Women’s Month: Focus on Dr Nadine Sonnenberg
Senior lecturer in the Department of Consumer and Food Sciences

Q: What has been the highlight of your career?
A: As bland as it may seem, and almost ten years since, I would have to say my highlight was the day I submitted my PhD. There are many other amazing highlights following the PhD, which certainly carry more weight from an academic perspective. Still, from a personal perspective, I have never been so happy finishing something riddled with seemingly insurmountable challenges all along the way. I am sure many people with a PhD can relate because life still happens whether you are busy with a PhD or not! To this day, the lessons I learned from that experience shaped much of my thinking and understanding that perseverance and sheer faith can make the impossible possible no matter how high the odds are stacked against it.

Q: What inspires you?
A: The “unexplained”. Whether we are natural or social scientists, there are always some unexplained problems or issues at the core of what we do, which justifies the time and effort we devote toward generating scientific results that can, to some extent, offer explanations and/or solutions for those problems. Yet, regardless of how deep we dig, there will always remain that which is “unexplained” and allows us to stay curious, to continue investigating, and humbly accept that there are limitations to what we know.

Q: What challenges have you experienced in your career?
A: Like many other women in science, my challenge has always been balancing my role as a mom and following a career in academia. In my case, it's being a single mom to a 15-year-old autistic girl, and as I always jokingly maintain, the combination of puberty and autism is not for the faint-hearted! But in this, I recognise immense blessing and gratitude for my chosen career path because it allows me to continue pursuing those things I am passionate about and, with that, a certain amount of flexibility in how and when I engage those pursuits.

Q: What message do you have for the women of South Africa?
A: We live in a performance-driven society, where every day, we are, in one way or another, reminded of what we have not yet achieved and where we have not yet succeeded. There will always be someone doing things better and achieving higher accolades, but each woman has a unique story to tell, and there is an inspiration to find in each of these stories, no matter who you are and what you do. While others might not always grasp the full scope and background of your story (which is also okay!), we, as women, need to sometimes take a moment and reflect on what we managed to get right as opposed to all those things we have not yet achieved and then draw inspiration from that to continue our journey forward, mindful of the prescribed norms and role models, but not to the detriment of our well-being.