Alexandra Knight is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of the IMechE, Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor at Brunel University London, Fellow and Trustee of WES and a mum of two. She recently left the Corporate World where she was a Technical Director at Amey Strategic Consulting to set up her own business STEMAZING Ltd, focused on igniting inspiration and amplifying inclusion in STEM.

After an early IT career, Elizabeth moved into aerospace and was awarded Membership of the Royal Aeronautical Society for work with Rolls-Royce. She led skills policy in aerospace before establishing her own consultancy. Elizabeth has always worked towards diversity and in 2018 she was appointed CEO of the Women’s Engineering Society.

Dame Judith Hackitt is a chemical engineer and is currently Chair of Make UK, the manufacturers’ organisation formerly known as EEF. She is also Chair of Enginuity, the UK skills body for Engineering and Manufacturing, formerly known as Semta, and senior non-executive director of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult an organisation which exists to support and encourage innovation in Advanced Manufacturing. She is also a Board member of HS2 Ltd.

Dame Judith worked in the chemicals manufacturing industry for 23 years and then worked in an advocacy role for the sector at national and international level. Dame Judith became Chair of the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in October 2007, until March 2016.

She was made a Dame in the 2015-16 New Year Honours for services to health and safety and engineering, in particular for being a role model for young women. She had previously been awarded a CBE in 2006 for services to the chemical industries. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2010 and currently serves as a trustee of the Academy. She is also a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and served as President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (2013-14).

Following the tragic fire which occurred at Grenfell Tower in London in June 2017, Dame Judith conducted an independent review into Building Regulations and Fire Safety related to high rise buildings for the Government. She began her review in July 2017 and plans to implement her recommendations in full were announced in the Queen’s speech in October 2019. She now works as an adviser to Government chairing the Industry Safety Steering Group holding industry to account to deliver the culture change needed and the Transition Board which is overseeing the setting up of the new Building Safety Regulator. She speaks and writes regularly on the need for industry to step up to its responsibilities for safety and quality.

Sally is a Fellow of WES and was Hon Secretary for the last three years. Sally set up the WES Climate Emergency Group to respond to the global crisis. She was the lead judge for the eminent Karen Burt award for the last three years.

Sally is a chartered engineer and chartered environmentalist currently leading on the Net Zero Carbon strategy and programme for infrastructure at the Environment Agency. She is also sustainability lead, driving carbon reduction targets for all construction, maintenance and operational activities.

Sally has over 30 years’ experience of working in design and construction in both the private industry and public sector, managing £ multi-million programmes of work for flood risk, river and canal restoration and highway engineering.

Sally helps to sustain the industry talent pipeline, as a director at Engineers for Overseas Development (EFOD), which delivers life changing sustainable community projects in sub-Sahara Africa. This engineering charity provides challenging opportunities for our young construction professionals to gain valuable experience to help them with their training to become professionally qualified.

As a chartered chemical engineer, Yasmin Ali currently works within government to help the UK reach net zero emissions by 2050. She is leading a £30 million programme which funds the development of solutions for a decarbonised future, focusing on heavy industry and advises teams on shaping their sustainable energy policy.

Deborah Greaves is Head of the School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics, Professor of Ocean Engineering and Director of the COAST Laboratory at the University of Plymouth with previous appointments at Oxford, UCL and the University of Bath. Her research interests include marine and offshore renewable energy, and physical and numerical modelling of wave-structure interaction. She has led many national and international research projects concerning offshore renewable energy (ORE) in collaboration with industrial and academic partners and is Director of the EPSRC £9 million Supergen Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Hub. In the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, 2018, she was awarded an OBE for services to Marine Renewable Energy, Equalities, and Higher Education and in 2020, she was elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Professor Halliday established Gaia Research (now Gaia Group) in 1995 to develop sustainable solutions for the built environment. It currently includes research, design, evaluation, dissemination, training and capacity building. Her own research covers solar air conditioning, the circular economy, zero waste, future proofed, low allergy housing and urban design.

Kelly Harrison has been widely involved in the research and delivery of sustainable strategies and is an advocate of sustainable methods of construction. She champions the use of engineered timber to improve the quality and speed of construction, reduce carbon emissions and enhance wellbeing.

Sally Povolotsky is a self-employed prototype engineer working in low carbon and sustainability engineering in transport, clean growth and sustainable communities. She was responsible for the end to end delivery of the Zero Emission E-VType Jaguar prototype powertrain conversion used as the wedding car for Harry and Meghan back in 2018 during her time at JLR. She promotes sustainable strategies for low carbon growth in Oxfordshire and sits on many special interest groups and task forces. Recently Sally and the team she works with, as a consortium, won a unique carbon sequestering project using cryptogamic methods.

