Have you signed up to the Diverse Leaders Pledge? 

 

The Diverse Leaders Steering Group met on 27 March for our first meeting of 2024 – with new diversity and disability champions from across NLA’s community joining the fold and bringing a wealth of personal and professional experience. Many of the steering group members have established internal equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) networks at their place of work and are passionate about making the built environment accessible to all, from a city-wide perspective and within the industry itself. 

 

The steering group was brought together to inform the Diverse Leaders Pledge and programme of events and ensure NLA is supporting the industry to ‘Value Diversity’ a key pillar of placemaking in the New London Agenda that highlights London’s diversity as its greatest strength, the built environment must support and reflect the diverse needs of London’s citizens through our teams, buildings and neighbourhoods. 

 

In 2020 NLA collaborated with a group of seventeen organisations to form the Diverse Leaders Pledge, a built environment wide pledge and set of actions for companies to help set targets around inclusive recruitment practices, the progression of talented and underrepresented professionals and the advocacy of diverse people and places. 

 

Now the pledge is in its fourth year, the steering group met to discuss how it can be updated to better serve the industry. Implementing key performance indicators (KPIs) so companies can benchmark their own progress was suggested. The pledge was created to aid built environment companies with their progress in EDI by providing measurable actions, there are no prior expectations to signing up, but companies must hold themselves accountable to creating positive change and set their own time frames for implementing new practices in the recruitment and progression of staff. By proving a template for tracking progress through measurable KPI’s we will be able to monitor how the industry is changing over time. 

 

We discussed inclusive event practices such as ensuring there is seating at networking events for people to be able to rest, giving disabled people the option to pull out on the day, and making event access requirements part of the sign-up process for everyone. What can seem like small changes to event practices can make a huge difference to someone that might find attending events more challenging, but often these processes and therefore people can be forgotten. We also discussed the need for hybrid or online events for continuing professional development (CPD) so people are able to learn and upskill at home. 

 

I’m looking forward to working collaboratively with the steering group as we make progress towards a more accessible and inclusive industry that values diversity of practice and practitioner.  

 

The Diverse Leaders Steering Group is made up of the following industry professionals: 

 

Gabriella Appiah, Senior Stakeholder Engagement Consultant, AECOM

Natalie Barber, Director, Opera 

Úna Breathnach Hifearnáin, Associate Urbanism, McGregor Coxall

Mark Carman, Senior Architect, Ryder Architecture

Pui Quan Choi, Architect, Hawkins\Brown

Sarah Considine, Senior Project Officer, GLA

Marcos Gold, Head of External Affairs, Central District Alliance 

James Halsall, Senior Design Manager, LLDC 

Dipa Joshi, Partner, Fletcher Priest Architects 

CJ Obi, Founder, Urbanist Platform

Grace Simmonds, Head of Learning & Engagement, NLA (Chair)