FELLOWS ONLY
A series of bi-monthly informal one-hour chat with the Academy CEO, Dame Tamara Finkelstein DCB, are scheduled for the upcoming year for Academy Fellows. This is an opportunity to meet Tamara, receive an update on Academy activities and have the opportunity to informally provide feedback and ask questions.
Capacity for this event is kept purposely low to allow the opportunity for more meaningful conversation. Should this event be fully booked, you can either book for a future date or contact Beth Hagen, Programme Manager for Fellowship Engagement.
Accessibility
It is very important to the Royal Academy of Engineering that our events are accessible to all. If you have any accessibility requirements, please contact the Events team at your earliest convenience so that necessary arrangements can be made. Contact details: [email protected].
Further information about accessibility at Prince Philip House can be found at: https://raeng.org.uk/about-us/accessibility.
Diversity monitoring form
The Academy is committed to equity, diversity and inclusion and one of our goals is to develop an engineering community fit for the future. To help us achieve this, we would like to collect some basic anonymous data about the event attendees. If you would like to help, please complete the diversity monitoring form by logging into your user account on our website and completing ‘Update my D&I data’.
Dame Tamara Finkelstein DCB
Dame Tamara Finkelstein DCB is CEO of the Royal Academy of Engineering, which promotes engineering excellence and technology innovation for public benefit.
Tamara is a trained engineer and economist, and has supported the work of the Academy in government as a champion of the Policy Fellowships programme, and participant in the pilot Senior Policy Fellowships programme.
She has also fulfilled a number of charity leadership and advisory roles, including as Vice-chair of Norwood, a charity for vulnerable children and people with learning disabilities.
She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath (DCB) in the 2025 New Year Honours for public service.
Prior to her current role, Tamara had a long and successful career as a senior leader in the civil service, most recently as Permanent Secretary of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). In this role, she led the department through Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic, during which she oversaw the government’s response to food supply issues.
As Director General, Building Safety, at Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Tamara created the government’s building safety programme in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire. As Leader of the Policy Profession in government she also worked closely with the science and engineering profession to raise science and engineering capability in policy professionals, raising the percentage of STEM graduates in the policy fast stream from 9% to 31% over the five years to 2025.