Making Motorsports a more Diverse Space with Maia Rowe-Sampson

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Getting her start in Motorsports

#1. What was the first moment that you can remember discovering motorsports?

I think the first moment that I heard about motorsport was when I was a child, but that didn't really have much of an impact on me because it was just always on in pubs.

That was the only influence then. BUT it was when my wife was talking about it in our house all the time that I became interested. That was the the main introduction to motorsports. She was just talking about all of these random men and I didn't know who these people were.

Once she gave me the lowdown on all of the drivers, the season came back and we were just watching all the time!

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#2. When did you decide that this is where you wanted to build your career?

Prior to doing anything in motorsport, I was working in science outreach. I was doing a lot of work for really big, 'heartless' companies like BP and Pfizer. I actually really realized that, they weren't doing science outreach in a very exciting way.

It was quite boring. At the same time, I was learning about all of this stuff with motorsport and how interesting all of the science was there.

I thought, " OH, this is a really good way for us to make science more interesting", and so I came at my job from that angle.

Obviously, there's the notion that motorsports is a very exciting and competitive space where - because it's growing so quickly, there's a lot of .... I don't know if disruption is the right word, but you can make quite a lot of change quickly.

I think that's quite exciting!

Maia's Current Role

#3. Since this is your first role and it's quite unique, describe your role!

The Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers, which I'm going to refer to as AFBE, is a nonprofit organization that helps people from ethnic minorities who are either working in engineering, want to work in engineering, or are young people who may have never heard of it - interested in engineering.

They've existed for over 10 years in the UK. Over the years, they've been doing some amazing work, but generally most of what we do is not motorsports specific. We got the motorsport specific program about 2 years ago when they added the Ignite Program (previously managed by Mercedes).

Mission 44 may have been running it for a bit, but AFBE took it on from Mission 44. We started to have a lot of motorsport specific things. My role is a program manager... so I literally manage the program which helps young people get an interest in STEM through motorsport. It's what I do!

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#4. What does a standard day look like for you at work?

I guess every day is super different.

For example, today I had a event in a school. Most of my day was taken up by actually delivering the program. We were talking about how nutrition and fitness are related to motorsport.

Most of my days I'm trying to liaise with our core partners, which are F1 teams for me. I also work with other nonprofits who do science outreach in schools.

On top of that, I plan and then do loads of data analysis. That's not the most fun part, to be honest. It's not F1 data analysis. It's more, "Did you enjoy the session?" So, every day is very different.

I think I'd get bored if it was the same thing over and over again. I don't know how people do that.

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‍#5. What are the most rewarding and the most challenging parts of working with children and AFBE?

Rewarding

The most rewarding part is definitely working with young people and seeing ones who haven't had any interest or any exposure, get motivated.

I think when we're in this world, we think everyone knows what motorsport is, but most of them have no idea.

So, seeing them understand is amazing, and hopefully it helps motivate them to keep studying science or something. We're not trying to get everyone to work in motorsport, but hopefully it helps them understand why science is cool, rather than them thinking that it has no use.

So that's really cool. I also work with a lot of older people who want to get into motorsports, so helping them out is really nice as well.

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Difficult

The most challenging part is that doing anything with F1 - when you're not in F1 - is really hard. The teams don't want to work together because they're competitive.

So, it makes it quite difficult to do the same thing with every team or to even get time from them because they're busy and this isn't a priority for them. Well, it might be, because they've signed a charter, but we'll see how much of a difference that makes.

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#6. What are the top 3 qualities that have helped you succeed?

Being very organized

The most important thing is being super organized. I'm dealing with a lot of different schools, a lot of different organizations, I have volunteers - so just trying to get everyone in the same place is a lot of logistics and organizational work. Once you're at an event, it's actually quite easy. It's just the organization of it, which is quite difficult.

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Flexibility

I think being flexible and adaptable. In this field, so much can go wrong, so much can suddenly change - suddenly someone doesn't have funding for this thing, so you have to apply for a different thing, or for if we have a volunteer from F1, suddenly there might be something that they have to do because someone's crashed. That's something that is a knock on effect.

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Clear articulation and communication

I feel like all I do is organise. That's my entire life. I don't know if this is a skill, but being able to explain things simply.

Obviously, in motorsports, everything is very technical, and I have quite young kids that I'm speaking to. A lot of the kids I'm working with are ~11 years old and so they don't know any of that technical language. I have to clearly explain things in words they WILL understand.

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Maia's Advice

#7. If you could go back and change anything about your path to where you are today, what would that be?

Yeah, this is my first role in motorsport. So I guess, when I was younger, I was very concerned with having a very linear career.

I think my advice would be to not stress out too much about following a path that people would expect you to. I always say you'll probably end up in the same place no matter how you got there.

I was very stressed when I was 18.

#8. If you could give one piece of advice to someone looking to follow in your footsteps what would that be?

You have to network like crazy and be very open to a lot of different roles.

I guess my equivalent in teams would be in the sustainability team within motorsports teams. That's something that, until I started this role, I didn't even realize that's what it was called.

You have to be very open, network, and understand how all of these teams work because it's not always clear.

I don't know whether that's on purpose or because no one has ever written it down.... Networking and spending time understanding how the field works is very important.

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Maia's Favorites

#9. What is your favorite race/ event/ moment that you’ve had in your career thus-far?

This isn't necessarily my favorite moment BUT it was the moment I realized, "okay, this is something that exists as a role in this space."

This was Silverstone 2023. I had the opportunity to work with Mission 44 with a group of students I was working with separately from my current role and take them to the Paddock on Media Day. It was a really cool experience because I have been to other paddocks on media days, as media, but I've never been as a guest who was shown around.

The Head of Sustainability at Silverstone came to talk to us. It was absurd. Just the effect that it had on the kids was huge, and it was wild that that opportunity happened.

It wasn't even for me, it was for the kids I was taking, but I felt so excited too. It was really surreal, because we hadn't done anything like that.

The kids were obviously not very big fans, so I dragged them through the paddock to meet George Russell. They thought it was cool afterwards, but at the time they were like, "I don't know who this man is."

Yeah, no, immediately afterwards they were like, "Oh my god, that was so cool, thank you for doing that!"

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#10. You are obviously very active on social media with your wife Manon under Mania Onboard - how do you think being so online and ingrained in F1 discourse has affected the way you do your job?

There's definitely impact. I don't think I would have gotten this job if it wasn't for Mania Onboard.

Having an online presence, no matter what you're talking about, particularly in motorsport, is very important. It's a space that really values having a platform.

I think my work with AFBE impacts what we do with Mania Onboard more than the other way around because I'm very aware of the issues surrounding, Formula One. Whether I make videos about it, or if it's something I bring up when we're, when we get to meet people, happens more often than not.

It's cool to say, "No, I actually know that these are the issues and this is how you change things. I guess it gives me a bit more credibility rather than just being someone who makes TikTok videos.

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