With our 2024 Annual Dinner just around the corner, we sat down with Sue Kingswood, the latest winner of the Eily Keary Maritime Diversity Award to understand more about life since winning the award.
The Eily Keary Award, sponsored by BP, recognises the contribution by an individual, organisation, or part of an organisation to increasing equality, diversity, and inclusion in their sector of the maritime industry. During her time at the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) Sue had been “instrumental in developing four thriving affinity networks (LGBT+, Race Equality, Disability, Young Professionals)”.
How has winning the award affected your work or research?
“Winning the award has helped to motivate me towards becoming a consultant in this field, which is something I have been considering for a long time. BP’s sponsorship of the award has enabled me to contact others in an area of the maritime world with which I had not previously been involved. This has been extremely rewarding and interesting, enabling me to build new networks and share experiences of creating inclusive cultures, in what can sometimes be challenging contexts.”
What steps have you taken to further improve ED&I since winning?
“By taking a leap into the world of consultancy, I am sharing the knowledge, experience and skills I’ve gained over the years with a greater variety of people to help create culture change on a much wider scale.”
Any words of encouragement or advice for those looking to contribute to ED&I?
“I would encourage people to ‘stick with it’ because culture change takes time and can be exhausting, especially when you face institutional barriers. Be consistent, build your resilience and maintain a sense of humour. Be compassionate and refrain from judgement in order to encourage learning, understanding and to build confidence. Support one another and recognise that everyone is viewing the world through a different lens, and this is the joy of diversity. However, if it challenges your own worldview, it can be uncomfortable. Be ok with that and remember that inclusion is about respecting others’ differences and not about attempting to quash it. Civilised communication is key to understanding one another but this won’t happen if we are not prepared to listen without prejudice.”
Past winners
- Natalie Desty
- Cathy Ingram
- Dr Ralitsa Mihaylova
The window for our 2024 award nominations closed on the 31st of January 2023 but for more information on all our awards visit our awards page here.
