10:25 – 11:15

Alex is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the IMechE with over 15 years’ experience of working in Industry. She is the Founder and CEO of STEMAZING – a social enterprise dedicated to inspiration and inclusion in STEM. Alex is passionate about supporting women in STEM to shine as confident, visible role models and inspire our future generations of innovators and problem-solvers. She is also a Visiting Professor with the Royal Academy of Engineering at Brunel University London. Alex won the We Are The City Champions Award in 2020 for her work to champion diversity and inclusion in STEM, and STEMAZING won the Diversity Impact Award at the RAC awards in 2021.

Dawn Bonfield MBE is a materials engineer by background and specialises in inclusion in engineering through her role as Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor of Inclusive Engineering at Aston University. She is currently Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence at King’s College London specifically looking at embedding entrepreneurial skills in the training of engineering students, in order to empower them to address the Sustainable Development Goals. She is Past President and former Chief Executive of the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) and Deputy Chair of the Women in Engineering Committee of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations. She has a variety of other Board roles in engineering.

After an early IT career, Elizabeth graduated from the Open University, specialising in systems thinking. She was awarded Membership of the Royal Aeronautical Society for work with Rolls-Royce and went on to lead skills policy in aerospace before establishing her own consultancy. Elizabeth has always worked towards diversity and in 2018 she was appointed CEO of the Women’s Engineering Society. In 2019 she became a Member of the International Council of Systems Engineers UK and in 2020 Elizabeth was invited to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.