Wellbeing & Diversity in Construction & Property Conference; Sponsored by The Social Value Portal

The Social Value Portal – Guy Battle, Chief Executive Officer

Guy Battle is a Sustainability Consultant with over 25 years of experience. He was the lead partner for Sustainability at Deloitte LLP, where he worked closely with many corporates helping them solve some of the key sustainability challenges facing the world of corporate business. In September 2014, Guy set up The Sustainable Business Partnership and is now focused on unlocking the inherent social, environmental and financial opportunities that businesses should do to create value. Guy is passionate about the contribution that Business can make to improve our society and this has been one of the driving motivations behind the creation of The Social Value Portal.

Transport for London – Emma Hatch, Senior Development Manager

TFL owns a 5,700 acre estate that includes land and properties with huge potential for creating the homes and jobs that the capital needs. They are partnering with a number of developers, housebuilders and registered providers to bring forward housing, commercial and mixed use projects. Emma will give an update on the development programme which will see the long term development of 10,000 new homes and creation of thousands of jobs.

British Land – Saul Collyns, Community Executive, Canada Water

British Land are developing the first new town in London for centuries in one of the UK’s largest projects, transforming 53-acres in Southwark into a thriving new community. The development will take 15 years to complete, deliver 3,000 new homes, create workspace for 20,000 people and have a new modern high-street. Saul roles sees him lead on the firms community engagement and governance at Canada Water whilst he also heads up their approach to inclusive supply and supporting local enterprise through development.

#YesSheCan – Sophie Turner, Founder

#YesSheCan aims to inspire women to take the next step, put themselves forwards and have some underlying self-belief. Their mantra of “She Believes, So She Leads” is critical to breaking down the gender barriers and ensuring the opportunity landscape is an equal one regardless of gender. Sophie will share details of the work behind this forward thinking, progressive entity, whilst using her expertise to tackle the tough questions.

Sovereign – Jerome Williams, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Manager

Prior to joining Sovereign, Jerome had excelled within his roles at BT, Homes and Communications Agency, as well as Department of Energy and Climate Change. He is passionate about creating inclusive work places which is why he joined Sovereign, where they embraces diversity at work so that their people bring different ideas, innovation and creativity to what they do. To them, diversity means more than colour, religion, disability and sexuality. It also means things like people’s hobbies, passions and personalities. They are interested in and inspired by the rich variety of experience and knowledge in our truly diverse and inclusive working community. Jerome will be sharing his experience and discuss how these strategies can be integrated within the industry.

ACAS – Jennifer Williams, Deputy Head of D&I

With over 20 years’ experience of advising and training, covering a wide range of human resource management and Equality and Diversity matters, Jen has worked with both public and private sector organisations to introduce policy change for the betterment of work life experience. She helps organisations with any issues from the equality legislation to the more sensitive issues around Equality and Diversity – she has a vast experience in this area and enjoys working with companies to enable a change of culture, ensuring a healthy workplace.

Highways England – Ron Calderwood-Duncan, Head of Equality, Diversity & Inclusion and Engagement

With 5,000 across the current and thousands more working across their projects – Highways England is one of the biggest infrastructure organisations in the country – and heading up their EDI and Engagement strategy is Ron. He’s in charge of organisational culture, talent acquisition and employee engagement amongst numerous other areas, and his involvement will be incredibly beneficial for delegates to hear how they’re rolling out EDI nationwide offices and filtering this down to their partners and contractors.

Housing 21 – Deborah Hope, Head of Development

Housing 21 is a leading not for profit provider of Retirement Housing and Extra Care facilities. With 25 years’ experience in the housing and regeneration field, Deborah is passionate about equal opportunities for all and ensuring a positive work environment for her team members. Housing 21 is committed to help develop worker’s skills through induction toolkits, upskilling programmes and personalised learning management systems- at the forefront of which are diversity and inclusivity with a  value led approach.

Willmott Dixon – Richard Pickett, Head of Legacy

Willmott Dixon are known for making a difference to communities – focusing heavily on this before the term social value was even coined. Ensuring social impact is maximised, Richard heads up a team focused on delivering social value – ensuring it’s considered, planned and delivered during all parts and elements projects across South London and the South East.

Homes England – Julie Musesoglu, Senior Diversity and Inclusion Manager

Homes England are putting communities at the heart of its work – and they’ve recently published their first Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Report. But they’re not only fledging to work with partners to create more inclusive communities, they’re also actively working to address issues with a focus on their workplace, employees and partner companies. As D&I Manager, and also the Co-Founder of LGBT Property Professionals and a member of Building Equality, Julie is in the perfect position to highlight the work they’re doing at Homes England and how they’re collaborating and integrating their values and beliefs across the wider industry.

