The 2020 winner of the prestigious Karen Burt Memorial Award for the best newly chartered female engineer is Tina Gunnarsson, Digital Transformation Lead for Balfour Beatty Major Projects.
Tina was nominated for the 22nd Karen Burt Award by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), in acknowledgement of her achievements. The Award recognises the importance Chartered status has, the winner’s own contributions to excellent practice and highlighting engineering to others.
Sally Sudworth, Head Judge for the 2020 Karen Burt Award, supported by Joint Head Judge Dr Katherine Critchley, said,
“The judges were very impressed by Tina’s commitment to sustainability, demonstrating the application of her technical skills to improve transport links at Rubavu, Rwanda. From learning the local language of Kinyarwandan to deliver effective communications and engagement, to promoting engineering at the local schools, Tina’s talent was evident.
Her role in promoting SECT was also very impressive together with her support for the reverse mentoring scheme at Balfour Beatty. Tina was awarded the Renee Redfern Hunt prize by the ICE for her chartership assignment on the subject.”
Tina Gunnarsson responded to the Award by saying,
“It is an honour to have been awarded the Karen Burt Memorial Award. Dr Karen Burt was an incredibly accomplished engineer, and to share a passion with her for recruiting and retaining women in engineering is exciting. Engineering has empowered me to make positive changes in our communities to improve sustainability and diversity through teamwork, and I'd like to thank all the amazing people that I have worked with. I hope I can help to inspire more engineers to use their knowledge and skills to create positive changes in the world.”
For more information on the award winners for this year and previous years visit www.wes.org.uk/awards.