Four iconic portraits of women trailblazing

The four women featuring in the new Trailblazers’ portraits are Jane Atkinson, Senior Vice President, Sembcorp Utilities UK Asset Management and in 2007 winner of the CBI First Woman Award in Manufacturing as she frequently has been at the forefront of women in engineering and industry; also Fiona Cruickshank, non-exec director at SCM Pharma, a leading business figure and a former North East Woman Entrepreneur of the Year (see image above).
Joining Jane and Fiona are Nicola Pearsall, Director of Northumbria Photovoltaics Applications Centre (NPAC) and group leader for the Energy Systems and Materials research group in the School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences; and Laura Wilkinson, (see image right) the youngest of the four selected, and an Engineer with Northumbrian Water with a degree in Applied Biology which has allowed her to use her knowledge on microbiological processes.

I won the commission thanks in part to the work I had carried out on ‘Science in Profile’ when between 1988-1989 I worked with my partner John O’Grady and The British Council on their collection of 24 colour portraits of Great British Scientists. This included the last official portrait of Nobel Prize winner Dorothy Hodgkin and Dorothy is also featured in the Trailblazers’ exhibition.