Pathways to Property – Paddy Allen, Chairman

Pathways to Property aim to widen access to the real estate profession by raising awareness of and aspirations about the vast range of careers available within the sector. Established as a response to the lack of diversity in the industry, the outreach programme exposes students from less advantaged and non-traditional backgrounds to opportunities within the property sector. Chair of the organisation Paddy, who is also a partner at Cushman & Wakefield, will talk about the importance of initiatives such as these and how the sector must address diversity.

Willmott Dixon Interiors – Judy Usher, Head of People

An experienced HR professional responsible for managing recruitment, retention and succession planning within then interiors division of Willmott Dixon, Judy is a well known figure for driving forward the agenda around mental health and wellbeing. She leads on activities within the business on these important topics – whilst coaching and training managers to enable them to effectively lead their teams to achieve high levels of performance and motivation. She’ll be adding her experience to the panel to share how their focus on these key areas can also drive commercial value for the business.

Judy heads up the mental health and wellbeing activities at Willmott Dixon.

Talik & Company – Paul Davies, Associate Director and Head of Social Mindfulness Practice

My biographies typically show off about:

• my diverse consulting experience at McKinsey & Company, Accenture, Ashridge Consulting and, now, Talik & Company (the only boutique organisation development consultancy to win three FT Management Consultancy awards in both 2019 and 2020)
• how my work is informed by my Founding CxO roles at social enterprises like Teach First and my years studying in the Far East, both at Taoist kung fu schools and Buddhist temples
• how my work as head of Talik’s Social Mindfulness practice has helped harness the power of ‘group mind’ in organisations (including the construction sector)

My biographies don’t typically mention my bipolarity and how working with Social Mindfulness has led to kinder, curiouser, conversations that mean I now treat it as a ‘feature’, rather than a ‘bug’, at work.  Might such conversations complement interventions for diversity and inclusion?

The WOW Network – Lisa Charlwood-Green, Founder and Director

For almost 20 years Lisa has been championing LGBT equality and diversity – volunteering for a number of organisations and charities whilst also founding The WOW Network. Over the years she has dedicated her time, energy and funds to achieve her goal of making workplaces a safer and more inclusive spaces – with involved as SQA’s LGBT Network Chair, the Deputy Chair of Network Rail’s LGBT network and involvement in the University of Strathclyde’s LGBT staff training. She’ll be sharing her invaluable experiences and as one of the UK’s most influential names working in the industry she’ll have an abundance of knowledge and thoughts to add to the discussion.

Legacy Consultants – Nathan Dennis, Founder & Senior Consultant

Nathan is a specialist thought leader & consultant in behaviour change, helping companies think differently about how they engage diverse, young people & communities. He does this by utilising his values based approach which he has developed, connecting and listening to the hearts & minds of clients & customers.

He teaches & connects you to young people & local communities, using years of experience of helping many different companies more effectively engage, connect & build lasting relationships with those deemed traditionally hard to reach.

His values based methodology and theory of change ensures that both clients & their services users win & get the results they require, by inspiring, empowering and training on how to improve their engagement & diversity awareness. He creates a fun & innovative learning environment that inspires learning & encourages fresh new ideas thereby creating solutions to problems.

EDP Training – Bianca Jones, Director

Mental health has recently been in the spotlight like never before with suicide rates rising and the impact on health wellbeing due to the Covid-19 lockdown has seen this increase. Bianca helps deliver mental health training to a wide range of business across the UK – and she’ll bring her expertise to the panel to discuss how we can as organisations help people open up about their issues, help staff through troubling times and play our part in raising awareness of the issues.

Enfield Council – Peter George, Programme Director, Meridian Water

The £6 billion Meridian Water project, being led by Enfield Council could stake a claim as being London’s most important regeneration project. The 25 year programme will see the development of 10,000 new homes and thousands of new jobs on the 210 acre site. The 4^th stage of the scheme is about to begin, with the next 800 BtR and affordable homes alongside commercial and community space. Peter will discuss how the next stages of the project will unfold and the partners they are engaging with along with opportunities to get involved.

Constructing Rainbows – Sharon Slinger, Director

Having worked in the construction and facilities management industries for nearly 20 years as a Chartered Quantity Surveyor for main contractors, Sharon has seen and experienced the many positives that built environment careers bring. She also noticed the lack of diversity within the industry, and as more and more research was produced demonstrating the business benefits of diverse organisations, it became obvious to her that we all need to be doing better. So in 2017, she set up Constructing Rainbows, to share her knowledge and experience more widely to help others improve their businesses, the wider industry and ultimately the bottom line.