We close the year on a high following WIA's first in-person event since the start of the pandemic. Our Winter Social took place on Wednesday 1st December at the Herman Miller Showroom, and we certainly made up for lost time!

Our keynote speaker was Marsha Ramroop, Director of Inclusion and Diversity at RIBA. Fresh off the back of the inaugural RIBA radio sessions, Marsha entertained us with some inspirational poems and anecdotes (check out the RIBA resources on Menopause) and brought home the point that the work of creating an inclusive profession should not be down to the under-represented alone.

Marsha is one of the few independently certified practitioners and facilitators of Cultural Intelligence (CQ) in the UK; and one of the first 300 in the world. Learn more about what the RIBA are doing around inclusion and CQ and do listen to the RIBA Radio series:

WIA Committee members Sarah Akigbogun, Anna Schabel and Tanisha Raffiuddin, gave an overview of WIA's work during 2021 and our plans for 2022. We also enjoyed an ice-breaker game organised by Karen Fugle, where we drew our spirit animals, which facilitated conversations and the evening networking.

A huge thanks goes to Shazia Sheikh and Maria Eastell from Herman Miller for being such wonderful hosts (and for the excellent canapés). To fellow WIA Committee Laura Collins, Madeleine Hobern, Annie Cosentino and others for organising the event and bringing us all together, and to the WIA community who came along and made the evening a memorable one.

From ticket proceeds, we also fundraised £200 for CRASH, the construction industry's charity. CRASH assists homeless charities and hospices by sourcing pro-bono or discounted professional expertise and construction products from their Corporate Patron companies and supporters within the industry. For more information on their work and initiatives or to get involved, please visit https://www.crash.org.uk/

Mentoring 2022

We are very excited to send out the mentoring matches for 2022 very soon!

"I have been interviewing some of our younger mentor applicants, and they seem amazing. I am so impressed with the poise, grace and wisdom of some of those women!" - Katya Veleva, Mentoring Lead, Blush Cloud

Unfortunately, we were unable to match everyone as we had many applicants. We understand how hard it is in this challenging time to be visible when working from home, but we encourage you to keep looking for a possible potential mentors/mentee match.

Join our committee

Thank you to all those wonderful folk who have expressed an interest in joining or helping the WIA committee. We appreciate your enthusiasm! We are collating a list of people and will be contacting you in the new year to get together.

WIA Committee members: Sarah Akigbogun, Anna Schabel, Tanisha Raffiuddin, Laura Collins, Karen Fugle, Maddy Hobern

Best wishes for the festive season, and stay safe - WIA will be back again in 2022!

PS. A reminder to offer any support you can to WIA, and to spread the word: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-wia-to-continue-our-work. If your company would also like to get involved in a sponsorship opportunity, please get in touch!