The Isabel Hardwich Medal is awarded to a WES Member who has made an outstanding and sustained contribution to the Women’s Engineering Society over a number of years and has gone above and beyond the call of duty.

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This Year’s Winner

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Previous Winners

2023 Winner: Jo Douglas Harris

Since 2014 Jo Douglas-Harris has contributed to the Women’s Engineering Society in a multitude of roles. She was the founding member and Chair of WES Bath, a member of the WES Council and the Student Groups and Universities Liaison. Jo launched a student column in the WES Journal, The Woman Engineer, and formed and chaired the Young Members’ Board, now the Early Careers Board. She also formed the University Groups Board and became a WES Trustee, Board Member and Vice-President.

Above and beyond these achievements, Jo relaunched the dormant Tyne & Tees Cluster and has attracted and engaged many new WES Members. The Tyne & Tees Cluster is now the most active WES cluster outside London. Jo has delivered many collaborative webinars and events including a university event which became the global launch of the 2022 International Women in Engineering Day.

2022 Winner: Dr Katherine Critchley

Jo also created the outstanding WES Lottie Tour, growing this outreach programme from 10 to 150 volunteers. She led the design of the Lottie poster during the WES Centenary and inspired the writing of five Lottie Books. Jo’s innovative creativity has enabled WES to showcase careers in STEM and encourage more young women into engineering.

Dr Katherine Critchley is both a Trustee of WES and a member of the Events Directors Committee. She has been instrumental in ensuring that that organisation provides a robust and varied programme of events for it’s members.

Katherine has not only served on the boards of WES she has been head judge for the Karen Burt Memorial Awards and is a Fellow of WES. Katherine is generous with both her time and expertise. She has provided support to the new members that joined the board, has supported staff in interviews and is generally willing to provide her experience in any task.

Katherine is a member of the Wales Cluster and chaired the Wales Centenary celebrations in 2019 which took 2 years to plan. Her skills, knowledge, willingness to help others, and dedication to WES make her an excellent winner for the Isabel Hardwich award.

2021 Winner: Sally Sudworth

Sally Sudworth has been a stalwart supporter and active volunteer in WES for many years. She was a Trustee and Honorary Secretary from 2017 until 2020 and her contribution during her tenure was staggering.

Never shying away from roles that required significant hard work and organisation, there were several stand-out contributions such as setting up and chairing the Annual Conference in our Centenary Year and also acting as Head Judge for the WE50 2020 for sustainability.

The 2019 Annual Conference was extraordinary, held at the RAF Museum and tied into the centenary theme of ‘Celebrating the past and transforming the future’ it was indeed a true celebration and highly over-subscribed; it was a real marker of the centenary and it set the bar for any future conferences to beat.

Not content with resting on her laurels after her contribution as a Trustee; last year Sally set up, and still chairs, the very active WES Climate Emergency Group. This has brought together her passion for supporting Women Engineers and her drive to make a difference on the sustainability and climate agenda and has delivered an amazing outcome. Her drive and determination have not only harnessed the input of a key group of volunteers into this emergency, but also secured WES’s involvement at the most anticipated climate conference in a generation, COP26 – truly remarkable!

Consequently, there is no more deserving nominee for the 2021 Isabel Hardwich Medal.

2020 Winner: Dawn Bonfield

Dawn joined WES in 2012 and soon after started working full time as a volunteer in the office, with her first job being sorting out all the files – which were in some disarray following the departure of WES’ only member of staff. Dawn made a particular impact increasing WES links with industry and other STEM organisations. By June 2014, when Dawn became President of WES, she had secured 15 partners and sponsors, when she resigned as CEO in 2016 she had increased that number to 38, which enabled WES to become stable financially and hire more staff. 

Dawn founded National Women in Engineering Day in 2014, which grew to become International Women in Engineering Day (INWED) and continues to get bigger each year, the campaign is now firmly embedded in WES calendar of events.  She also founded the WE50 Awards in partnership with the Telegraph and the Amy Johnson Inspirational Award.  During her time at WES she created the Magnificent Women schools outreach: an engineering inspiration activity which gave children the opportunity to experience engineering using the Stixx machines with an added component celebrating women engineers over the last 100 years. 

Since her resignation as CEO Dawn has continued to support WES with its heritage work.  She laid the foundations for the Centenary Trail project, she has been truly inspirational, innovative and inclusive.  Dawn continues to play an active part having conducted oral histories and is often present at events.

She continues to actively promote WES to her connections, and WES is grateful to Dawn for introducing WES to Santander Universities in 2019, which led to the creation of a ground-breaking partnership covering student sponsorship and events.  Dawn has recently written two resource sheets which are available on the WES Partner area: Inclusive Framework and Inclusive Leadership Towards Vision.

Thank you, Dawn, from everyone at WES, for your enormous contribution to WES and to women in engineering.

2019 Winner: Petra Gratton

The Isabel Hardwich Award is for a Member of WES who has made a positive impact on WES over a sustained period of time, and this is certainly true of Petra.  Petra joined WES in 1990 and her first formal role in WES was Chair of the London Branch in 1992.  She has sat on the Editorial Board for many years, assisted with the organisation of conferences and was elected Vice President in 1997 then President in 1998, when her presidential aim was to set up a mentoring scheme.  This vision turned into WES’ cross-sector mentoring scheme, MentorSET, which is still going strong today and has made 100s of pairings, providing support to mentees and personal development to mentors. 

In 1999 Petra delivered a speech to the Campaign Promoting Engineering (CPE) National Congress entitled ‘Let’s talk about sex!’ which, according to the WES Journal “caused a bit of a stir” and “woke them all up”.  Petra re-joined Council as a Trustee in 2017 and has played an active role as a Trustee for the last two years.  Petra is seen by all as rational and fair, and the support she gave behind the scenes in the running of WES in 2018 was greatly appreciated by staff in particular.