At Ridge, International Women's Day reflects something already in motion - a culture shaped daily by women who lead projects, mentor the next generation, champion inclusion, and in some cases literally redesign the industry around them. Across Ridge, 30.5% of our team are women - and every single one of them contributes to a business that is stronger, smarter and more purposeful because of it. These are some of their stories.

Alice Parker, Partner, Architecture  

Alice interviewed for her role at Ridge while seven months pregnant. She got the job – and she’s proud of that. It’s a small detail that says a lot about who she is. Alice has built a senior career while raising two young children, and she’s under no illusion that the balance is easy. But she’s equally clear that it shouldn’t have to be a choice and has spent years making sure other women know that too. 

Your path doesn’t have to look traditional to be valid. Leadership and flexibility can absolutely coexist.

From sitting on the committee of the Call In initiative to contributing to the RIBA Careers, Kids and Caring Responsibilities Toolkit, to joining the 2026 Education Estates Advisory Group, Alice puts her energy where her values are. She has mentored through the RIBA NW programme and spent over a decade as an external critic at Manchester School of Architecture and Liverpool University, quietly shaping the next generation of architects along the way. 

The work she finds most meaningful: designing SEND schools. There’s something fitting about that. Someone who cares deeply about creating the right environment for people to thrive, doing exactly that – in brick and mortar, and in the industry around her. 

Hannah Jones, Partner, Project Management  

Hannah has a simple belief – when women see other women leading, they start to believe they can too. It’s the reason she chairs Birmingham’s NextGen group, sits on the Birmingham Senior Leadership Team, and mentors women both through Women in Property West Midlands and internally at Ridge. Not because it’s expected, but because she knows what the right support at the right moment can do for someone’s career. 

Day to day, she’s delivering major regeneration and commercial developments across the Midlands – projects that will shape cities and communities long after the scaffolding comes down. She brings that same long-term thinking to the industry itself. As a leader and a mentor, she’s focused on building workplaces where talent thrives. 

For Hannah, IWD is a moment to recognise how far things have come, and a nudge to keep pushing. 

Representation doesn’t just inspire – it expands ambition.

Sam Elliott, Architectural Assistant  

Sam is currently in the final year of her Master’s in Architecture apprenticeship at Cambridge. Sam and her colleague Tasnim were the first two of six Ridge architecture students to join the programme, with Ridge recognised as one of the employers with the most students on the course since its inception. Her design thesis, centred around a retrofit project in the heart of Cambridge, reflects her commitment to thoughtful, sustainable design rooted in place and community. 

Beyond her studies, Sam is deeply invested in shaping the future of the architecture profession from within. Throughout her time at Ridge, she has contributed to internal strategy across the architecture discipline, advocating for future apprenticeship students and helping to expand the firm’s work experience provision to broaden access to the profession -particularly for women. As a STEM Ambassador, she regularly visits schools to inspire the next generation, bringing the same passion for inclusion and opportunity to her outreach work as she does to her design practice. Sam embodies the idea that learning, leadership and advocacy can go hand in hand. 

Holly Slater, Assistant Design Manager and Summer Bowdley, Apprentice Quantity Surveyor 

Holly throws herself into every network opportunity going – Women in Property, Generation 4 Change, You and Everyone in Property, Ridge’s Social Value Network, NextGen, Elevate & Evolve. It’s not box-ticking; she’s intrigued to understand the industry and find her place in it. Alongside her project work, she’s helping develop Ridge’s new Design Management Toolkit. 

Summer is an apprentice quantity surveyor doing much the same, turning up, getting involved, and bringing others with her. She’s active in Women in Property, Fabulous Females and NextGen, and through OpenCity, she’s currently running workshops with 8 and 9-year-olds in Birmingham, helping them design and build on a plot of land. 

For both, IWD is personal. It’s about the female role models who made their ambitions feel possible – and their own commitment to being that for someone else one day. 

Being part of these networks shows me what’s possible. They help me see the paths ahead, and the kind of leader I want to become. – Holly Slater 

Lauren Bailey, Head of Social Value 

For Lauren, International Women’s Day is a moment of both reflection and purpose. She works collaboratively with project teams from the earliest stages of a project, creating frameworks rooted in community wealth building, stakeholder engagement, and social impact integration that are as practical as they are measurable. That same ethos – of ensuring everyone has a genuine stake in the outcome runs through her commitment to gender equity too. As she puts it: 

For me, IWD is about acknowledging and celebrating the achievements of women striving for equitable outcomes for all. 

Niralee and Hannah, Technical Expert Witnesses  

Hannah has spent over a decade leading teams and actively encouraging engagement with IWD, be it organising annual IWD fundraising breakfasts for Care International, mentoring a young woman through Stemettes, participating in a STEM invention competition with a London primary school or inspiring those around her to also get involved.  Working in a field for over twenty years where male voices still dominate, she is committed to helping shift the balance. She is part of Ridge’s Technical Expert Witness team, led by the firm’s first female equity partner and made up of an equal number of women and men. For Hannah, that’s not a statistic to be proud of in theory. It’s proof of what’s possible. 

We’re not only talking about gender equality – we’re living it and showing what a balanced team can deliver.

Niralee has been underestimated in meetings. She has lost instructions because some clients still assume a male expert will be more persuasive to a judge. She knows exactly what it’s like to be the only woman in the room – and she also knows what it feels like when that starts to change. As a second-generation immigrant woman working as an expert witness, she carries that experience as both a reminder and a responsibility. These days she finds herself increasingly in meetings where the client, solicitor, barrister and expert are all women. Something she once couldn’t have imagined. 

 There’s real power in walking into a room and seeing women leading at every level. It changes the conversation before it even begins.

Marketing Team

For the women of Ridge’s Marketing team, International Women’s Day is not a date in the calendar; it’s reflected in the ambition, creativity and strategic influence they bring to the firm every day. 

A special mention to Kate Lewis, whose events expertise turned an enormous logistical challenge into a seamless, memorable experience for 300 partners; and to Katharine Morris, who is currently steering Ridge’s rebrand. A project that will define how the firm presents itself to the world for decades to come.  

From rebranding a firm with eight decades of history to producing events that unite 300 leaders under one roof, these women don’t just deliver Ridge’s vision – they help set it.