Places She Shapes

Season 4 | Episode 2 – Places She Shapes with Zoe Smeeth

At 15, Ellie left Devon for London with one goal: to become a professional ballet dancer. By 19, she was performing at the London 2012 Olympic closing ceremony. But the stage that gave her everything also asked a great deal in return.

This episode is proudly supported by Saville Row Projects (SRP).

When injury and uncertainty brought her dancing career to a close, Ellie had to start again from scratch. A trip to the job centre, a basic computer course and an interview in a church full of taxidermy and graffiti set her on an unexpected path into property. Today, she’s Client Engagement Director at Perkins&Will.

In this honest and moving conversation, Ellie talks to Zoe about grit, reinvention and the one phone call that could have cost her a brand new job. She also shares what being a dancer taught her about teamwork, why the best talent doesn’t always come with the right CV, and how three words on an office wall still shape the way she leads.

Listen now to hear Ellie’s story in full.

Search ‘Places She Shapes’ to find us on all your favourite podcast platforms or use the link in bio! 📺 Watch full episodes on YouTube: @PlacesSheShapes ✨ Stay connected, follow us on TikTok: @PlacesSheShapes

This season is proudly supported by JAC Project Management.

Season 4 | Episode 1 – Places She Shapes with Zoe Smeeth

Season 4 is here, and we couldn’t think of a better way to open it than with Katy Dowding, President and CEO of Skanska UK, and currently the only female CEO of a UK tier-one contractor.

Katy didn’t start with a master plan. She found her first job by working through the Yellow Pages, squeezed five days’ work into four, and travelled from Southampton to London for college. Somewhere along the way, she also became a TV quiz show champion, and her colleagues still occasionally spot her on reruns.

In conversation with Zoe at Abbey Road Studios, Katy talks openly about the weight of being first, and what she says to people who think she “doesn’t look like a CEO”. She also shares where her earliest leadership lessons really came from, and the moment she realised that leading like someone else simply wasn’t working.

Honest, funny and full of hard-won wisdom, this is a brilliant start to the season. The episode is out Sunday 25 October.

Search ‘Places She Shapes’ to find us on all your favourite podcast platforms or use the link in bio! 📺 Watch full episodes on YouTube: @PlacesSheShapes ✨ Stay connected, follow us on TikTok: @PlacesSheShapes

Season 3 | Episode 12 – Places She Shapes with Zoe Smeeth

This week, Zoe sits down with Christina Hsieh, structural engineer, Fellow of the Institution of Structural Engineers, and founder of Matter, a consultancy she built around social value long before the term existed.

Christina's story begins with a documentary, a dream, and a decision that put almost everyone she loved against her. She applied to study in the UK in secret, having never held a passport or set foot in an airport. What happened when she finally arrived is the kind of thing you couldn't make up, and it's only the beginning.

She's remarkably open about the moments that shaped her: the mentors who saw something she couldn't yet see in herself, a rebuild on the other side of the world, a diagnosis that changed everything, and the comment that finally made her stop trying to break the glass ceiling and simply build a company without one.

It's a conversation about following your gut, asking "why," and deciding your time is worth spending on work that matters. You'll want to hear how she got here.

Search 'Places She Shapes' to find us on all your favourite podcast platforms or use the link in bio!

📺 Watch full episodes on YouTube: @PlacesSheShapes

✨ Stay connected, follow us on TikTok: @PlacesSheShapes

Season 3 | Episode 11 – Places She Shapes with Zoe Smeeth

This week on New Tracks, Zoe is joined by someone she knows very well indeed: Lily Dent, Project Manager at JAC Project Management. New Tracks flips the usual format, asking the questions we might have posed to our season one and two guests if we could have caught them right at the start of their careers.

Lily didn't grow up knowing fit out existed. One disgruntled evening, a scroll through a job site, and a role she almost talked herself out of applying for; that's where it began. What happened next is a lesson in backing yourself before anyone else does.

