70Up

2023 has been quite a year of growth for the Corporate Partnerships Team. Over 20 new partners joined as Corporate Partners ending the year with over 70 partners!

Some of our new partners joining us this year have been BBC Scotland, Mott MacDonald, Institute of Mechanical Engineers, Baker Hughes, MatchTech, Ramboll. Our first partner that joined in January 2022 was Harbour Energy, and our last partner that joined in December 2022 was BP, so the Energy Industry really seem to be stepping up and doing something about DEI, which is wonderful! We at AFBE-UK are very excited to be working with all of our corporate partners. The AFBE team has also had to grow to be able to provide the right level of support to our partners, and we now are a team of 10 volunteers, and with a new permanent staff member to ensure we can meet the needs of our ever-growing numbers of corporate partners.

The organisations that we work with span all industries that employ Engineers, from Aeronautical to Formula 1, and also many educational institutions across the U.K. We have seen from the partnerships that we have, that they benefit not only the companies that we work with, by some of the work that AFBE do with them, such as Recruitment DEI Reviews, Lunch’n’Learn talks to raise awareness amongst staff, Job-posting etc, but it also allows employees of those companies the opportunity to participate in Transition events at Universities, give STEM talks to young school children or professionals, Mentor people in other companies to help them progress and achieve their goals; all of which not only benefits the employees and thus the company, but also widens the skill pool and opportunities for those people that may otherwise not have awareness or access to those opportunities, which at the end of the day is what AFBE is all about!

We are very excited to continue working with our corporate partners and organisations in 2023 and expanding our programme to provide as much tailored support as we can on this shared DEI journey.

Anjela Maharajah is the AFBE-UK Corporate Partnerships Lead. She is a Chartered Chemical Engineer with over 25 years’ experience working in the upstream Oil and Gas Industry for the likes of Shell and E.ON, and most recently was the ‘Head of Business Development and Commercial’ at a Japanese Energy company in London.