Emily Spearman is Head of PMO (Portfolio Management Office) in QHSE for Orsted – the most sustainable energy company in the world. She leads a team overseeing the global portfolio of QHSE projects across offshore wind, onshore wind, solar, bioenergy and energy storage. Part of the QHSE Senior Leadership, Emily plays a major part in setting the organisation’s strategic QHSE direction. A far cry from her first role as an engineer working on offshore oil rigs in the North Sea.
Alongside her busy career, and a mum of two young children, Emily dedicates her time to making positive changes for others by modernising ways of working to be more inclusive and by being an active supporter of women at all stages of their educational or career journey. She does this through her role as Trustee of the Energy Institute (since 2015) and Chair of Professional Affairs Committee (since 2018) where, under her Chairship, the numbers of women and BAME members is increasing significantly. Emily is an active mentor supporting engineers seeking Chartership. She is a public speaker where she champions the amazing opportunities in engineering to students of all ages and has been invited to speak at high-level roundtables (Green Jobs Taskforce) with BEIS. Always striving for improvement in diversity and inclusion, Emily has founded a STEM Champions Network and STEM Returners programme at Orsted.
Emily, a Chartered Energy Engineer and Fellow with the Energy Institute, won the Women’s Engineering Society Karen Burt award for ‘most outstanding newly chartered engineer’ in 2008. In 2020 she was highly commended in the WES Top 50 Women in Engineering: Sustainability and in 2021 was a finalist for Engineer of the Year with EqualEngineers.