Yewande Akinola MBE HonFREng

Visiting Professor, University of Westminster; Innovate UK Ambassador for clean growth and infrastructure

Yewande Akinola is distinguished as an engineer, communicator and sustainability advocate, as well as being an outstanding role model for inclusive leadership. She has balanced a successful career in design engineering with a vibrant parallel career in media and public engagement to promote engineering and challenge narrow stereotypes of who engineers are and the difference they make in the world. Yewande is a chartered engineer whose expertise includes design and construction, innovation and the manufacturing of buildings and systems in the built environment. In 2007, after graduating from the University of Warwick, she was employed by Arup as a design engineer, designing water supplies and water management systems. While working for Arup, she earned a master’s degree from Cranfield University in 2011. She was later Principal Engineer and Innovation Lead at Laing O’Rourke. She is currently a Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor at the University of Westminster, an Innovate UK Ambassador for clean growth and infrastructure, and a social entrepreneur.