The EDI engine: Evidencing the business benefits of equality, diversity and inclusion

Clare Rhodes-James

Clare Rhodes James is Mott MacDonald’s Development Manager for Energy in the European region. A Chartered Engineer, she started her career in hydraulic engineering, working on a range of international dams and flood alleviation projects before moving into energy over 25 years ago to work with specialists and lead consultancy teams supporting governments, developers, lenders and utilities across the sector. Clare has experience in the engineering aspects of project finance and due diligence in a number of subsectors, has developed and led renewable energy business including wind energy and hydropower. She leads business development across Energy.

Annette Chau

Annette Chau is an Associate Partner at Dalberg, an impact-driven strategic advisory firm. She co-developed the recent report “The EDI Engine: Evidencing the Business Benefits of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in Engineering.” She leads Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) work internally in Dalberg Europe, coming up with the region’s DEI strategy for internal initiatives. Her work on inclusive business models with philanthropic, public and private sector clients takes an equity lens especially looking at gender and under-represented populations – for example, developing a gender strategy for the sustainable trade organisation IDH, and working with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa on better reaching women entrepreneurs in agriculture. She has authored public-facing reports on the intersection of social impact and business – for example, 2022 report on the economic and social returns of investing in data ecosystems with a launch event at the UN General Assembly in 2022 and the Understanding Rural Pathways to Prosperity report on the livelihoods and resilience of smallholder farmers in Kenya. She has twice served on the judging panel for the RAEng’s Leaders in Innovation Fellowship prize for sustainable engineering.

Loraine Martins

Loraine is the Global EDI Director at Arup and previously was a leading consultant at Nichols Group. Before that for 10 years Loraine was the Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Network Rail, which maintains and develops Britain’s rail infrastructure. With some 43,000 employees, it was the fastest growing railway in Europe. Loraine led a centre of expertise which supported Network Rail’s ambition to be a more open, diverse and inclusive business. Previously, Loraine led a multi-award-winning team, delivering a programme of equality and inclusion and employment and skills in the construction of the infrastructure, venues, and facilities on the Olympic Park for London 2012. For this work Loraine was awarded an MBE. As the vice chair of the Trust for London, a grant-making body which tackles inequality and poverty in the capital, Loraine led the working group that funded the London Living Wage campaign. In October 2019 Inclusive Boards and the Financial Times included Loraine in the top 100 women influencing engineering in the UK. In November 2019, Loraine was awarded the Mike Nichols Award (Association of Project Management APM) which recognises contributions to transformational change for the world and society. Loraine was part of the independent advisory panel for the Windrush Lessons Learned Review. And in the 2020 Queen’s New Year’s Honours list, Loraine was awarded an OBE her work on diversity and inclusion at Network Rail. Loraine is a non-executive director (NED) of DFS Group, and a Board member of POWERful Women and the Black Business Association (part of the London Chamber of Commerce). Loraine is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Henrik Hagemann

Henrik Hagemann is the CEO and co-founder of Puraffinity Ltd, a water treatment company with a mission to provide PFAS-safe water to 1 billion people by 2030. He holds a Master's in Bioengineering from Imperial College London. Hagemann was awarded the 2016 Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellowship, received the 2018 Innovators under 35 Europe award from MIT Technology Review and was named in the 2019 Forbes 30 under 30 Europe list.

Jake Maughan

Jake is an Associate Partner at Dalberg Advisors, an impact driven strategic advisory firm and co-developed the recent report “The EDI Engine: Evidencing the Business Benefits of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in Engineering.” At Dalberg, Jake has significant experience in skills to employment with a specific focus on incorporating equity, diversity and inclusion. As part of this Jake has supported the EBRD on the development of their EDI strategies - the Strategy for the Promotion of Gender Equality 2021-2025 (SPGE) and the Equality of Opportunity Strategy 2021-2025 (EOS). Jake also led the design of a Development Impact Bond in Turkey aiming to improve youth unemployment through ICT skills training with a specific focus on gender diversity of participants. Jake also led the refresh of the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) ‘Right’s@work training guide’, updating and incorporating the rights at work for forcibly displaced persons. Jake also works extensively in the skills and other capacities needed for the just energy transition to net-zero. As part of this, Jake has worked with private sector actors, international NGOs and advocacy organizations on how to ensure that the Just Transition will not have an adverse effect on specific communities or groups and to help build the skills required.