Accelerate Action: Celebrating Inspirational Women and Empowering Future Leaders
International Women’s Day (IWD) is on 8 March 2025, and the theme this year is to Accelerate Action, this reminds us that progress is a collective effort, and knowledge-sharing is a powerful tool for change. We believe in a workplace that is equal for all, and free from bias, stereotypes and discrimination. We are proud to support gender equality and empower women in our field.
Celebrating inspiring women
At JBA we understand the importance of making time to celebrate our people when they do great things for each other, and for our clients. The JBA Awards align with our core values of; Share, Innovate and Be Different, and combine those with technical and service excellence.
To celebrate International Women's Day, we would like to spotlight our award winners in the Rising Star and Innovation categories.
The Rising Star award recognises someone within the early years of their career whose progression is accelerating and is a passionate role model for others.
Rising Star...
Rebekah Alford is this year’s Rising Star. Rebekah joined JBA in September 2022 as a graduate in our Exeter Office, and has been involved in a range of flood resilience projects, a clear highlight being her contribution to the ResilienTogether initiative, part of the Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme. More widely, Rebekah was an early career representative on the CIWEM Flood and Coast event Advisory Committee and awarded the JBA Group Scholarship for the Flood and Coastal Risk Management PgCert.
Innovation...
Innovation is at the heart of everything we do in JBA, and the Innovate Award celebrates colleagues who are committed to innovation. One of this year’s winners, Cathy Lemon, has been instrumental in advancing JBA to the forefront of virtual reality. Her innovative work has transformed our approach to design and significantly enhanced engagement with stakeholders.
Supporting career aspirations through mentoring and empowerment
We are passionate about life-long learning at JBA; supporting our colleagues to realise their own development ambitions is central to this. Reinforcing opportunities for female colleagues to accelerate their career development has been a particular emphasis over the last year. For example, mentoring is one development route that we proactively promote, through both our internal Mentoring Scheme and via sponsorship of industry-led professional mentoring schemes such as the Women in FCERM initiative.
