Wellbeing & Diversity in Construction & Property Conference; Sponsored by Faithful+Gould

Fusion 21 – Mark Chadwick, Director of Business Services

Mark leads the business improvement, governance, R&D and business services functions. As an experienced transformational leader Mark has delivered change strategies to help organisations in social housing, social care and government to achieve success. Passionate about working with organisations that make a positive impact on the communities they serve, Mark is committed to delivering high levels of performance and success. His approach to aligning culture, skills, systems and processes has enabled the delivery of operations improvement projects, information strategies and growth plans.

At Fusion21 Mark’s work with operational teams resulted in the award of external accreditations including ISO9001 (Quality) and ISO14001 (Environment). In addition, he recently led the successful bid for Investors in People GOLD award, putting them in the top 7% of accredited organisations across the UK who believe in realising the potential of their people.

Highways England – Rebecca Eaton, Occupational Health and Wellbeing Manager

Rebecca is an experienced Occupational Health and Wellbeing Specialist with a demonstrated history of working in many industries and more recently the utilities industry. She is skilled in improving the health and wellbeing of employees to increase productivity, reduce absence and improve engagement. With a healthcare services background she has a Bachelor of Science focused in Community Public Health Nursing-Occupational Health from The Manchester Metropolitan University.

Network Rail and East West Rail Alliance – Danny Miller, Social Value and Legacy Manager

Danny is an award-winning community champion who is overseeing the huge East West Rail project in his role at Network Rail. He is responsible for employment, education and volunteering initiatives on the project which will establish a strategic railway network connecting East Anglia with Central, Southern and Western England. In particular the project will build a line linking Oxford and Cambridge and see a number of new train stations developed over the course of the project.

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 safer and more inclusive. She’ll be sharing her invaluable insight during the event 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.

Faithful+Gould – Stephen Wightman, Regional Director

Stephen Wightman is a Regional Director at Faithful+Gould. Leading their Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) offering, Stephen provides advice and support to existing and new clients on delivery of MMC projects, strategic business planning and business case writing. Stephen has over 22 years’ experience in the offsite construction industry. Having managed multiple factory and construction site based activities, he has specialist knowledge in volumetric and panelised systems in both steel and timber frame. His offsite expertise span a wide range of market sectors including residential, healthcare, military, education, commercial, retail and infrastructure.

L&Q – Jan Gale, Assistant Director, Diversity and Inclusion

L&Q is one of the UK’s leading housing associations, housing around 250,000 people in more than 100,000 homes, primarily across London and the South East. They have the largest and most ambitious residential development programme in the sector, with projects ranging from partnerships with small housing associations to the creation of whole new towns .They are proud of their inclusive culture and are striving towards making L&Q a place where everyone can be confident that difference is not only accepted but celebrated at their workplace. Their commitment to workplace wellbeing has earned them an award for ‘Best HR Policy’ at the 2019 Diversity in Housing awards.

Faithful+Gould – Dara Jafari, Associate Director. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Lead

Dara is an Associate Director and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion lead at Faithful+Gould. He has over 10 years’ experience in the construction industry, specialising in framework partnerships, maximising collaboration and measuring performance to drive continuous improvement.

Dara began his ED&I role in September 2020, as his own lived experience had been strikingly lacking in equality, diversity and inclusion, and he did not want it to be like that for others.

Women into Construction – Shelley Lawrence, Project Lead

Shelley is leading the set-up and delivery of our programme throughout Cambridgeshire. Shelley has 15-years’ experience in Events and Marketing and is a passionate champion for women, having also co-founded a website to support mothers. With two daughters of her own, one of which would like to be an Engineer, Shelley is looking forward to changing the face of construction in Cambridgeshire and breaking down barriers for the future.

NHS Employers – Paul Deemer, Head of Diversity and Inclusion

Paul has been a HR professional for over 30 years. He has worked in local government, the voluntary sector and the health service – with particular experience in the fields of recruitment, employee relations, employment law and diversity. When working for Barnardo’s he took on the role of national equality and diversity manager. After a short spell as a HR lead in an NHS trust, he was seconded into the Department of Health and Social Care’s Equality and Diversity Team to help them develop the first national strategy in this area. Paul currently works for NHS Employers – which represents and supports NHS trusts across England – and is helping NHS organisations to embed diversity and inclusion good practice across the NHS. He also works on various diversity working groups and initiatives – with bodies such as the Chartered Institute of Linguists and the Recruitment Industry Disability Initiative – and writes frequently about all aspects of diversity through various social media channels.

RE:Women – Maria Wiedner, CEO

Maria founded the RE:Women network in 2012 as she saw the need to gather the real estate community and discuss gender equality in the industry. Maria is a CFA Charterholder and graduate from the University of Cambridge with a Masters in Real Estate Finance in 2011. Following a successful career in property funds analysis and consulting, Maria set up the Cambridge Finance – School of Applied Real Estate Finance – in January 2016.

