We held our Annual General Meeting (AGM) on 27th June where we invited our members to review and celebrate the successes of the past year, as well as provide their feedback to help us shape the year ahead.
The hybrid meeting was attended by over 50 people online and in-person, with thanks to our immediate Past President, Katie Hulland and Turner and Townsend for hosting.
Women in Transport board members and volunteers at the 2024 AGM hosted by Turner and Townsend
The AGM slides can be viewed below.
Achievements and milestones
In another amazing year, our membership has grown to over 1600 individuals, supported by over 100 volunteers and over 70 corporate partners. Thank you all so much for trusting us and supporting us, and special thanks to our wonderful volunteers for everything you do.
A huge thank you to our Leader partner, Transport for London, and our seven Advocate partners:
Kier
RHA
Brightly
Caledonian MacBrayne
Transport for Wales
Network Rail
Lothian Buses
Our recent membership survey was positive, with members expressing continued likelihood to recommend Women in Transport to a colleague. We have recently re-appointed Shazar Dhalla to our Board as the membership champion, to ensure our members’ voices are represented at Board level. We want to make sure Women in Transport continues to deliver for our members, so please keep sharing your views.
We’ve had a bumper year for events, delivering 73 in the past 12 months and we now operate in seven regions across the UK, including our new hub in the South West.
Our flagship programmes Advance and Lead are going from strength to strength. We’re now in our seventh year of Advance and 355 participants have benefitted from the mentoring programme during that time. Lead has helped 136 women from 46 companies develop as leaders since it was launched in 2021.
Our AGM also recognised the achievements of our wonderful Chief Executive, Sonya Byers, who was awarded an OBE in the King’s Birthday Honours. Sonya’s leadership has made Women in Transport the organisation it is today, and we are truly grateful for all Sonya’s hard work and dedication to our mission.
Organisational changes
As we are experiencing rapid growth and moving from a small volunteer-led organisation to a UK-wide movement, it’s important that we further improve our organisational structures and processes. The last 12 months have been a period where we have transitioned our structure to create a distinction between the Board and the Operational Team, with the Board being Chaired by myself as President and the organisational leadership team being led by Sonya as CEO.
We have slimmed down the Board to enable better-decision making and appointed some new skills including Rachael Collman to our Treasury team. I’d like to record our thanks to both Katie Abraham and Dorota Konieczna who have both stepped down from the board. In the coming months, we will be looking to recruit up to three new non-executive directors to help us further professionalise our Board and fill our skills gaps.
This year we have also welcomed some new members to the operational team. These include new regional leads Gillian Risdale (volunteer, South West) and Chloe Williams (Volunteer, West Midlands) who have joined the regional leadership team. And James Hogg (marketing consultant) has joined the central leadership team one day a week to help us improve our marketing and web presence. James will also help us implement a new CRM system.
Financial performance
Our financial performance continues to be strong and we are enjoying rapid growth as a result of focusing on diversifying our revenue over the past four years. As a non-profit, we reinvest all our income back into our mission of advancing Women in Transport.
This year we have also transitioned to a new accountant and have introduced accounting software to enable us to effectively manage our finances. Our strong financial position has also enabled us to invest in our marketing by appointing James Hogg.
Industry influence
Over the past 12 months we have continued to cement our position as trusted EDI partners and advisors to the transport industry and this is reflected in our continued membership of advisory boards including:
Fairness, Inclusion and Respect (FIR)
Freight Innovation Cluster
Highways UK
Intelligent Transport
MOVE
Women in Bus and Coach – National Steering Committee
Rail Unites for Inclusion
Railway 200
Transport Employment Skills Taskforce (disbanded May 2024)
Strong regions
Our regions are going from strength to strength and have delivered around 50 events between them during the past 12 months. This included five mince pies and networking events in December.
We’re delighted to have launched our new South West hub led by Gillian Risdale and supported by WSP.
