Honorary graduates 2024

Rachel Skinner CBE FREng FICE (DSc)

Thursday 18 July 2024 9:00am

Rachel Skinner is an Executive Director at WSP, a global company that provides engineering, environmental and advisory services. Prior to this, she led WSP’s UK transport planning and advisory team.

From 2020-21, Rachel served as the youngest ever President of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE). Her theme of climate action explained the role of civil engineers in making faster, real-world change. She is a long-standing patron of Women in Transport (a not-for-profit that seeks to improve sector diversity).  Rachel was awarded a CBE for services to infrastructure in 2022.

Rachel was invited to become a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2019, is a chartered engineer and a chartered transport planner. She was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Leeds in 2022 and is an honorary fellow of the Society for the Environment. She continues to work closely with the UK’s largest infrastructure clients as chair of the Carbon Task Group of the Infrastructure Client Group (ICG), also the ICE’s Decarbonisation Advisory Board and the UK Department for Transport’s employment and skills taskforce. She also served two years as an Infrastructure Commissioner for Scotland from late 2018.

In 2016, Rachel was listed as one of The Telegraph’s inaugural UK Top 50 Influential Women in Engineering; in 2017 she was named the Most Distinguished Winner and Best Woman Civil Engineer at the Women in Civil Engineering Awards, and in 2019 she was confirmed by the Financial Times as one of the UK’s Top 100 Women in Engineering.