Deborah is a core member of the BRE Trust Council, providing leadership in setting the vision and strategy to maximise the Trust’s positive societal impacts. She is responsible for the Trust’s operations and programmes, which use gift aid to commission research, provide scholarships and disseminate outputs.
As Executive Director Deborah has strategic and operational responsibility for the BRE Trust, delivering social value in the built environment through its research and education programmes with over 50 partners from Universities, industry and its subsidiary companies. The focus of work is on sustainability, resilience and wellbeing.
To date the BRE Trust has provided over £20m of funding, leveraging a further £50 million of cash and in-kind to support over 400 research and education projects, more than150 studentships, and 7 professorships and lectureships. Over 1000 new and updated published reports, peer-reviewed papers and learning modules have been created to share the findings of this work.
She is currently the Vice-President of the European Network for Building Research Institutes and also Chair of the Scholarships and Awards Committee of The Worshipful Company of Constructors, where she is also a member of the Livery and was awarded the Freedom of the City of London.
Deborah was previous the Group Research and Innovation Director, and she has also sat on many Government, industry and academic advisory groups, providing input to the strategic direction of funding and focus. She was recognised for her contribution to Innovation and Knowledge Transfer and awarded an MBE in the 2014 Queens New years Honours.
She was also awarded a Doctor of Science for her leadership of the Future Cities Programme at BRE in 2015 from the University of Hertfordshire. She has continued to extend her own knowledge by becoming a Fellow of Science and Policy at Cambridge and successfully completing a Certificate in Sustainable Business, also at Cambridge.
Prior to joining BRE Deborah has 20 years experience in leading research programmes, teams and business units in international public and private sector organisations delivering products and services relevent to a range of engineering industries. This has also included the creation and management of a number of national knowledge transfer and innovation exploitation networks.
