Caroline Haslett Lecture and Awards 2021

Dame Jo da Silva is the Global Director of Sustainable Development at Arup, leading their activities to address the climate, biodiversity and equity crises through creating safe, inclusive and resilient communities whilst safeguarding the planet. She is also an Arup Fellow promoting excellence and innovation that delivers social outcomes.
Jo has earned global recognition as an engineer who has applied her knowledge and design expertise to improve safety, promote inclusivity, and enhance resilience of communities, cities and infrastructure globally. She has led the planning, design and implementation of a wide range of buildings, infrastructure, and urban regeneration projects for Arup, and also worked extensively in crisis and disaster contexts for non-governmental, UN agencies and multi-laterals.
She has authored numerous papers and publications and received an honorary doctorate in humanitarian engineering from Coventry University. She was previously a Fellow at Sydney Sussex, Cambridge University lecturing in Engineering for Sustainable Development and contributing as guest Faculty for the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership.
In 2007 she founded Arup International Development to enable Arup to direct their technical excellence and creativity to improving human development outcomes in the global south working with national and local government and community-based organisations as well as international agencies such as the World Bank, International Federation of the Red Cross and the Rockefeller Foundation.
More recently, in 2016 she co-founded the Resilience Shift to raise awareness and drive action to improve the resilience of critical infrastructure globally and is currently a Board Director.
She was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire this year in recognition of her contribution to international development. She previously received an Order of the British Empire for her services to humanitarian relief and was awarded the Gold Medal by the Institution of Structural Engineers in 2017.

Susan Robson is a Principal Consultant in the Internal Consultancy team at National Grid. Building on seven years’ experience as a management consultant with PwC, she works across the National Grid business to help drive the strategic initiatives that will play a key part in enabling the UK’s transition to net zero carbon.
Susan has been instrumental in developing the Women in National Grid Employee Resource Group into a strong team of volunteers across the company who deliver initiatives that have had tangible outcomes in promoting gender equality, inclusion and diversity both internally and externally. With a focus on women in engineering, the team have developed a number of initiatives both to encourage more women and girls into engineering, and to support those already in engineering with their professional development.
Susan has also had a number of voluntary roles in the Education sector, including as a TeachFirst Futures mentor and as a governor on the board of a primary school.
In 2018 Susan was placed top of the Future Leaders list in the Financial Times and HERoes Champions of Women in Business. She served as an expert panellist on the BBC’s The Apprentice 2019, and in 2020 she was named as one of the We Are the City Top 100 Women. Susan was co-opted to the WES Board in November 2020.

Chrisma Jain is a Chartered Engineer, and Trustee and Board Member for the Women's Engineering Society, as well as a member of Council for the Institute of Mechanical Engineering and is working towards her Fellowship with the IMechE. She is also the chair of FiTE (Females in Transport Engineering), a support network group within Transport for London that supports over 300 women in their career progression in Engineering.

Chrisma is a Senior Project Manager at Transport for London and is responsible for renewing the track and drainage infrastructure on the London Underground network. Chrisma gained a 1st Class Honours degree in Mechanical Engineering and has over 15 years of experience in the transport industry.

Dr Crtichley graduated from Coventry University in 2002 with a PhD in Process Analysis Software for the draw bending of small diameter thin walled tubes. Prior to this she gained an MSc in Computer Aided Engineering (1992) and an Honours Degree in Engineering (1991), from Coventry University.

Dr Critchley started her career in Engineering through a course aimed at getting more women into engineering and joined this course based at Jaguar Cars on the technician apprentice training program. This led to other technician training mainly within the automotive sector in Coventry, gaining a BTEC in Engineering which allowed her to successful join a degree course in the same.

Dr Critchley has had a varied career, within Automotive and Aerospace Engineering, mainly in the area of Computer Aided Engineering. which included some career breaks. She spent time lecturing, but she is now industry based. Dr Critchley is currently the BPM of Configuration Management in an international Aerospace interiors business, currently changing the business processes to enable a part centric approach to the engineering design process and taking an approach that has been developed in one location and ensuring continuity during a global roll out.

Dr Critchley is also a member of The Institution of Engineering and Technology. She is enthusiastic about promoting Engineering as a career path for all, as well as promoting ways to help and support women who have had significant career breaks to find a pathway back into a career in engineering. She is also an active member of the WES Wales cluster and helped organise their WES Centenary conference in Senedd.

Dawn Childs FREng is the Chief Executive Officer for Pure Data Centres (Operations), having formerly been UK Change Director for National Grid . Prior to this she was the Group Engineering Director for Merlin Entertainments Group with responsibility for engineering delivery, standards, practices and processes across the worldwide portfolio of more than 130 theme parks, resorts and attractions. This followed a tenure at Gatwick Airport as the Head of Engineering, responsible for all of the infrastructure and technical services at the airport. She joined Gatwick in 2012 after 23 years as an Engineering Officer in the RAF. In October 2018 she became the President of the Women’s Engineering Society and is also a Trustee for World Skills UK.