The power of connecting virtually led to the successful launch of our latest WiN Region in London & South East on April 24th at Herbert Smith Freehills in Central London, where the newly formed Regional Team met in person as a whole team for the very first time! The launch was attended by a gender balanced mix of men and women from diverse organisations in the nuclear industry, spanning the whole value chain of our sector, from government to power stations, from the regulatory offices to professional advisory services firms.
After a warm welcome by Bronwyn Rymer from WiN’s Industry Partner Jacobs, Adrienne Kelbie, Patron of WiN UK, provided a motivational and positive keynote speech, encouraging everyone to;
· “Smile” as when you smile it encourages others to want to work with you;
· “Complain” in a positive and constructive way about what needs to change and
· “Just start doing stuff” if it’s the right thing to do, as if you wait for the perfect time you many never start!
Words that were taken to heart as a follow up on LinkedIn a week later proved with many stories of what had been started by attendees, motivated after the event.
This was followed by some interesting facts on engagement with the case for nuclear in the generation mix of the UK, given by Joe Rippon from EDF Energy. He outlined that with women being less supportive of nuclear generation than men, but females also being more interested in investing for impact and sustainability than males (84% v 67%) we should all consider how we position our industry in all that we communicate and the power that WiN had to do this. Then Fiona Jackson, Vice President of WiN UK shared WiN’s strategy and plans with the audience, before Illy Andrews from Jacobs led a session to gather ideas about what attendees wanted next from the newest WiN Region.
Feedback was very positive with one attendee noting that as a senior leader in the industry “they came because they thought they should, but they left positively inspired”.
We look forward to providing details of our next event, which will set out the plans for this branch moving forward, based on the feedback from the launch. If you are interested in hearing about upcoming events please bookmark the WiN UK pages https://www.nuclearinst.com/WiN-UK or contact the Regional Team on WINSouthEast@nuclearinst.com