Aurecon leader awarded prestigious US business school scholarship

27 August 2018 – Aurecon’s Regional Director for South Australia and Victoria Louise Adams will join talented leaders from across the world to hone best-practice business approaches after receiving a prestigious scholarship to the internationally acclaimed Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

As Aurecon continues its transformation to become future ready, Wharton’s Executive Development Program will support Louise in addressing challenges including the digitisation of infrastructure, shortage of talent, and driving diversity and inclusion through people development, retention and leadership.

The 2018 Chief Executive Women (CEW) Scholars awarded Louise the scholarship in recognition of her commitment to increasing diversity and inclusion in the male-dominated engineering profession.

Louise said she couldn’t wait to make the most of this inimitable opportunity in September this year.

“This intensive study programme will challenge my status quo, taking me outside of my engineering comfort zone and I relish the opportunity to learn from real world practitioners and leading academics,” said Louise.

“I’ll be learning alongside and from a highly diverse group of talented individuals from different industries around the world, including eminent thought-leaders on different leadership and business strategies. Industries across the world are changing and engineering is no exception. This course will further equip me to learn insights into how other organisations are navigating disruption, create and sustain competitive advantage, and how to lead cultural change in high-performing teams across geographies and functions.”

Louise’s scholarship was awarded through the 2018 CEW Scholars program that provides 18 talented Australian women with the opportunity to take their careers to the next level by supporting executive education at internationally acclaimed business schools.

“I am passionate about increasing diversity and inclusion within Aurecon and the engineering industry. We’ve already achieved significant progress at Aurecon, achieving our female leadership representation target of 30 per cent earlier this year, two years ahead of schedule, but much more can be done,” said Louise.

“This scholarship will enable me to learn from others about how we can continue to drive and promote greater inclusion in our industry, increase female voices at senior leadership levels and attract women in to engineering.”

The Executive Development Program involves a multidimensional approach of lectures, small/large group discussion, case study, role playing, campus networking opportunities, and a strategy simulation to provide new insights and give participants the opportunities to apply them.

Chief Executive Women represents Australia’s most senior women leaders whose mission is to support future leaders and inform the #gender debate.