23rd of June marks International Women in Engineering Day and today we are celebrating the amazing work that women engineers around the world are doing, and not just to respond to the pandemic but also to support lives and livelihoods every day.
Here at Forward Ladies, we are glad to be joining the celebration by throwing a spotlight on our amazing #FLNAtionalAwards Alumni – the best, brightest and bravest women in STEM, who recognise a problem and dare to be part of the solution.
We are happy to present – The 30 Top Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (FL Awards Alumni)
1. Najwa Jawahar
Najwa is an award-winning Chartered Structural Engineer who believes nothing is impossible. No muddy boots. No cultural or religious barriers. She wants to leave her mark on the cities around the world by working on engineering challenges at all scales. She wants to make a true contribution to the community around her as an engineer, as a mentor and as a role model. Her desire to fulfil her dreams is evident from her impressive track record of achievements. No challenges daunt her but only excite her to develop and learn more. She has initiated a graduate group and extended it to 300+ young engineers and apprentices globally in 2 years. She has delivered two business initiatives as WSP’s Taskforce Team and named the Best Young Woman Engineer at the European Women in Construction and Engineering.
2. Emma McGuigan
Emma McGuigan leads Accenture Intelligent Platform Services, which helps clients achieve enterprise-wide transformation by bringing Accenture’s deep technology, functional and industry expertise across SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, Workday, Adobe and other leading platforms. For these IPS platforms, Emma oversees Accenture’s relationships, strategy and capabilities globally and across all industries. She is a member of Accenture’s Global Management Committee.
3. Anna Keeling
Anna joined Boeing as Managing Director of Boeing Defence UK in 2019 from GKN Aerospace. She is responsible for Boeing UK’s significant defence programmes, people and sites and the organisation’s growth, alignment and business development. Boeing, across all businesses, operates in over 30 key Boeing and customer sites and employs 2,500 people directly and many more through a significant domestic supply chain.
Anna has two decades of global leadership experience in the aerospace and automotive sectors. Before joining Boeing, she was Senior Vice President Business Transformation, leading GKN’s business improvement plan to drive profit, margin and cash and Senior Vice President Commercial, where she assumed responsibility for all GKN Aerospace’s global commercial governance and ensured an aligned customer strategy across the business.
4. Natasha Sayce-Zelem
Natasha Sayce-Zelem is Global Head of Partner Engineering Amazon Prime Video. She is a founder of ‘Empowering Women with Tech’, a social enterprise showcasing female role models working in digital media, science, and technology with the goal of getting more women to consider a career in STEM in England.
5. Alice Newton-Rex
Alice Newton-Rex is a Product Director at WhatsApp. Her career has revolved around product development, having spent five years as Chief Product Officer at fast-growing start-up WorldRemit, where she joined as their first product manager and helped grow the company from 40 people to over 900, and the user base from thousands to millions before joining WhatsApp in 2019.
6. Jessica Okoro
Jessica Okoro is a global program manager with experience in the United Kingdom, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria. She has developed, curated, and managed multiple programs and events in media, technology, and education industries.
Jessica’s track record of successful project delivery spans across private and public sector, as well as the non-profit space. This range of real-world experience on creating demonstrable business value in varied contexts gives her a unique understanding of how to support teams and leaders remove blockers and unlock higher performance.
As a charity founder and STEM education activist, her charity, BeScience, has had 1000+ volunteers and engaged with thousands of people in the United Kingdom and Sierra Leone.
7. Suzanne Smith
Suzanne started her career as an asbestos bulk analyst then moved onto surveying. Suzanne quickly progressed through the ranks before moving to the public sector to manage the asbestos for a social housing provider. During her time as the Asbestos Officer she trained 360 site staff to work with asbestos and was responsible for all elements of asbestos management.
Suzanne is the principal consultant at Soteria Asbestos and works with clients to deliver the services that best suit the needs of their organisation and employees to achieve compliance with asbestos regulations.
8. Diane Hassett
Diane is a passionate technical leader with 20 years experience in leading Innovation, Engineering and Quality teams within the medical device/manufacturing/finance sector. She focuses on developing inclusive teams and has a proven track-record in building and developing teams to meet organisation G&O. Diane uses her own unique communication style to build successful internal/external customer and supplier relationships.
Throughout her career Diane has continually developed a growth mindset, completing Masters in Design Innovation and further researching how human values are reflected in Software. She is interested in technology-focused leadership role which builds on her excellent people leadership skills, innovation-focus and technical capability. Ideally this will enable her to share her interest in building diverse and inclusive cultures which extend beyond representation, to the processes and software which shapes our world.
9. Sarah Manning
Sarah Manning is a founding director of Spaceagency and has set the company’s direction as a front runner in experience design and wayfinding. Sarah leads our strategic planning work and has delivered complex, multi-stakeholder projects for major international companies and cities. She holds a Masters Degree in Architecture and Urbanism from the Design Research Laboratory at the Architectural Association and graduated magna cum laude from Duke University with a BA in International Comparative Studies. Her professional experience comprises a wide range of international commissions which integrate information design, user experience and urbanism.