BT – Bruce Greenhalgh, Global Health and Wellbeing Clinical Lead

Bruce has supported and trained managers internationally at all levels in global organisations for over thirty years. He is a certified mindfulness teacher by Bangor University, a psychotherapist and Fellow of Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development. He has presented and trained in a diverse range of organisations from NGO to Corporations such as Accenture, HSBC, BT and Microsoft. His passion is helping individuals grow, develop and optimise, and in particular incorporating mindfulness into well-being, leadership, development and change programs.

BT – Lina Chauhan, Musculoskeletal, Ergonomic & Wellbeing Specialist

For BT Group plc Lina works as an Ergonomic, Musculoskeletal and Wellbeing Specialist within a leadership and collaborative role involving and engaging the wider team, various stakeholders, researchers and business unit leaders to drive forward optimum health and wellbeing in the workplace. The foundation for delivering within this role integrates her skills and knowledge cultivated during her MSc, research projects and from developing and leading on a RCT study to influence preventative and enabling workstreams of musculoskeletal health strategy.

Bouygues Construction United Kingdom – Leigh Hughes, CSR Director

Bouygues UK is one of the UK’s largest contractors, delivering construction, housing, development and regeneration projects, working across the public and private sectors. The company employs around 1,800 people across the business.

​Leigh is currently Chair of Cardiff Capital Region Employment & Skills Board and represents the South East Wales region on Welsh Government Employment & Skills Board (WESB). He was also named Property Diversity Champion of the Year at the Wales Property Awards 2020. He has often been praised for championing females in the industry and supporting people with disabilities.

Taylor Wimpey – Amna Khan, Head of HR Business Partnering, Inclusion and Wellbeing

Amna is incredibly experienced in creating and implementing strategies focused on attracting, developing and retaining talent. With her vast experience and versatility she’ll be able to share a high-level overview of the work Taylor Wimpey are doing, where delegates can take learnings from their work. From delivering an internal D&I Conference with the buy in of all senior business staff to their work with the supply chain and contractors/sub-contractors they’re one of the firms leading the way in the industry.

Construct-Ability – Jez Cutler, Co-Chair

Jez Cutler has been working in the built environment sector for over 20 years with 15 years plus experience with Travis Perkins in supply chain sustainability management, he is now a bespoke sustainability consultant helping companies like St Gobain, Aggregate Industries, Barratt, TfL and Morgan Sindall tell better stories. Jez got involved with the Construct-ability network because he is interested in accelerating change in the way impairments are understood so that people with disabilities feel welcome and supported in the sector

Jez has a type of Muscular Dystrophy which has meant that from his late 20’s his muscles have gradually become weaker and weaker.  Jez has  been a powered wheelchair user for the last 5 years. His disability became apparent after he started working.

Business Disability Forum – Adrian Ward, Head of Disability Partnerships

Adrian leads the teams responsible for all relationships with Business Disability Forum’s 380+ Members and Partners as well as overseeing our consultancy and learning and development services. Adrian is an experienced disability consultant and has an extensive background in human resources within the public sector, specialising in diversity and inclusion.

Adrian spent several years as a regional diversity and inclusion manager providing strategic guidance and advice to a large operational business area within the public sector. Prior to that he was the Chief Welfare Officer leading a team of staff counsellors and had overall responsibility for the department’s wellbeing strategy.

Before joining Business Disability Forum, Adrian led a diversity and inclusion experts team within a large Civil Service organisation specialising in all aspects of disability as well as leading on Public Sector Equality Duty work. Adrian has practical experience of developing departmental policies (including disability-specific policies) and procedures and overseeing effective implementation of these.

ATKINS – Michelle Baker, Associate Director – Social Value

Michelle’s is shaping, developing and helping to lead social value at Faithful+Gould and Atkins, providing both strategic support and delivery services to our clients and internal delivery teams

KPMG – Claire Handby, Director – Major Projects Advisory, Infrastructure & Government

Claire has led a dynamic, exciting, stimulating, adventurous 20+ year career within the Built Environment. She recognises that she has been given the right advice by trusted people, at the right time, embraced many opportunities to develop, alongside making a commitment to maintain life-long learning. As a result, she continues to progress a family life with 3 daughters the eldest of which is 13 years old, alongside a professional career which continues to twist and turn, where ultimately it has flourished. Two impactful roles very dear to her heart presently are as an Employment, Skills and Inclusion Policy Advisor with the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce and her day job as a Director in Major Project Advisory Team at KPMG LLP where she supports multiple flagship clients to increase their performance when completing multibillion £ capital and infrastructure projects.

#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.

Mayor’s Fund for London – Sietske van der Ploeg, Director of Strategy and Campaigns

Sietske is responsible for Mayor’s Fund’s strategy and campaigns activities. She makes sure all our work is informed by relevant data and insights, gets told in a variety of engaging ways, and is built on extensive partnership working. Sietske joined the Mayor’s Fund in 2015 as Head of Employability Portfolio. Previously Sietske worked in international development for nearly 15 years where she developed specific expertise in youth employment, entrepreneurship and microfinance programming.