This year, the Academy marked International Women in Engineering Day (INWED) with a celebratory lunch, attended by senior industry leaders and early career engineers. This year’s INWED overall theme is Enhanced by engineering , and our event was steered by this with consideration of the Academy’s own D&I theme on Diversifying the power of thought.
We were delighted be joined by Rachel Skinner CBE FREng, Executive Director at WSP, who took part in a discussion hosted by Academy CEO, Dr Hayaatun Sillem CBE. Rachel shared her perspective on this topic and around thought leadership, providing inspiration to an audience of both established and newer members of the profession.
You can watch the full conversation here:
Rachel Skinner CBE FREng
Rachel Skinner CBE is an Executive Director at WSP, where she now leads on UK ESG and government relations, having previously led its transport business. She is a Patron of Women in Transport (a not-for-profit), having been one of its founding board members since 2005. Rachel chairs the Infrastructure Carbon workstream of the Infrastructure Client Group (ICG), the ICE’s Decarbonisation Advisory Board. In 2021 she was invited to chair a new UK Department for Transport Taskforce that is focused on employment and skills. In 2016, Rachel was listed as one of The Telegraph’s inaugural UK Top 50 Influential Women in Engineering; in 2017 she was named the Most Distinguished Winner and Best Woman Civil Engineer at the Women in Civil Engineering Awards, and in 2019 she was confirmed by the Financial Times as one of the UK’s Top 100 Women in Engineering.
Dr Hayaatun Sillem CBE
Hayaatun is CEO of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Foundation. She co-chairs with the Science Minister the government’s Business Innovation Forum and co-chaired with Sir Lewis Hamilton his Commission on improving Black representation in motorsport. She is a trustee of various charities, member of the government’s Levelling Up Advisory Council and Digital Skills Council and NXD at construction company Laing O’Rourke. She has been named as one of the ‘Inspiring 50’ women in tech in Europe and one of the most influential women in both UK engineering and UK tech. She has a Masters in Biochemistry (MBiochem) from Oxford and a PhD from Cancer Research UK/UCL. She is a Fellow of the IET, Honorary Professor at UCL and Honorary Fellow at The Queen’s College, Oxford. She has received honorary doctorates from UCL, Imperial College London, Newcastle, Brunel, Huddersfield and Southampton, as well as a Science Suffrage Award and the Engineering Professor’s Council President’s Medal. She was a finalist for the Veuve Clicquot Bold Woman Award and was made a CBE for services to International Engineering in 2019. Prior to her current roles, she was Deputy CEO at the Academy and served as Committee Specialist and later Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Science & Technology Committee.