Electronics Weekly
Founded in 1989 in Belgium, Melexis has grown to employ more than 2,000 people in 12 countries. It is a very different company from when it was created 35 years ago by Françoise, her husband, Rudi de Winter who served as CEO, and Roland Duchatelet, who remains a board director.
Melexis began as a “tiny startup in Belgium”, making custom asics in the year the Berlin wall fell. Today it is a company with a range of semiconductor products and international operations in the former East Germany and Bulgaria. In 2000 a site in Kyiv was opened because “in Western Europe we couldn’t find the engineering resources we needed to uphold our growth ambitions”, says Françoise. Since then, the company has taken “early steps” into the US, and expanded into Asia (first Hong Kong, then Japan, Korea and China).
In addition to edge sensors and drivers, the company specialises in EV powertrains, thermal management and batteries, e-braking and e-steering, and lighting for the automotive sector. It also operates in emerging markets, for example, robotics, sustainability solutions, alternative mobility and health applications.
Route to Melexis
Her mother was her first role model. She was, says Françoise, a free-spirited and intelligent woman who was a rep in a textile machinery company. “She was very demanding for herself and also for the children, but in a positive way. What she taught me is a true growth mindset: ‘Whatever you do in life, with your studies or your work, try to be the best and get the most out of your talent.’ So that’s what I did.”
Françoise says she was also lucky to have encountered “a myriad of fascinating people along the way, who have been, wittingly or unwittingly, my mentors, coaches, and sponsors”.
Not having an engineering degree (she has a Masters in applied languages) moreover did not impress the engineers, she recalls, but by asking basic questions (“why? what? who? how?”) she became involved in problem-solving. As the company grew, the engineers started to value the diverse points of view she brought. “The first time they asked me to come and help them get unstuck, I knew I had earned my place among them,” she says.
She was careful, however, not to be complacent. “Credibility improves over time, but it shouldn’t be taken for granted, it has always to be earned,” she advises.
Promoting STEM
As president of the STEM platform, an advisory board to the Flemish government, Françoise is helping to encourage young people to pursue a science, technology, engineering, or mathematics education and to enhance the reputation of STEM with the general public. She also supports the EU STEM Coalition, a European-wide network of national and regional STEM organisations, and the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives of SEMI Europe and GSA. “My long-term commitment to actively advocating more STEM, more diversity in tech, and more gender balance is driven by a profound belief in their positive societal impact,” she says.
She believes an inclusive culture, allowing many diverse perspectives, is key to innovation and therefore to prosperity and well-being, in all walks of life, not just industry. “Diverse teams generate more and better ideas, leading to better products and services for their customers, leading thus to increased market share and better financial results,” she explains.
She identifies a global phenomenon that the STEM pipeline is “leaky”, and “it’s leakier for girls than for boys”, she says. She is concerned about significant drop-off points for women in tech, namely after secondary education and at workforce entrance.
She also identifies the STEM-gender paradox. “In countries where gender equality is high on the legal agenda, the female STEM inflow tends to be lower, and vice versa. There’s a complex set of reasons, economic, sociological, cultural beliefs and narratives, unconscious and cognitive bias, and family science capital,” she says, describing it as “a multi-layered puzzle to disentangle and solve”.
Her strategy to tackle these issues would begin with self-examination, to uncover unconscious biases.
With this awareness, she believes, people can adjust the perspectives of the younger generation to strengthen the STEM pipeline from a very early age. “You can’t be what you can’t see. Industry professionals must reach out to schools and talk to kids and youngsters, particularly about the gifted women who have been pioneers in the tech field and there are really, really many,” she urges.
“Finally, it’s not the women who need changing, it’s the culture. If ‘leaning in’ means that women should be more like men, then we are missing the whole point and we’re not getting the best out of the diversity we may be carefully building up in our organisations,” she continues. “Shifting the balance will not happen unless (next to women) more men in power positions start acting as allies and sponsors to create systemic cultural change.”
She is proud that Melexis has a consistent yearly increase in the percentage of female hires, two out of five women in its C-suite and 50/50 male/female members on the board.
Today, Françoise relies on advice she received from her life coach 20 years ago. He told her: “You are the CEO. Be your role.”
It’s “as simple as that”, she says. “Be your role, not your gender, not your age, not where you came from.
She recommends reading ‘The Gendered Brain’ by cognitive neuroscientist Gina Rippon, which discusses the gender difference in self-esteem, in which men consistently score higher. “Women seem more self-critical and much more likely to underrate their work performance and have a greater fear of disapproval than men. Self-esteem may be nearly as vital for our well-being as adequate food or shelter,” says Françoise.
“Now, I’m aware that gender is a spectrum, but for the sake of argument here, I’m taking the simple dichotomy of male and female,” she continues. “We’re constantly bombarded with gender stereotypes, such as STEM is a boy’s thing. Boys are praised for getting things right and criticised for bad behaviour. Girls are praised for good behaviour and criticised more for making mistakes. This affects girls’ self-esteem negatively and they then tend to avoid environments and disciplines like STEM because they have the feeling they don’t belong there. The pain of social rejection activates the same areas as physical pain, so it’s clear why belonging influences our well-being.”
Her advice to young girls that love STEM subjects but feel they don’t fit in is: “Whenever this feeling, sometimes misdiagnosed as imposter syndrome, hits you, pause, and think ‘I need to be my role, not my gender’. It has worked like a charm for me.”
She also urges them to look for inspiration from women who pursue STEM professions with passion and success. “Seek role models and mentors. If you can see it, you can be it! Don’t let anything keep you from your talent and your dream.”
