Speaker

Founder and director of Stopcocks Women Plumbers; the first national company of women plumbers anywhere. Founder and director of Register of Tradeswomen CIC a not-for-profit, the only organisation connecting customers nationally with verified tradeswomen; established to enable survivors of abuse to train in trades and increase numbers of tradeswomen. Founder with Jiku Kaguma of iFundi, a plumbing company in Nairobi, Kenya which supports young women and men into plumbing and raises standards of customer service. Author of 'The Joy of Plumbing’. Speaker, inspiration and pioneer.

I believe a more feminine approach to plumbing and all trades will change the industry for good. The situation for women entering manual trades has hardly changed in my 30+ years. Girls (and probably boys) are still being told by careers advisors they’re ’too good’ for skilled trades!

I am passionate that the reputation of my beloved industry is restored; making it aspirational for anyone to join. I am passionate that global water and sanitation issues are addressed, a supporter of WaterAid and Peace One Day, I've made several trips to Kenya, supporting women and young people living at Kithoka Community Home to build an effective rainwater harvesting system and halve their water bills, as well as helping Jiku set up iFundi.

Through Stopcocks I have created a service built on respect and quality and with Register of Tradeswomen we’re enabling householders all over UK to choose tradeswomen whatever their reason.

As a survivor of abuse, I can see that I ‘fixed myself by fixing things’ and see many other women empowering themselves by doing this throughout our industry. I want to make it simpler for women to do this and one of our primary aims at RTW is creating clear training routes into skilled trades that work for women. One of five children in a second generation Turkish Cypriot family, we were all abused like our mum, by our dad. Who’d have imagined I’d now be the proud recipient of an MBE for my work!

We’re all role models, and we all grow by putting ourselves in ‘the shoes’ of others.

I believe our whole industry will benefit massively, in ways we can’t even imagine yet, by embracing those groups who’re currently under-represented in it, to more accurately reflect our population.