ERIN WINICK ANTHONY’S CAREER STARTED with an unusual dilemma for an engineering student: journalism or mechanical engineering.
The engineering side had been there since childhood, from LEGOs to paper towel roll marble runs taped around her parents’ house. It all pointed to the same basic instinct: she liked making things.
But the storytelling side was also present. “I was editor in chief of my high school paper,” she said. “Sometimes you’re making a hinge for a tractor, other times you’re putting together quotes and writing to craft the story you want to tell.”
Anthony ultimately took the mechanical engineering route at the University of Florida, where the chance to use lathes and mills, weld, and make the parts she had modeled in CAD with her own hands made it feel like the right fit.
When she told engineering professors she still had an interest in writing, the suggested path was not quite what she had in mind. “They were like, awesome, you could be a technical writer and write manuals. That’s not exactly what I was looking for,” she said.
Off the Beaten Path
Science communication was not a career Anthony thought she could pursue. The early examples she knew of were Bill Nye and the MythBusters, which made that job seem like TV show host or bust. She kept her writing to a side hustle, writing articles for Engineering.com, education companies, and other projects.
It got her wondering if there was a way to combine the two beyond documenting manuals. “A lot of the [engineers] around me didn’t like to write and didn’t like to communicate,” she said. “I realized I found a niche here that needs to be filled.”
After graduation, she faced uncertainty. The metric of success was going on to get your master’s degree or a job at a big company, she said. But she knew that wasn't the path she wanted to follow.
“There’s a hesitation of like, I feel like I’m leaving engineering behind,” she said. “There’s [the expectation] that I have to go take this hard technical route. But in engineering, we need people that overlap with so many other different areas to be successful.”
After landing a science journalism internship at The Economist, Anthony joined MIT Technology Review as an associate editor. She later moved to NASA, where she spent nearly four years working as a science communicator for the International Space Station program.
“There’s a lot of science communication opportunities at big institutions and universities,” she said. “[They] need people to explain what they do, whether it’s earth science or rockets.”
Throughout her employment, she had continued freelancing on the side. Over time, the side work became too big to keep treating like an add-on. When NASA then offered her a management position, the moment forced a decision.
“I’ve always been someone who is definitely an entrepreneur, who liked to go out on their own, and jump between a million different things,” she said. “I loved my time at NASA, but it is a very bureaucratic institution.”
The choice became clear. She left her job at NASA to go all out on that entrepreneurial instinct and found her own company, STEAM Power Media.
“I definitely do think [communication] is something that is undervalued in engineering. I’ve always said I think engineering almost has a PR problem. Part of the difficulty of it is engineering is applied science and math. To explain it, you almost need to also explain the thing you’re applying.”
—Erin Winick Anthony, Founder, Steam Power Media
Photo: Rosie Johnson/ @cosmic__rosie
Anthony has been featured in a Marvel comic book and is hoping to publish a book of her own in the future. She’s also a competitive pinball player and has made women’s state championships, ranking among the top 100 women pinball players.
Engineering Has a PR Problem
Now, through STEAM Power Media, Anthony helps scientists and engineers translate their work into stories for a wider audience.
“I definitely do think it’s something that is undervalued in engineering,” she said. “I’ve always said I think engineering almost has a PR problem. Part of the difficulty of it is engineering is applied science and math. To explain it, you almost need to also explain the thing you’re applying.”
Some of her favorite projects to date have put her close to the science, where she can help researchers and engineers bring out the excitement that might otherwise get buried under all the professional seriousness.
“I think top of the list for me, is work with Zero G, the parabolic flight company,” she said. “I’m really passionate about advocating for low earth orbit research and why what we do in space helps us back here on earth.” Flying in microgravity for the first time was a plus, too.
She’s also worked with CBS’s Mission Unstoppable on its STEM Loft series and helped script a 20-episode series hosted by Miranda Cosgrove, including pitching topics and helping “science up” the scripts.
In showing all the less obvious ways an engineering degree can be used outside a traditional job, Anthony’s advice to students considering similar is to be self-aware of what they really enjoy doing. And if it’s storytelling that they enjoy, bring out the passion.
“That’s most helpful in sharing science and engineering—when the people who are sharing it are passionate and excited themselves,” she said. “Engineers often want to be extremely professional and serious. But the more people can see that spark in your eye, the more they’re going to be passionate about it too.”
Engineering societies, she thinks, could learn from that same idea of translation. If they want to reach new audiences, they have to feel more accessible, more visual, and more human.
“People connect with people. You have to give them someone to latch onto,” she said. “I like to describe it as like, no one really cares about some niche winter sport until they find a cool athlete they’re following on TikTok that’s competing in it.”
That doesn’t mean clickbait, she said. There are ways to make things engaging while staying trustworthy. A well written script still needs visuals besides a person talking to the camera with no edits.
“There’s an art to making things succeed online,” she said.
Sarah Alburakeh is strategic content editor.
Photo: Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology/Bryan Cantwell
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