Succeeding as a Female Leader in the World of Megaprojects

In case you missed it: Our second Sustainable Megaprojects event

Women make up only 13% of the construction workforce. However, they play a vital role in our industry. We wanted to spotlight the importance of women’s success in megaprojects.

With this in mind, we hosted the second webinar of our Sustainable Megaprojects series in partnership with Oxford University’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. The event was led by Leasil Burrow, Associate Fellow at the University of Oxford and Founder & Director of Minerva Imagines. Leasil was joined by Gali Glatt Simhi, VP of Quality and Innovation at NTA. Gali disucssed her experiences as a female leader in the world of megaprojects and shared advice for women who want to carve out a successful career in our industry.

In case you missed it, here are the highlights:

Gali addressed 3 key hurdles from her newly released book ‘Running Hurdles: How to Forge Forward in Your Career as a Woman’.

1. The fear of not being perfect – Gali reflected on her past experiences to explain why women need to overcome the fear of not being perfect. She discussed how women can be fearful of taking risks in their career as they judge themselves too harshly. Overcoming this self doubt is vital to success.
2. Unequal pay – Gali discussed her experiences of being offered a salary far below the value she knew she was worth (and the salary that her male counterparts were attaining easily). She argued that women must demand fair and equal pay, highlighting some situations from her own career to illustrate how other women can do this themselves.
3. Having children – This is the most complicated hurdle for Gali. Many women think that combining a career and a family is too difficult, however, she emphasises that neither parenthood nor your career need to be sacrificed. The key is that women need to have a strong support system to navigate this hurdle.

Valuable lessons

Alongside these 3 lessons, Gali took part in an exclusive Q&A which was not only insightful but inspirational to women seeking to advance their career in megaprojects.

We were proud to host Gali and showcase her success story and share the valuable lessons she offered. You can order Gali’s book in Hebrew here, with the English translation coming soon.