I’m Chitra Srinivasan, a Realtime Control Software Engineer working in Fusion Research at UKAEA. Our mission is to produce sustainable, green fusion energy that might help to solve the climate crisis. To achieve this, we make an artificial sun. Our artificial sun is many times hotter than our real sun, but it has instabilities. My job is to write a code to measure and dynamically control these instabilities. Before I started researching fusion energy with UKAEA, my experience saw me writing control code for medical ventilators and smart energy-meters.

Simon Recently started as a Plan Review Consultant at FM Global. This was Simon’s first job after graduating from Oxford University with a degree in Engineering Science. During university he completed two internships at Millbrook Proving Ground and Oxfords Thermofluids Institute. Before that, he went to Bedford School and completed A-levels in Maths, Further Maths and Physics alongside an AS-level in Economics.

My name is Ananya Mudera and I am currently in my 4th and final year of Chemical Engineering at UCL. I recently completed a 12-week internship with FM Global as an Engineering Intern which was a fantastic opportunity where I learnt about their engineering systems, participated in interactive consultancy engineering training and did project-based work.

I am the former Treasurer of my university’s WES group where I helped facilitate our “Get Women into STEM” event which was an opportunity for students to network with industry professionals who came to our university to give insight to their career paths and experience in industry. I have previously attended two Annual WES Student Conferences which was another great chance to network with many different companies, like FM Global, and discuss ways in which to increase the number of women in technical roles. I think it is important for students to make connections with people in industry to gain advice on how to achieve their goals despite the barriers and gender stereotypes they could face.

Jonathan is a Chartered member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology and has a 1st Class degree in Systems and Microcomputer Engineering from the University of Glasgow. As a student engineer sponsored by ICI, he experienced work placements in the United Kingdom, Germany and South Africa.

Jonathan manages a team of engineers designing and developing new products/solutions primarily for drinking water and low pressure gas distribution applications along with supporting our existing product portfolio through drawing office activities and the Engineering Change process. Jonathan contributes to Crane’s overall growth strategy through the development of the engineering strategy and the delivery of New Product Development and Value Engineering strategic initiatives.

Ismail completed his Diploma and Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering in Pune, India before coming to the UK to pursue his Masters. He is a Member of the Institute of Engineering & Technology (MIET) and is a Yellow Belt in Lean Six Sigma.

He has recently completed his Masters in Advanced Mechanical Engineering with Management and Industry, which included a placement year at Diodes Incorporated. In his placement year his role focused on minimizing waste using Lean methodologies.

As a Technical Graduate with Crane Ismail has worked in both Production and Design Engineering which has given him a good exposure to the processes and the nature of the business. He is currently working with the Engineering Department as a member of the project team working on one of our key strategic initiatives. As part of this he has been responsible for the design of some of the parts on a prototype which is currently undergoing testing.

Paula is responsible for the leadership and development of all Engineering and Programme Management activity across Leonardo Electronics UK. The Electronics business offers solutions, services and capabilities across the Maritime, Land and Air domains into the global market.

Paula is an experienced, operationally focused Engineering and Programme Management professional, having started her career in the Rail Industry before moving into Defence and Aerospace.

Paula was previously Programme Director for Raytheon, delivering Engineering Development and Operational Support for the Sentinel R1 and Shadow programmes, supporting the RAF in aircraft mission capability and deployment, as well as Programme Director for Raytheon Transformation programmes.

Prior to joining Raytheon, Paula spent nearly 10 years with Rolls-Royce, operating across a variety of Programme Management, Strategy and Manufacturing roles for the Civil Aerospace business globally with sites in UK, Germany, US and Singapore.

Paula is passionate about developing STEM activities within budding Engineers and embedding Inclusion and Diversity into the business culture as well as being an advocate of High Performance Culture.

Living in the Midlands, Paula is a single parent to her son, Ewan (11) and daughter, Colbie (7). Her personal time is taken up with trying (and often failing) to juggle a healthy variety of their academic and social activities coupled with a keen interest in property renovation.

Joanna is the Engineering and Quality Director for BAE Systems. In this role, Joanna is responsible for providing strategic leadership for all business units across the company, and for driving strong standards in process, integrity, delivery and capability.

Prior to this role, Joanna developed through a number of key leadership roles within engineering management in the Defence industry.