Our very own Charlotte Downes was recently recognised at the ACE Awards for her outstanding contribution to the sector as Programme Director of the Diversity Agenda. She has been instrumental in driving and supporting our Accord Signatories to achieve their individual goals, while pushing for excellence across the membership helping us move closer as a collective to our goals outlined in our strategy. Congratulations Charlotte! 👏
Our first award of the night is the President’s Award, which goes to Charlotte Downes, Programme Director at The Diversity Agenda, the movement that supports engineering and architecture firms to become more diverse and inclusive. Since becoming Programme Director in 2022, Charlotte has been exceptional in her efforts to further the programme’s reach and tireless in her willingness to extend its boundaries beyond the initial target audience. Under her leadership, notable achievements include raising awareness and empowering members by creating industry networks, offering learning opportunities, and providing tools to help accelerate members’ DEI progress. An outstanding achievement announced at this year’s Summit at Parliament was the narrowing of the pay equity gap of Accord signatories to 0.4%, down from 5.6% in 2023. As well as this, 90% of Accord signatories have begun their Māori cultural competence journey and women now occupy 30% of senior leadership roles, with a 5% increase annually. Charlotte’s boundless enthusiasm, tenaciousness and desire to deepen her personal knowledge for application to the wider sector is simply exceptional. She’s given outstanding service to the professional services sector and the communities we serve and is a very worthy recipient of this award. Huge congrats Charlotte Downes! #aceawards2024