Part of University of Bath Founders Day 2016.
In the University of Bath's 50th year, two graduates, Dawn and Peter Bonfield, shared their experiences and perspectives on how diversity and sustainability go hand in hand towards a better future.
Dawn and Peter talked about how to achieve higher levels of diversity alongside the new ways of applying talent and capability required to meet the challenges and opportunities of a more sustainable future, all in an ever and more rapidly changing world.
Dawn is the Chief Executive of the Women's Engineering Society, which for the last 96 years has been promoting and enabling more women to work in engineering careers. Her work at WES builds on her experiences working as a materials engineer in the nuclear, automotive and aerospace industries. Her work at WES is targeted at inspiring a new generation of women to enter the engineering profession and on supporting companies to become more diverse in their people and to individuals to enter and flourish in the engineering sector – one where on average less than 1 in 10 employees is female.
Peter is the Chief Executive of BRE, the Building Research Establishment, which deploys its science and research base to help enable a more sustainable built environment in the UK and internationally. He was also part of the Olympic Delivery Authority where he co-developed and delivered the sustainability strategy for the London 2012 Olympics. He has also been appointed by UK government to Chair 3 Independent Reviews since 2013, on the topics of UK Forestry, the Food and Farming, and currently on UK Housing Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies. In each case socio, economic and environmental sustainability considerations have been critical to achieving positive impact. In all of this work, achieving positive outcomes has required new levels of innovative, creative, diverse and multidisciplinary thinking that has challenged and taken forward what has been learned from our forebears.
