Last week, in a rare rainy day, we hosted our last event of the summer, the August NAWIC Business Breakfast.

Hosted at the heart of Marylebone, the event provided an opportunity to network and learn about the drives of a social entrepeneur.

HOD Kathy Basheva provided an update on several key business related events which will take place in the forthcoming months (keep and eye on the events setion of this website) and Chair Cristina Lanz Azcarate shared some details of the imminent regional conference.

Guest speaker, Danna Walker, from Built by Us, kindly offered to share her personal journey which took her from her apprenticeship as an electrician , passing through architecture school to her current status as a social entrepeneur.

We learnt that Social Enterprise can provide both the opportunity to contribute to local communities through projects we feel passionate about in a sustainable manner, as a business.

We learnt that understanding your own drive is key to identifying the path you may want to follow and that to do so, there are projects which provide you access to mentorship.

Danna has been a long time collaborator of NAWIC through Fluid Mentoring, a project which she started as a collaboration between RIBA, CIC, the Stephen Lawrence Trust and architects for change…all grops form which Danna supported and encouraged a more diverse future for the industry. The project is now run by her own social enterprise and has seen an unprecedented growth which has demostrated the need for such a project.

She also told us about Shape, a new project she has created to connect people at the start of their business career with people who have run enterprises of varying scales in the industry and Build, a project through which she plans to encourage young minds to engage in the built environment in order to find a worthwhile career.

The Q&A  was insightful as were the conversations which followed.

We must thank all attendees for participating and our guest speaker for sharing and inspiring all of us. We look forward to continuing to collaborate and support Built by Us

If you are interested in attending the launch of Fluid 2018, sign up here

If you can help on the event, email Danna

If you want to find out about Fluid, Shape and Build, and get involved personally or as a company ,check Danna’s website HERE

If you are interested in listening to the AMAZING programme Danna did for BBC4 check this blog post we did LINK