This episode of Designed for Life was recorded live at the V&A London as part of the London Design Festival 2022. 

Yewande Akinola is one of the foremost design engineers in the UK today. Born and raised in Western Nigeria, she describes her interest in the built environment and bridges from an early age, intrigued by the beauty and structure of buildings around her. 

Her father was a Government Minister in Nigeria. He sadly passed when Yewande was very young, and her mother took over the task of ensuring that her children received the best education possible; this required grit, tenacity and hard work as money was tight and private education was the only way to chase the dream realistically. 

At 17, Yewande moved to the UK and Warwick University to start her journey into design and engineering. On graduation, she took up a post as a mechanical engineer for Thames Water before later moving to the Arup Group and continuing her development with a Master's Degree at Cranfield University. She currently holds the role of Principal Engineer and Innovation Lead at Laing O'Rourke. 

Yewande successfully balances the prominent roles of engineer, innovator, and visiting Professor at the University of Westminster. She is an Innovate UK Ambassador for clean growth and infrastructure. She is developing a growing reputation within media and public engagement, promoting engineering and challenging narrow stereotypes of who engineers are and the positive difference that they make in the world. 

This was a fantastic conversation with an engineer with an untold passion for the role of innovation, creativity and engineering. 

So pull up a comfy chair, pour a coffee, put the earbuds in and walk the dog or go to the gym...wherever you listen to your podcasts, make sure you find the time to listen to Designed for Life Live - In conversation with Yewande Akinola MBE. 

Please note this podcast has also been recorded on video and will be released imminently (we will post a link here when it goes live). Huge thanks to The London Design Festival and the V&A for presenting us with this opportunity and to Yewande for taking time out of a busy schedule. Should you wish to find out more about Yewande, do visit her website http://yewandeakinola.co.uk/

This podcast has been recorded with the help of our sponsors, The Edge Foundation https://www.edge.co.uk/ inspiring the education system to give all young people across the UK the knowledge, skills and behaviours they need to flourish in their future life and work, and PTC Onshape Providing industry-standard cloud-based CAD to education  https://www.ptc.com/en/news/2020/ptc-onshape-education-enterprise-plan-available-free-of-charge.

We are indebted to The Edge and PTC Onshape for their continued support.