ICE Strategy Session: systems thinking in action: a nature-based approach

Prof. Anusha Shah

Anusha Shah is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) and its president for the 2023-24 session. She’s the third woman and first person of colour to be elected as president in over 200 years of ICE history.

She’s a senior director for resilient cities and UK climate change adaptation lead at Arcadis, a global sustainability, design, engineering and management consulting firm.

She’s also a non-executive director at the Met Office, a trustee at the Green Alliance and a visiting professor at Edinburgh University. She was awarded honorary professorship by the University of Wolverhampton for knowledge transfer and an honorary doctorate of engineering by the University of East London for her services to address climate change.

Anusha specialises in water and environmental engineering and has over 22 years of experience in designing, managing and leading projects and programmes in the UK and internationally.

Anusha sits on various industry climate change groups. She represents Arcadis at the London Climate Change Partnership and the 50L Home Initiative of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. She’s a past chair of the Thames Estuary Partnership Board.

Anusha is the recipient of several awards, including the 2020 Top 50 UK Women Engineers Sustainability Award and the CECA Inspiring Change Award. She was recognised by Climate Reframe as one of the UK’s leading Black, Asian and minority ethnic voices on climate change.

Keith Howells

Keith Howells is the 158th President of the ICE.

Having graduated in civil engineering in 1974, Keith joined one of the founder members of the Mott MacDonald Group and spent the first 10 years of his career in infrastructure design and project management, mostly in the water and transport sectors. On completing an MBA in 1986, he became involved with the planning, feasibility, and financial and economic analysis of projects, principally in the water and environmental sectors. Over the next decade he worked on numerous projects funded by the international finance institutions as well as by UK government bodies.

Keith has built career long experience in the planning, study and design of hydraulic structures, hydropower, urban drainage, sewerage, water supply and river engineering schemes. He has worked in numerous countries as well as in the UK. He ran the firm’s Water and Environment business from 1997 to 2002, before becoming the Group Managing Director in 2004, directing the firm’s expansion in North America and Australasia. Keith became Chair of the Group’s Executive Board in 2011, responsible to shareholders for the performance of the company and its strategic direction – a role he continued until mid-2019.

Keith was on the board of the Association for Consultancy and Engineering from 2011 to 2015, and its Chair in 2013; he was a member of the CBI’s Construction Council from 2013 to 2019; and a member of the Cranfield School of Management Advisory Board from 2012 to 2020.  He is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a Fellow of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Emma Wren

Emma is a technical director for nature-based solutions and our Natural Flood Management Lead at Mott MacDonald. Emma is lead author of the exciting new CIRIA Natural Flood Management Manual and has recently won our internal Thought Leadership Award for her work promoting nature based solutions. She oversaw the flagship Leeds scheme to work with nature to reduce flood risk and helped develop the award winning NFM Sites digital platform to manage the conception, delivery and management of 100s of sites in tandem.

Emma also coordinates technical activities for Mott MacDonald’s water resources and flooding technical practice across Europe, seeking to improve the way the company does things and encouraging excellence. She co-leads a team of over 100 professionals working in the UK water resources and flooding team.

Piet Dircke

Piet Dircke is the Arcadis global director for climate adaptation, with 38 years of worldwide experience in climate adaptation, water management, urban resilience and coastal resilience. Since 2005, he has been working in the USA on flood protection and climate adaptation projects in cities such as New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Pittsburgh, Norfolk, Honolulu, Miami and Charleston. In Asia, he was active in Jakarta, Singapore, Semarang, Hongkong, Shanghai, Ho Chi Min city, Hanoi, Yangon and Bangkok.

Piet was platform partner for the 100 Resilient Cities programme from 2015–19, and a professor for urban water management at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences 2007–14. Piet was on the Sounding Board of the UN Water Conference in New York. He is on the steering committee of the AIWW Amsterdam International Water Week 2023 and on the Programme Committee of the SIWW Singapore International Water Week 2024.

Donald Lunan

Donald Lunan is head of strategic programmes at 3Keel. With a background in ecology and agriculture, Donald has over 20 years’ experience in the delivery of programmes internationally that work to identify solutions to seemingly intractable problems. At 3Keel, Donald is helping to further develop the Landscape Enterprise Network (LENs), a model that draws together organisations that have a shared interest in a specific landscape, and how, by working together, they can make a greater impact on biodiversity, climate and livelihoods while continuing to derive economic value.

Dr Andy Moores

Dr Andy Moores is executive director of research at CIRIA. CIRIA is a member-based organisation that produces good practice guidance, training and events to share knowledge. CIRIA have long championed the use of nature based solutions through work on SUDS, Blue-Green Infrastructure and through the Natural Flood Management Manual released last year. Prior to joining CIRIA in 2021, Andy led the FCERM research programme for the Environment Agency which helped to champion working with natural processes in the broadest sense. Andy serves on a range of CIWEM, ICE and research advisory boards.

Abby Crisostomo

Abby Crisostomo is a multidisciplinary policy, planning and delivery professional with a focus on the intersection of cities, environment and communities. She has a wide variety of interests and experience, but has worked most extensively in climate adaptation, environment, planning, sustainability and infrastructure.

Abby Crisostomo is the head of green infrastructure at the Greater London Authority, leading policies and programmes to deliver London’s greening ambitions. She also founded and chairs CIWEM’s SuDS and Water Reuse Policy Leadership Group.

Previous roles include: director for delivery of Thames Estuary 2100 at the Environment Agency; head of climate adaptation and sustainable development at the Greater London Authority; leading sustainable design and construction projects for KLH Sustainability, including London Olympic Park legacy projects; and environment and social policy and planning in the US at the Alliance for the Great Lakes and Chicago’s Metropolitan Planning Council.