Next Generation Leaders – Nikki, Hannah, Ali & Adam

Before working in the Housing Sector, I worked within Children Services in London and later in Kent. My career in children services began in Youth Work, Youth Justice and then Intensive Family Intervention (FIP). I began face-to-face roles working directly with service users and mover into a Service Development role and later became a Manager within the FIP services. I began my career in Housing as a Neighbourhood Housing Manager and shortly after joining I had the opportunity to move into my current role.

My current role began with just me, tasked with exploring what our organisation required in terms of supporting our residents to Sustain their tenancies and how we would deliver this. As the Pandemic hit this provided us with important information about our resident's support needs and vulnerabilities which could impact on their ability to manager their home and tenancy. As a result of what we found it was agreed a Tenancy Sustainment team was required, I was quickly required to set up a new team including referral criteria, case management process and data collection for reporting and measuring outcomes. I now manage a team of four Sustainment Casework Officer who work directly with some of our most vulnerable residents, linking them with the right agencies to help them access appropriate support.

Outside of work I love to travel and try new experiences, eating lots of amazing food along the way makes it more fulfilling too! I also enjoy spending time with friends and family especially when they join some of my adventures. My next trip was meant to be to Estonia for a weekend, but this has been delayed multiple timed due to Covid. Instead it will now be local trip to London to see the new Van Gogh immersive experience, stopping at Bunsik a new Korean street food restaurant in Charing Cross which I am looking forward to trying.

I started my career in the Financial Services industry, working for a Global Private Health Insurance company. My first role began in customer services where I progressed through junior and senior roles in quick succession. During this time I spent 4 months seconded to the USA office to support the service delivery of a high profile client, deliver training of new systems and processes, and provide coaching to offshore colleagues. I then moved to a new role where I managed the on-boarding of large corporate clients and worked alongside the Sales teams to secure new business and renew existing clients.

As part of a talent programme, I had the opportunity to work alongside and be mentored by an experienced Programme Manager, whilst studying for and achieving the PRINCE2 qualification. Shortly after this, I accepted a project management role and gained experience delivering a number of projects ranging from IT implementation to product development and regulatory change.

I joined the Housing sector in 2019, after taking a five month break to travel, in a newly created role within the Transformation team at Town & Country Housing. Our team supports the business with ideas to transform their existing processes into modern, digital and improved ways of working. In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have delivered and continue to work on a number of initiatives to shape the future of our business in our new normal.

The other part of my role is focused on digital inclusion and involves partnership work with local authorities and agencies to design and launch projects to support residents in our communities to get access to digital skills training as well as access to devices +/- internet connection.

My career spans over working initially for the civil service departments and over 14 years of housing industry experience working for Toynbee Housing, One Housing Group, Town & Country Housing, L&Q, Church of England and also serving as a technical team Associate Director at GL Hearn, part of Capita Real Estate and Infrastructure. I have experience of working as a client and contractor, developing asset management services which includes advisory, consultancy, and successful implementation of asset management strategies and surveying programmes in social housing, student accommodation, NHS and commercial projects. I have attained a Masters' degree with distinction in the Build Environment and I am also a qualified retrofit coordinator. My research projects include evolution of Asset Management within housing sector, BIM, sustainable technologies and energy usage in occupied developments.

I lead towards the Asset Management Strategy, Carbon Reduction strategy and BIM implementation at Origin Housing as Head of Asset Management. Reporting to the Executive Director of Assets and Development, I hold the responsibility for the delivery of planned programme including cladding replacement, capital works, estate improvement and sustainability projects. I manage to ensure that asset data is updated with regular surveys and fit for purpose to enable suitable analytics for future modelling. I am currently leading on an Asset Management system upgrade project by developing a phased approach for an integrated, single but cross departmental platform. We have recently completed a two-tier asset hierarchy to a six-tier, BIM compliant asset hierarchy system and enhancing electronic surveying with a large, asset attributes collection dataset design, including EWS requirements and leading on business modernisation within Asset data management inc. drone survey pilot and IOT.

I have two young children and we usually go on activities together including bike rides, swimming, play video games, attend comic cons (when it is allowed) and visit historical places. I like cricket and badminton in sports, love cooking different types of food and travelling.