Miren Bamforth is ready to take creative control in her career. The USC Iovine and Young Academy grad student already has two degrees from MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a resume that includes Disney, Mattel, and Microsoft, but she’s not slowing down any time soon. In fact, she’s committed to expanding her skill set and broadening her horizons as she pursues a Master’s of Science in Integrated Design, Business, and Technology. An engineer by trade who calls herself a ‘maker’ at heart, Bamforth is on a learning quest that will enable her to focus on what matters most – creative autonomy and fulfillment. 

With technical experiences lining her resume, Bamforth aims to get to a point in her professional life where she can take charge of creative decision-making that makes an impact. While her prestigious jobs have leaned towards electrical engineering, she’s drawn to the narrative and human-centered power of technology. 

Working at Walt Disney Imagineering, fabricating, designing, and prototyping tech for full scale rides, reflects her propensity to create experiences for people that connect emotionally and sentimentally. It’s not just about the complex technical elements she’s so well-versed in, it’s about the grand art of storytelling. 

“The hard technology enables the soft parts of the human experience,” she explains. 

A longtime lover of technical theater (her minor at MIT), she’s worked behind-the-scenes putting on performances employing her tech know-how and design sensibility. The act of producing an emotionally resonant spectacle echoes the sides of the job she’s drawn to at Disney, and she compares theme parks to immersive theater – on a larger scale. 

“Immersive theater is usually not that technical, but it’s about experience. It’s about purposefully creating a specific sense of emotion or wonder, and creating a good memory,” she says. 

Exploring the interconnectivity of theater and engineering, she notes, “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out what that narrow sliver of crossover in the Venn diagram is. The underlying thing being wanting to understand how things work. Both of those are about the behind-the-scenes of objects or experiences.”

Reflecting on her job history and interests Bamforth concludes that she’s driven by making physical things and experiences for people. 

“I recurrently learned the lesson that anything that didn’t have a creative arc to it was not engaging for me,” she shares. 

With those motivations at her core, she’s branching out from straight engineering and opening new doors through furthering her education. She considered either business and design school, until she found IYA. 

“It seemed like a pretty perfect fit because I was looking for more design background and more business background. Then I could be in the room making decisions with people in a cross-disciplinary way, which is what this program is for.” 

Business is a whole new world for Bamforth, who says the closest thing she’s gotten to any business education is a statistics course. Now she’s gaining a design and business vocabulary that widens her technical perspective. Because of the intersectional context of the program, she’s not just analyzing case studies in a traditional academic setting.

“Having exposure to people in other fields has been fascinating. Even though I have worked at a lot of places that are engineering but creative, I don’t interact with business people” says Bamforth. “Reaching across that communication bridge where we’re trying to close the gap more on our different backgrounds, that is very valuable,” she points out. 

While she hasn’t narrowed down a professional next step, Bamforth is moving in a direction that makes room for more creative freedom. Starting a production company, special effects studio, or makerspace are enticing routes that would combine her passion for designing human-centered experiences with her technical expertise. And now that she’s gaining business prowess, the prospect of starting something from the ground up isn’t just a pipe dream. 

“So much of why I never did it, other than the pandemic, was that I needed a business partner. I can’t just read three books and be ready to make something like a makerspace,” Bamforth laughs. 

“If I was going to do it, it would be after learning what I’m learning in this program.” 

An engineer by trade and a ‘maker’ at heart, Miren Bamforth is on a learning quest that will enable her to focus on what matters most – creativity. The IYA grad student has two degrees from MIT and a resume that includes Disney and Mattel, but she’s not slowing down any time soon. In fact, she’s expanding her skill set, so she can open new doors and take creative control of her career.

A Grad Student Explores the Creative Side of Engineering