Fig O’Reilly, NASA datanaut and beauty queen: ‘When are we going to stop minimising women to just one thing?’

Given the success she has experienced in her career so far, a fact that speaks to her abundant capabilities, it is somewhat surprising that, growing up, Fig (Fionnghuala) O’Reilly, engineer, NASA Datanaut, correspondent for CBS show Mission Unstoppable, Engineers Ireland Ambassador, and Miss Universe Ireland 2019, never even considered a career in STEM as an option. “Never. Not once,” she tells me now when we speak on Zoom. Fig, whose mother is from San Francisco, father from Sutton, Dublin,...