She's honest about walking into rooms and being underestimated, about imposter syndrome that shows up "every day," and about the quiet power of deciding you'll simply outwork the doubt. She also talks about proving things to herself, the accreditation she took on to do exactly that, and why leaning into who you really are might be the most memorable thing you can do.

And then there's the question of what she wants people to say about her long after she's left the room. You'll want to hear her answer to that one.

Search 'Places She Shapes' to find us on all your favourite podcast platforms or use the link in bio! 📺 Watch full episodes on YouTube: @PlacesSheShapes ✨ Stay connected, follow us on TikTok: @PlacesSheShapes

Season 3 | Episode 10 – Places She Shapes with Zoe Smeeth

Brogan MacDonald was going to be an artist. A Blue Peter badge at five, a love of drawing and fashion, and a plan that had nothing to do with maths or science. Today she is Head of Sustainability for Building Structures at Ramboll UK, a role that, until three years ago, did not exist. She built it.

This week Brogan joins Zoe to trace a journey that almost went a very different way. She is honest about the teachers who told her what she could not do, the first year of university where her maths marks were Ds, and the tutoring she was too embarrassed to admit she needed. She talks about being one of very few women on site, the meetings she walked out of in tears, and the mentor who threw her in the deep end to see if she could float.

Then there is the month in the Bali jungle, silent until midday, that changed how she thinks about ambition altogether. She came home not quite sure where her career or her life was going, and that question is still with her.

If you have ever been told no, or quietly wondered whether the thing you love could ever become the thing you do, this one is for you. Listen to the full episode to hear how Brogan learned to trust that what is meant for you will find its way to you.

Search 'Places She Shapes' to find us on all your favourite podcast platforms or use the link in bio! 📺 Watch full episodes on YouTube: @PlacesSheShapes ✨ Stay connected, follow us on TikTok: @PlacesSheShapes

Season 3 | Episode 9 – Places She Shapes with Zoe Smeeth

Lottie Outen never planned a career in real estate. As a child she wanted to be a vet or a doctor. As a student she fell for languages, chased a year abroad, and ended up in a flat in the middle of Madrid learning corporate banking in Spanish. Ask her how she got from there to Managing Director at Kennedy Wilson, overseeing seven billion euros of assets, and the honest answer is that almost none of it went to plan.

This week Lottie joins Zoe to trace a path built on instinct and a stubborn refusal to stand still. She is open about the disappointment that redirected her whole life, the long hours in investment banking, and the moment in a Berkeley Square boardroom when she looked around and thought, I am on the wrong side of the table.

What came next took nine months, a lot of Saturdays teaching herself, and one of the least convincing resignations her boss says he has ever received. And then, while she was riding an elephant in Sri Lanka on garden leave, her phone rang.

If you have ever felt the pull towards something before you could explain why, this one will land. Listen to the full episode to hear how Lottie learned that things happen for a reason, and that drive really does come from within.

Search 'Places She Shapes' to find us on all your favourite podcast platforms or use the link in bio! 📺 Watch full episodes on YouTube: @PlacesSheShapes ✨ Stay connected, follow us on TikTok: @PlacesSheShapes

Season 3 | Episode 8 – Places She Shapes with Zoe Smeeth

Some people map out exactly where they will end up. Kara Carter, owner and director of Spacelab, is not one of them. She was the kid who loved to draw, the teenager juggling three jobs, the graduate who had no idea how you actually turn a talent for art into a living. What she did have was a quiet, stubborn work ethic and a knack for saying yes before she felt ready.

This week Kara joins Zoe to trace a career that started with a summer placement and somehow, 21 years later, ended with her buying the company. There was no grand plan. There was a chance meeting at university, a competition win, and a founder who saw something in her she could not yet see in herself.

But the road to ownership was anything but smooth. Kara is honest about the years of waiting, the conversations that went quiet, and the moment a single phone call changed everything, right before she left for holiday. What followed tested her in ways she never expected.

to the full episode to hear how Kara learned to trust the process, and herself.

