Flood and Coast 2025 Reflections

Volunteers from WiFCERM were once again invited back to the Flood and Coast Conference 2025 in Telford.

The WiFCERM committee organised various events over the three days, including:

• Our popular networking event
• A lively exhibition stand, inviting conference visitors to learn more about the initiative, what it has to offer, sign up to become members or volunteers
• A Corporate Affiliation meet up and meet a mentor / mentee sessions
• The highly anticipated WiFCERM Awards.

WiFCERM would like to say a huge thank you to our sponsors:
CIWEM, Binnies, Environment Agency, Lower Medway IDB and Arup

Engaging with the Flood and Coast community

Building on our success from previous years and with particular thanks to our stand sponsors CIWEM, Lower Medway IDB and Arup, WiFCERM were honoured to exhibit at Flood and Coast 2025. We were glad to see so many of you stopping by our stand.

We shared about our group mentoring programme, which is a great opportunity for both mentors and mentees to connect, learn from each other, develop and make progress toward their personal and professional goals. We encouraged companies to sign up for our free corporate affiliation membership, and talked about our regional networking events and WiFCERM awards. We introduced the draft of our 5-year strategy, which sets the direction for an ambitious and exciting journey towards a more supportive and empowering initiative, addressing the challenges, and working towards supporting women and helping make the FCERM sector an attractive place for women to work in, thrive in, and feel empowered to make a difference in the face of a changing climate.

Corporate Affiliate meet up

To celebrate 1 year since WiFCERM launched its Corporate Affiliate Membership 🎉 at Flood and Coast 2024, we held a meet up for our corporate affiliate members on the WiFCERM stand. It’s exciting to see our affiliation has grown from 5 early adopters to 13 current members, who are striving for gender equality for everyone working across the flood and coastal erosion risk management sector.

Networking event

The WiFCERM networking event, sponsored by Binnies, has been the most attended session outside of the main conference sessions with total of 93 attendees! This year’s theme was based around the UN International Women’s Day theme: Rights. Equality. Empowerment in the FCERM sector.

We heard from our chairs Amy Shaw (Environment Agency) and Fabio Spaliviero (Binnies), and our amazing panellists: Emily Beasley (Environment Agency), Nicole Del Tedesco (Binnies), Jane Tingay (Arcadis) and Clementine Walsh (Arcadis), who openly shared examples of times they saw equality in action and how it inspired their career journeys. The panel also described what empowerment meant to them personally and how it translates into their work in FCERM sector. And finally, each panellist shared the best career advice they have ever received, a few of which were:

• Take up space at meetings – ask your question, make yourself seen and heard
• Ask yourself ‘Why can’t you?’ at times of doubt
• You deserve to be where you got to
• There’s no such thing as a silly question!

This led into breakout group discussions, sharing personal experiences in a supportive and uplifting environment. We will be analysing the feedback from the table discussions and building it into our future activities and initiatives.

We want to say thank you to all our guest speakers and attendees for making this another engaging, inspiring and successful event.

Awards

On Wednesday, 4th June we were delighted to celebrate the winners of our annual WiFCERM Awards 🎉 at gala dinner. The awards, sponsored this year by the Environment Agency, celebrate professionals of all genders and organisations in the FCERM sector, who are making a real difference to gender equality in the workplace and across the industry.

We had three awards this year: Rising Star Award, Equality Leadership Award and the Laura Baird Special Recognition Award. The judges were looking for individuals who acted as a role model – showing leadership of gender equality, influenced change and promoted a culture of fairness, inclusion and respect. Judges also looked for those who stood out for proactively developing themselves, supported the empowerment of others and who shined a light on the great things women can achieve.

We are excited to announce and congratulate well-deserved winners: Dr Kate Smith (Hull University), Youvrani Thimmegowda (Aecom) and Deborah Nutt (Arcadis)  👏