After six years co-leading our climate, sustainability and ESG practice, I am transitioning to a new role as the head of client engagement for the wider Strategic Risk Consulting practice.
As the Marsh UK head of ESG and climate resilience, I led a team of modelers, strategy consultants, engineers, surveyors, and geographic information systems experts. This team delivers ESG and sustainability consulting and innovation services, surveys and adaptation planning, climate and catastrophe resilience solutions, and remote sensing services to businesses, captives/insurers, and governments globally.
How does your work support Marsh in being the Risk Advisor of the Future?
Each day, we help our clients' executive teams tackle their most challenging and material risks and adopt a resilience mindset. While most of my time involves being a rainmaker and leading client relationships, I am passionate about life-long learning, so take immense pride in supporting both clients and colleagues on their journey to become fluent in the language of sustainability and climate and cut to the “so what?”.
How has being a mentor, mentee, or both shaped your life and career?
I believe in growth and giving back. Whether given and received formally or subliminally, mentoring is a cornerstone of how we evolve individually and our professional responsibility towards others. It’s part of my DNA – to seek input and offer guidance to those who seek it. When I look back on my workweek, the moments that matter most were spent moving the world forward and helping clients and colleagues.
What practice(s) have you found most useful in creating an effective mentor/mentee relationship?
The 1:1 sit-downs with my team and coaching I offer to female colleagues are helping them navigate short-term challenges and plan longer-term growth, be that juggling a young family, taking the next step with promotion, or pivoting their careers. I believe that excellent people skills are fundamental for consultants, so it is time well spent helping colleagues understand the importance of listening and becoming skillful in different types of conversation – whether that's building a relationship or reaching an agreement on terms for a new project, plus core skills like how to hold a business lunch. If you chatted with the team, you would probably hear a few Bev-isms, including one of my personal favourites – “have the serenity to accept the things you can not change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference”.
Tell us something important about your family or background that helped form the person and colleague you are today.
I am the first person in my family to go on to further education. I am deeply appreciative of the sacrifices my parents made and the opportunity I have been given to make a difference. I see a world of opportunity ahead for my son, Joel, and am doing all I can to help him lay the right foundations for future happiness – including becoming a critical thinker, following his interests and passions, being empathetic, seeing the positive, understanding the importance of a work-hard-play-hard mindset, and being resilient.