car? How does it fit into my lifestyle? I don’t care about the boot capacity in litres, because that’s so impractical. When do I ever measure my bags and think ‘that’s 250 litres’?
I want to know the answers to questions like: Can I take it on a road trip? How will I charge it? Can I have pets in the car? Can I have car seats in the car? Can my friends that are all different shapes and sizes fit in the car? These are the vital things that I actually want to know.
It’s the practicality of the car that is the seller. And, after your house, your car is probably the second largest purchase that you’ll ever make. I said this on the podcast that I did with Auto Trader. OEMs have so much work to do in terms of how they market their vehicles, because data has shown that women are the majority car buyer. If we’re making financial decisions, why are you not marketing it to us as a lifestyle piece?
Get it into women’s media, write about it in a way that we want to to understand it, use it in music videos and pop culture, like it’s not just this secular thing. When we look at how cars are marketed to men, they’re in aftershave adverts, they’re in clothing adverts, they are in movies, they’re in soundtracks. Why? Because it’s represented to be essential to who a man is. But cars are a way of getting around for women. Mobility is important for your self-esteem, for the economy, for the way that you live your life. Why do we not associate that with women? That winds me up a treat.”
Thanks to Daveena for taking part in our EV Leaders series. You can find out more about our Top Women in EV campaign, here.