Search 'Places She Shapes' to find us on all your favourite podcast platforms or use the link in bio!

📺 Watch full episodes on YouTube: @PlacesSheShapes

✨ Stay connected, follow us on TikTok: @PlacesSheShapes

New Tracks | Episode 7 – Places She Shapes with Zoe Smeeth

Lisa Ames-Hall is a project manager at Historic Royal Palaces, the independent charity that looks after the Tower of London, Kensington Palace, Hampton Court and more. She is also an architect by training, a farm kid by upbringing, and someone who has quietly pivoted her career twice and landed somewhere that genuinely feels like a fit.

Her route here was not obvious. She failed vet school spectacularly, opened a UCAS list from the top, and stumbled into architecture somewhere between astrophysics and aeronautics. Then, years later, she saw a job advert for a project manager at Historic Royal Palaces, told herself she wasn't qualified, applied anyway, and got it.

What makes Lisa's episode so warm is how honest she is about what she was looking for and how long it took to find it. She talks about the difference between pushing at a door that will open and pushing at one that never will. About leading with empathy in an organisation where some of her colleagues have worked for 40 years. About what success actually looks like when you stop measuring it the way you were taught to.

She also has some thoughts on keeping your weird. They are worth hearing.

Search 'Places She Shapes' to find us on all your favourite podcast platforms or use the link in bio!

📺 Watch full episodes on YouTube: @PlacesSheShapes

✨ Stay connected, follow us on TikTok: @PlacesSheShapes

This series is proudly supported by JAC Project Management.

Season 3 | Episode 6 – Places She Shapes with Zoe Smeeth

Emma Foster knew she wanted to be involved in buildings from the moment a careers advisor wrote the word "architect" on a piece of paper. She went to Liverpool, realised within days that architecture wasn't quite right, and spent the rest of her degree quietly working out what was.

Emma is now Principal at BGO, overseeing the design and construction of major development projects across Central London, including a half a million square foot office development at 105 Victoria Street. She got there via Mace, Goldman Sachs, Tishman Speyer, and a code word involving a monkey.

This episode is full of moments that will resonate. Being thrown in the deep end as a 23-year-old PM on a major school project with no real blueprint. Being told "don't run before you can walk" the day she handed in her notice. The worst interview of her career for a job she absolutely should have got, and did, because someone in the room backed her anyway.

Emma is thoughtful, driven and completely honest about the moments that shaped her. Including the ones where she had no idea what she was doing and did it anyway.

Search 'Places She Shapes' to find us on all your favourite podcast platforms or use the link in bio! 📺 Watch full episodes on YouTube: @PlacesSheShapes ✨ Stay connected, follow us on TikTok: @PlacesSheShapes

This season, we're delighted to be supported by Cripps, a Top 100 UK law firm proud to champion female leaders and help drive meaningful change.

New Tracks | Episode 5 – Places She Shapes with Zoe Smeeth

Rochelle Wright is an electrician at PPS Electrical, working on the Sellafield nuclear site in the Lake District. She is also a bodybuilder, a mum, and the founder of Herbasix, a platform she is building to give workers in construction a way to report harassment, access support, and actually be heard.

She wanted to be an electrician at school. She was talked out of it. At 25, she decided she was doing it anyway, and she has not looked back since.

What makes Rochelle's episode so compelling is not just what she has done, but how honest she is about why she did it. The Unite the Union survey that changed everything. The day she cried in a toilet on site and drove home without explaining why.

She is also, it has to be said, brilliant company. This one is warm, funny, and completely unfiltered.

Search 'Places She Shapes' to find us on all your favourite podcast platforms or use the link in bio! 📺 Watch full episodes on YouTube: @PlacesSheShapes ✨ Stay connected, follow us on TikTok: @PlacesSheShapes

This series is proudly supported by JAC Project Management.