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SPEAKER_03: Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Womanica. This bonus episode is brought to you by Mercedes-Benz. This July, we're celebrating dynamos. Women who led dynamic lives that shifted, evolved, and bloomed, often later in life, eventually achieving the success they were destined for from the start. Today's Womanican actually found her passions early, but she didn't rest until she found her niche and brought all her expertise to a role that fit her like a glove. Please meet Kimberly Stevens.
SPEAKER_01: My name is Kimberly Stevens. I'm a senior truck side aerodynamicist for Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One team. I'm maximizing the performance of all of the surfaces that you see on the car.
SPEAKER_03: Kimberly grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio called Brecksville.
SPEAKER_01: It's very safe and very pretty, and the schools are good. But I think I would also call it pretty boring. Everything looks the same. All the houses look the same. Let's be honest, the people all look the same. I was much more interested in other stuff, even as a young person living here, and I was really fortunate to find a group of kids as friends who were also interested in less suburban things, shall we say.
SPEAKER_03: Kimberly got a job baking bagels. On the weekends, she and her friends would take the money they earned downtown to Cleveland's art scene. This exposed her to new experiences outside her suburban life. It helped her gain the confidence she needed to invest in an unexpected passion, cars.
SPEAKER_01: I still don't have a good answer for where my love of cars came from, apart from that I always have loved them. There are stories of me not walking very well. That's how young I was, and just like running away from my family to go look at a car or a motorcycle. I think it may have been the sound. Even now, what really gets me excited about anything motorized is actually the sound. No good reason why I like cars, other than, I think, maybe the best reason, which is I was just born to like them. Kimberly followed that love to Ohio State,
SPEAKER_03: where she studied aerospace engineering. She quickly realized she could apply the concepts she was studying to her interest in cars. She put those skills to work her freshman year when she joined an Ohio State student project developing a land speed car. It was called the Buckeye Bullet. So it's really long, sort of pencil-shaped thing.
SPEAKER_01: Comes up to your waist and height at most. We were a little bit like the black sheep of the Ohio State student projects. There was several car teams there, and they all have like, between two and three cars, and they all have like between 20 and 50 students involved. And we were the Buckeye Bullet. We had this massive electric car, and we were like 12 kids that worked on it. You know, so we were a little bit the weirdo nerdy kids.
SPEAKER_03: Test runs for the Buckeye Bullet had a lot riding on them. The car could only be tested out in the Bonneville salt flats in Utah. Out there, away from the garage, it was nearly impossible to repair any major malfunctions. And the team had several high-profile sponsors banking on it.
SPEAKER_01: And so if it just finishes in a ball of fire, like that's really bad.
SPEAKER_03: In August, they hit the salt flats for a trial run. It did not go as planned. The car started leaking bright teal gearbox fluid. Out in the salt flats, the crew had no way of fixing it. That was it, week over.
SPEAKER_03: Kimberly wasn't gonna give up. The team regrouped, repaired the car, and set off again in October.
SPEAKER_03: This time was different. The Buckeye Bullet set a land speed record, 321 miles per hour. While she was still in college, Kimberly worked with Honda Research and Development Americas. She used her knowledge of aerodynamics to optimize the car's systems. Whether the goal was to get a car up to speed on the highway or make sure washer fluid hit the windshield just right, Kimberly was on the job. Just a few weeks after graduating, Kimberly's love of racing took her across the Atlantic. She signed a contract to work in Formula One racing in Switzerland. Seven years later, in 2013, she joined the F1 team at Mercedes-Benz. Formula One wasn't a straight trajectory.
SPEAKER_01: We won a few races, but it was still a bit of a low-key existence. Even though we were Mercedes-Benz, they had had quite a few challenging years. They weren't at the front. Even if you look back at pictures of the team gear we wear, this is our team gear now. It's this lovely white pressed shirt. That's what we wear at the track. And back then it was polos. You know, we looked a bit ragtag.
SPEAKER_03: Kimberly and the other members of the team got to work. She remembered her lessons switching gears when the Buckeye bullet hit a dead end. And then 2014, goodness me, did we have a weapon of a car.
SPEAKER_01: Before long, the Mercedes-Benz team was on top.
SPEAKER_03: And we basically won everything.
SPEAKER_01: And that success more or less continued for eight years. The team became a lot more polished in appearance and in operation. And we had a lot more scrutiny on us. Once you win a single time, the expectation is there that you will keep winning.
SPEAKER_03: Kimberly knew that working at Mercedes-Benz was an important step towards changing the industry she loved so much.
SPEAKER_01: The only thing that really matters to Formula One is the performance, right? It is about nothing else than making two cars go fast. In the end, if you're good and you work hard, that's all that matters. All that matters is you and how much you can contribute. So, you know, when I joined the sport, there were not a lot of girls around and in particular in the engineering disciplines. So Mercedes has taken a really big effort to recruit people from lots of different backgrounds.
SPEAKER_03: Her dedication goes beyond making sure Mercedes-Benz shines on the racetrack. Kimberly and Mercedes-Benz are working to ensure that the company is a place for folks to live dynamic careers, where anyone can achieve their peak performance. You know, some of my proudest moments
SPEAKER_01: have been in the more higher-profile situations that I've had, being with Mercedes Formula One at the track. There's a part of me that knows that girls are looking at this and thinking, yep, totally possible now. Whereas it wasn't necessarily like that, even in the early 2000s when I was a kid. You didn't watch racing and see a lot of women around.
SPEAKER_03: Kimberly's learned from her time at Mercedes-Benz that success requires determination. When the going gets tough, she remembers her team's motto.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine your counterpart in our competition. Do better, because that's how we win. You know, it's something that I kind of have lived by, in particular when things get a bit hard or you're a bit tired and you think, oh, I want to give up. You think, no, because maybe the trackside arrow at Ferrari, they're still finding performance or they're still doing something. And if I give up, no way, not happening.
SPEAKER_03: All month, we're talking about dynamos. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram, at Wamanica Podcast. Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. Talk to you on Monday.
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SPEAKER_00: Do you hear it? The clock is ticking. It's time for the new season of 60 Minutes. The CBS News Sunday Night Tradition is back for its 56th season with all new big name interviews, hard-hitting investigations, and epic adventures. No place, no one, no story is off limits, and you'll always learn something new. It's time for 60 Minutes. New episode airs Sunday, September 24th on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
SPEAKER_04: How rude, Tanneritos. A Full House rewatch podcast is here. Join us as hosts Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber look back on their journey together as the iconic characters we all love, Stephanie Tanner and Kimmy Gibbler. Here's a quick preview brought to you by the Hyundai Tucson. We spent our entire childhoods
SPEAKER_06: on a little show called Full House, playing frenemies but becoming besties whenever the cameras weren't rolling. And now 35 years later, it's our biggest adventure yet.
SPEAKER_04: You can listen to How Rude, Tanneritos on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the Hyundai Tucson. It's your journey.
