Now in its fourth year, the Gender Diversity Ambassador Award was created in recognition of an individual’s hard work in achieving gender equality within the engineering industry.
The award is for a person of any gender who is an innovative thinker who has actively addressed the gender gap by attracting and retaining women in engineering. It aims to showcase innovation and good practice to compliment the YWE Awards, by recognising the support and encouragement of women in STEM careers.
Our 2023 Gender Diversity Ambassador Award winner Adrienne Houston
In 2012, Adrienne established her company, Eurovacuum Products Ltd, following gender discrimination she experienced after becoming a mother. She swore to not take this approach forward into her own business and committed instead to welcoming a diverse workforce and creating an inclusive culture.
Adrienne is a passionate supporter of building gender diversity within engineering. She was the Midlands Cluster Coordinator for the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) between 2005 to 2015. During these ten years, she increased membership across the region, organised and held the first regional WES conference, and increased outreach to primary schools, secondary schools and scout groups.
Alongside this, Adrienne is a mentor at Women in Business Engineering Computing, a mentoring scheme at Brunel University, where she was awarded Mentor of the Year in 2023. As if she wasn’t busy enough, she is also a business mentor at the Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers (AFBE-UK).
A keen STEM ambassador, Adrienne was awarded a Gold Award in 2019 by STEM West Midlands for her work supporting companies looking to grow their diversity. That same year, she was appointed Diversity and Inclusion Visiting Professor at the University of Birmingham by the Royal Academy of Engineering. A year later in 2020, Adrienne was shortlisted for the prestigious Executive Leader of the Year Award at the Equal Engineers’ Talent Awards.