Challenge and Support: Feedback, Growth, and Success with Becky Simmons

Tina Schuricht • October 14, 2026

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Challenge and Support: Feedback, Growth, and Success with Becky Simmons


What does success look like when you stop trying to be the best at everything and start deciding what matters right now? That is what we discuss with Becky Simmons in our latest episode of Success Your Own Way.


Becky Simmons, Professor of the Practice in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University, joins Yifat and Tina to talk about defining success through personal metrics, showing up with intention, and learning to grow through feedback. Becky shares what decades of teaching have taught her about confidence, resilience, kindness, ambition, and the importance of challenging people while still giving them room to struggle and learn.


Her stories about students show how support, courage, and the opportunity to try again can build confidence over time. The conversation moves from the classroom to careers, parenting, gratitude, and women in STEM, including how our definitions of success change throughout life. Becky also reflects on a serious health challenge that shifted her perspective, the value of asking questions and building a strong support system, and why there is nothing wrong with being outrageously ambitious. 


Check out the Episode

About Becky Simmons

Becky Simmons is a Professor of the Practice in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University.  She arrived as a freshman to Duke in 1996 and has never left; she completed both her B.S.E and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Material Sciences.  She teaches a variety of design courses and is passionate about helping her students build creative confidence, think outside of the box, and design their life with personal metrics of success.  Her husband is also a mechanical engineer, and both of her daughters are studying mechanical engineering. Dinner conversations in the Simmons’s house are unsurprisingly nerdy.

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