How to Become an Automotive Engineer: One Woman's Remarkable Journey

Women in the World

For Jackie Birdsall, developing clean-energy automobiles is about more than just protecting the environment. For her, it's a humanitarian effort.

Jackie Birdsall’s job includes shooting a gun at hydrogen tanks in the wilderness to see if they explode. Birdsall isn’t a member of a special ops team; she is one of two senior engineers at Toyota North America charged with building the company’s hydrogen fuel cell sedan, the Mirai. She thinks putting the Mirai’s hydrogen fuel tanks to extreme tests is just one part of the best job in the world.
How did this intelligent, articulate, and vibrant 32-year-old woman ascend to such a groundbreaking engineering position? This story does not begin: “A child prodigy who designed a nuclear plant at the age of five . . .” In fact, before Birdsall went to college, she didn’t know engineering existed.

Parental Guidance Suggested
Birdsall grew up in a small community near Sacramento, Calif., which she describes as “an ideal American-life suburb that backed up on a great wilderness.” With her mother, a veterinarian and environmental advocate; her father, a lobbyist and education activist; and her four siblings, Birdsall’s family did volunteer work on a regular basis. “My parents instilled in us a desire to do what we could to impact society and improve the lives of the people around us. And each of us was encouraged to follow our passion, whether or not my parents agreed with us or understood it. I’m pretty lucky to have the parents I have.”
She found destiny at age 15. “My best friend got her license when she turned 16, and her parents bought her an old Honda Civic. It was around the time Fast and Furious came out, which was the coolest movie ever. I fell in love—with cars.”
Modifying cars was the thing to do in Birdsall’s circle of friends. The two girls embarked on a mission to swap out the corner lights on the Civic. “We had no understanding of what we were doing. Neither of our dads knew how to turn a wrench. We didn’t know parts or what tools were needed. We spent hours working blindly.” They ended up removing the entire front end of the car only to learn that the job consisted of a clip and a bolt. But it was that act of tearing something apart and putting it back together that started her on the path to being an engineer.