10. Dr Nora Vyas
Dr Nora S Vyas is an Associate Professor in Psychology at the Department of Psychology, Kingston University. She joined Kingston University in 2012, and previously held a Senior Lecturer position at Middlesex University. Dr Vyas completed her PhD in psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), University of London in 2008. Following her PhD, she worked at the Child Psychiatry Branch, National Institutes of Health (Washington DC, USA) as a Lindemann Trust Fellow (English-Speaking Union), preceded by a Fulbright Distinguished Fellowship in 2010.
Dr Vyas is the Course Director on the Foundations in Social Sciences programme, and module leader for a second-year module Mental Health and Brain Function. She teaches at undergraduate and postgraduate level in child/adolescent and adult mental health, health psychology, and clinical/cognitive neuroscience.
11. Ilaria Ambrogio
Ilaria joined P&G in the Analytical Department in August 2008 as a Scientist with expertise in Colloid and Organic Chemistry. During the first 3 years she was working on a Hair Colour Platform as Project and Capability Leader, collaborating with many functions as Product Development, Product Research and Process Engineering. She delivered critical learnings and the technical model of product-performances developing a techniques toolbox that represents the current best approach to characterize those systems.
In 2011 she was promoted to Senior Scientist joining the Health Care business, where she is working on Front End Innovation projects with particular focus on predictive stability and integrated stability forecasting.
12. Aimi Elias
Aimi Elias is a software developer with a passion for science communication. She works on technology that makes online streaming possible all over the world at Sky. Before she discovered how much she loves to code, Aimi was a civil engineer working on underground tunnels for Crossrail.
13. Jaclyn Bell
As an advocate and champion for women and diversity within the sciences, Jaclyn has a huge passion for communicating science and inspiring more young people to pursue STEM careers. Currently a Senior Teaching Fellow at Imperial College London with a specialism in Diversity, Outreach, Equality and Public Engagement, and Honorary Fellow of the University of Liverpool, Jaclyn has devoted both her professional and personal careers to inspiring and engaging young people from disadvantaged and underrepresented groups.
In addition to conceiving and managing a regional project successfully promoting STEM-based learning (funded by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills) Jaclyn has also project managed national STEM programmes in partnership with the UK Space Agency and Science and Technology Facilities Council whilst a project manager at the UK Association for Science and Discovery Centres (ASDC).
14. Victoria Woodings
Global CEO for the Principle Group. Having left school at 16, Victoria joined Principle Group in 2008 as part of the Finance Team with a turnover of around £24m) and progressed through the ranks before taking the Global CEO role in 2017. Turnover is now over £200m.
15. Naomi Morrow
Head of Innovation at Sunderland Software City (Digital Catapult NETV). Naomi enables commercial opportunities for tech SMEs through her open innovation work with businesses that helps them understand and implement emerging technologies.
16. Mivy James
Mivy James has been an IT professional for over 20 years. Prior to joining BAe systems Applied Intelligence in 2005 she worked for several international IT consultancies and corporations.
Mivy started her career as an analyst / programmer after completing a degree in Computer Science and Maths and soon moved into technical leadership and system design. Mivy has worked for a range of clients across UK government on everything from cutting edge technology research to the strategic design of multi-billion-pound programmes.
17. Suzanne Oliver
Suzanne is responsible for operations, legal, IP and procurement at SeeChange technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of Arm. Suzanne is a Chartered Engineer, as well as dual-qualified European and UK Patent Attorney. Before joining the SeeChange business, she was a Senior Director in the Legal Operations team in Arm’s global legal department. Prior to this she managed ARM’s patent and trademark prosecution teams, during which time she supported a wide range of IP strategy and global IP policy development matters for ARM.
18. Jacqueline de Rojas
Jacqueline is President of techUK and Chair of the Board of Digital Leaders.[3] She serves as Non-Executive Director on the boards of Rightmove, Costain Group and FDM, and was formally on the board of AO World. She also supports the Government of the United Kingdom in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. She serves as co-Chair for the Institute of Coding and was recently awarded an honorary Doctorate of Engineering from the University of Bath.
Emma also is the global lead for the Accenture Microsoft Business Group and Chair of the Board of Avanade, the company’s joint venture with Microsoft. She is responsible for driving Accenture’s overall Microsoft business—including strategy, innovation, market differentiation, the Microsoft alliance relationship and Avanade, Accenture’s delivery capability for Microsoft solutions.
19. Zillah Doyle
Zillah Doyle is an Expert Senior Executive and has a proven record of delivering strategic growth in global organisations and is ex. CEO of Mechanical Engineering Ventures. Zillah is able to manage multicultural, multidisciplinary teams to achieve competitive targets, aimed to consistently meet and exceed customer expectations.
