What is your role on the board?
West Midlands Regional Hub Lead
How long have you been involved with Women in Transport?
3 years
Why did you join Women in Transport?
There have been great strides made around diversity since I started my career but there is still a lot more work to do and I wanted to play a small part in that. I wanted to help drive our initiatives forward to empower women in the industry, celebrate our achievements and work to increase gender parity.
What do you enjoy most about being part of Women in Transport?
As Regional Lead for WIT in the West Midlands no two days are ever the same. I really enjoy engaging with people from different sectors and organisations all with different perspectives, life experiences and from diverse backgrounds but all sharing the common goal of working to support and advocate for women in the transport industry. Since taking on the regional lead role in March 2024, I have prioritised forming relationships with partners and professional networks to help maximise the impact of our regional hub. We have lots of exciting events coming up over the next 6 months and it is great to see this work now come to fruition.
Current job title
Associate
What does your current job involve?
I am currently an Associate Transport Planner at Arup working within the Cities, Planning and Design team. I am Travel Behaviour Change Lead so I work on a diverse portfolio of exciting projects aiming to influence people's travel behaviour. I technically lead teams on client projects and also co-ordinate work winning opportunities. I work on projects with a whole range of clients including Local Authorities, Transport Authorities, National Highways and international government bodies.
What's the best thing about your job?
The best thing about my role (as briefly mentioned previously) is the diversity of projects that I get to work on from small scale neighbourhood projects, delivering behaviour change packages in major cities up to developing large scale travel demand management programmes nationally and internationally. Having come from the client side (previously working at Transport for the West Midlands) I enjoy build relationships with clients and being a trusted advisor in this space. There are so many commonalities to the challenges faced regardless of sector and I enjoy helping clients solve problems innovatively.
How did you become involved in the transport industry?
By chance! I graduated during the 2010 recession and considered working in a number of industries at the time. An early careers opportunity presented itself at Transport for West Midlands and the rest as they say is history... I have since worked for a number of organisations in the transport industry across both the public and private sector.
What do you like about working in transport?
Transport has such a crucial impact on both individuals and society - from social connectivity and equity, environmental impact to economic growth as a whole. Therefore the work you do in the transport industry has the potential to really make a difference and make an impact to people lives. Seeing a programme you have helped design, secure the funding for and then be delivered is very rewarding.
What are you most proud of?
It has to be leading the Travel Demand Management programme for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. Leading a significant programme of works on such a large scale event, with the eyes of the world watching, in your home city does not get much bigger! Working with such a fantastic team of people from across organisations to deliver the Games successfully will definitely take some beating!
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