As part of Black History Month, the Royal Academy of Engineering held a Leadership Lunch on this year’s theme "Celebrating our Sisters". Before the lunch Dr Nike Folayan MBE HonFREng, Technical Director at WSP and Chair and Co-Founder of the Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers UK (AFBE-UK), discussed with Yewande Akinola MBE HonFREng, Engineering Designer and Innovator her career. The discussion covered Yewande’s career as a black female engineer, the countries in which she has worked and the individual challenges, this travel and these cultures have brought to her engineering activities.

Dr Carloes Mingoes and Professor Liz Tanner from SEMS were invited to the lunch and joined the subsequent round table discussions on the challenges and opportunities minority engineers face. The tales of how different engineers, including Dr Agnes Kaposi MBE FREng who had just celebrated her 91st birthday, another member of their table where inspiring.

Updated by: Elizabeth Tanner