20. Julianne Antrobus
Julianne is a Global Head of Nuclear at PA Consulting. She has over 20 years’ experience in the nuclear sector, with a focus on developing transformational growth strategies and helping organisations to become global players. Some of her notable clients include the UK’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, and Global Nuclear Utilities. Before joining PA, Julianne led the strategic and business development of nuclear services, products and technology portfolio at Atkins, an engineering and design company.
21. Elena Rodriguez-Falcon
President at the New Model in Technology and Engineering. Before that Elena was a professor of engineering at Sheffield University whilst leading various strategic priorities. Elena has received numerous awards for her work on education and diversity and is a principal fellow at the HEA and fellow of the IET and CMI.
22. Juliet Kennedy
Juliet was appointed Operations Director for NATS in December 2015, and is responsible for leading the day-to-day running of Swanwick, Prestwick and the airports.
Prior to this, Juliet was the Operations Director for Swanwick. Appointed to the role in November 2012, Juliet was accountable forrunning the largest Air Traffic Control Centre in Europe.
Juliet has over thirty years of ATC experience both with NATS and in the RAF. She has worked for NATS for over twenty-five years and her previous roles included Operations Director, Airports in which she was responsible for service delivery and management of the sixteen airport ATC contracts NATS operates across the UK including Heathrow and Gatwick.
23. Jessica Yeung
Jessica is a Chartered Electrical Engineer at Mott MacDonald. She has 10 years+ postgraduate experience within the building services industry. Born in Hong Kong, she grew up intrigued by electricity and developed a love for science and mathematics at school. In 2004 she moved to the UK to pursue her engineering dreams at Northumbria University and joined Mott MacDonald in 2007.
24. Catherine Breslin
As a specialist in AI and machine learning, especially voice and language technology, Catherine works with companies bringing cutting-edge technology to market. She has a background in academic research, combined with years of experience of building technology products based in AI.
25. Lola Olaore
Lola is a Senior Digital Analyst at McKinsey & Company. She is an experienced product profession who works with organisations to shape and build customer-centric products, she has a track record of successfully delivering products and transformation projects across Leisure and hospitality, health and other sectors.
Lola is passionate about the empowerment of girls/women and the Future of Work, she founded thinkHER ambition, a training and skills development social enterprise that specialises in upskilling young females aged between 14-19 to create the next generation of female leaders.
26. Dr Rashada Harry
Rashada is a strategic technology leader with Enterprise account experience at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Vodafone Global Enterprise and Cisco.
Rashada is passionate about STEAM, inclusion and diversity. Over the last 15+ years has worked to provide access to opportunities in various leadership and ambassador roles. She is also a Co-founder of Your Future, Your Ambition which educates and inspires young people to pursue careers in STEAM and presently leads this initiative in a pro bono capacity.
27. Dr Suze Kundu
Suze is a nanochemist and has a BSc in Chemistry, an MSc in Analytical Chemistry and a PhD in Materials Chemistry from University College London. A passionate educator, she has also studied for a PGCE in Senior School Science, and an MEd in University Learning and Teaching while teaching at Imperial College London. After six years lecturing in the Department of Materials at Imperial College London and at the University of Surrey’s Chemical and Process Engineering Department, she is now the Head of Public Engagement at the technology company Digital Science, where she continues to research interesting topics within chemistry and materials science, but also the wider research landscape.
28. Vanessa Kilburn
Vanessa is an experienced Bid Director with proven results working in the Telecommunications and ICT industry. She is a strategic bid and proposal leader, leading high profile opportunities from capture planning to a winning proposal.
She is a Co-chair of the O2 Women’s Network; improving diversity awareness in the telecoms and ICT sector. Managing the leadership and strategy of O2 Women’s gender Network.
29. Olivia Thompson
Olivia currently leads NNL’s Skills and Development strategy where she is responsible for ensuring that they have the right skills in the business to respond to future challenges.
Formally a business manager within the nuclear/ chemical sectors and an APM qualified project manager, she has delivered a large number of multi-disciplinary projects to international clients. She has proven success in developing long-term mutually beneficial relationships with Regulators, Central and European Government, Trade Unions, Employees, Clients and Academics.
30. Johann Muldoon
Johann is a Director at Manor Architects. She is a multi-award-winning architect, Specialist conservation architect (SCA) and challenges the idea of the business of architecture, of women in architecture, and raises the bar across all sectors of the industry.
Have we missed anyone? Let us know in the comments below.
The mother of all awards is officially back!
Celebrating all women in business across the UK and beyond, this competition is open to established leaders, corporate leaders, male agents of change, rising stars and the companies that support women.
It is your time to be celebrated so stop telling yourself you are not worthy!
You are already a winner and winning this prestigious award will most certainly be the icing on the cake!