I’m also delighted that our Menopause Mondays event series, originally launched by our Yorkshire region is now a national event.
I also wanted to highlight that we have a vacancy in our North East hub and would welcome applications from sponsors and anyone interested in leading the region.
Key programmes and future plans
Women’s safety
Our key areas of focus during my Presidency, aside from our core mission of advancing women in transport, include supporting women’s safety and challenging cultural and gender barriers to leadership.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group (before it was dissolved ahead of the General Election) has been examining the issue of women’s safety. This included a joint event in partnership with the APPG on City Regions Transport looking at women’s safety on the transport network and a roundtable that will influence on-site safety, health and wellbeing. We intend to work with parliamentarians to re-establish the APPG as soon as possible in the new parliament.
Thanks also to Jade Neville who is leading our women’s safety steering group and working closely with the Department for Transport to improve women’s safety in transportation.
Intersectionality
Our Intersectionality programme led by Shireen Ali-Khan has been taking a campaign approach to exploring the relationship between power and privilege to help us tackle cultural and gender barriers to leadership. Highlights include our podcast and our recently launched motherhood penalty whitepaper which explores the penalties women face to their careers when becoming mothers. It shares insights from our maternal mental health podcast and four roundtables supported by Kier. Thanks also to Joanna Hill for all your hard work on the whitepaper.
I'm pleased to see our podcast audience growing and looking forward to the second season 2 of the podcast coming soon!
D&I Bus Group
Our D&I bus group continues its work to make the bus industry a more diverse and inclusive space. I especially wanted to mention our inclusive cab summit held in partnership with FirstBus, where we are pioneering long lasting improvements in inclusive bus cab design.
Equity Index
Last year we launched the Women in Transport Equity Index in partnership with WORK180, with a call-to action for transport sector employers to take part in a free-survey to declare their diversity data and help us create a benchmark for change. We’re hugely grateful to our sponsors that came on board to support the programme including the Merchant Navy Welfare Board, the Bicycle Association, Kier and Mobility Lab.
We recognised Southeastern as the top organisation for gender equity in 2023 and highly commended:
Bus and Coach: Lothian Buses
Cross-sector: Reed Mobility
Consultant: Turner & Townsend
Cycling: Brompton
Logistics: RHA
Maritime: Port of Dover and Nuclear Transport Solutions
Rail: LNER
At our AGM we launched the second year of the Equity Index project and we're asking all of you to take action and help us grow the Equity Index in year two. Please can you:
Sponsor - can you donate funds to ensure the Equity Index project can progress what we've started?
Get involved - ask your organisation to fill in the free survey and declare their diversity data
Support - endorse the index and help us to spread the word
We will only improve the transport sector's diversity metrics if we can measure and track progress over time.
Thanks for your support
Thank you to everyone who attended our AGM. We are hugely grateful for the trust, support and contribution of all our members, volunteers, supporters and partners who are on the journey with us to create a more diverse and inclusive transport industry.
Together we are achieving great things and it has been another amazing 12 months filled with achievements, collaboration and growth.
Thank you for being part of this incredible journey, I believe we are starting to see the difference that we’re all making and I look forward to the next 12 months as we continue to build our powerful movement for change.
Jo Field, President of Women in Transport
Summer break
As is tradition for Women in Transport, our volunteers and team will be taking a well deserved break in August to rest and recuperate ahead of our busy Autumn period. During August, we pause our monthly newsletter, partner communications and events programme. Our social media channels are also monitored by volunteers who will be taking a break too so please expect less activity and engagement in anything we are tagged in. Emails and enquiries to info@womenintransport.com will be responded to Monday to Thursday as we operate a four day working week.
Annual membership for Women in Transport is £60, providing access to professional development and networking opportunities.
Our partnership packages are a flexible and accessible way to support Women in Transport and your organisation's equity, diversity, and inclusion objectives. Learn more about our partnership opportunities here and contact us if you would like a meeting to discuss how we can work together.
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