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Young Leaders is back, with 20 new housing professionals ready to impress.
This year we had an enormous number of entries, from housing associations and ALMOs, to private contractors and local authorities.
The competition gets tougher each year, and we are delighted to reveal the 20 fighting for your vote to reach the semi-final.
Over on our website, you can see the reasons they were nominated and vote for who you think should make the final 10.
Those 10 will present a special online presentation, due to the outbreak of COVID-19, in front of a panel of expert judges.
Mark Lawrence, 24housing editor, said: “At a time of uncertainty, the entries we have received show that the sector has some brilliant bright talent ready to make change.
“These are housing professionals already making an impression at their own organisation, now ready to show the sector what they can do.
“Congratulations to all the shortlisted entries for making it this far through tough competition. Good luck to you all moving forward in the process.”
Entries open for the online vote on the 3rd April for two weeks.
Below is the full list of candidates, you can vote for them by clicking here.
Josh demonstrates a lot of passion and dedication towards the importance of electrical compliance, and the provision of safe homes for our customers. Over the past 18 months Josh has stepped up into the Admin Team Leader role, and in that time has created a centralised back office team for electrical works and compliance delivery. Over the past 12 months Josh has managed the back office team that has played its part in Sovereign taking its electrical compliance figure from 65% to 95% compliant, following the change in process to carry out electrical testing from every 10 years to every five years.
Jordan shows leadership qualities even this early in her current role. She carries out varied tasks throughout her role interacting on the front line daily interacting daily and problem solving for tenants who have a vast and varied amount of disabilities including learning disabilities and dementia. Jordan will always put the customer first and look at there needs and come up with the right solution showing empathy where required. She will take control of the situation and will always come up with the right decision for that customer. Overall Jordan makes a difference to peoples lives often.
Ella recently took on the work of an absent colleague, alongside her own workload, for a period of two months. Her determination to ensure her colleague’s work didn’t fall behind showed what a great team worker she is. Ella volunteered to do this and effectively carried out the work of two people for a significant amount of time. This made a huge difference to the team and ensured our customer’s needs were met. She is professional, engaging, knowledgeable and an excellent team player and also has become the “go to” person in our team for not only our administrators and the other officers for advice and support, but also for colleagues from other departments too.
Laura is passionate, ambitious and committed to Honeycomb Group; particularly in raising awareness of the services we offer and telling stories about the people we support. Laura believes that through carefully delivered messages and using an active presence on social media our customers not only have access to services when they need them but also have their own important experiences and stories heard by others both inside and outside of the sector. She has been proactive in the social housing sector both nationally and locally, taking part in the NHF network and conferences, PlaceShapers network and events as well as taking a role on the local Chamber of Commerce FutureFinest steering group.
Lucy has high standards and is assertive in encouraging others to match those standards. Lucy takes ownership for her objectives but will explore how best to fulfill the objective and what best skills and experience she can utilise across the business and partner agencies. Her Housing Officer skills are flourishing as she progresses. She’s a fantastic communicator and has the ability to soothe and get her message across to even the most difficult of customers.
Demi is a positive and likable person and is very popular with her colleagues. She is always happy to help out other teams in the organisation, often at short notice. Demi has built positive working relationships with the key stakeholders within the community in which she works. This includes the ward Councillors, local police, health professionals, tenant and resident associations and community groups. Demi plays a key role in organising and attending events and activities with these groups, often during evenings and at weekends. She has previously hosted an advice surgery at a local GP practice to help patients with their housing issues. She has also assisted the police in helping to reduce criminal activity in the area by sharing information and attending operational visits and joint walkabouts.
As the Energy Services Team Leader Natalie has a major focus on customers in fuel poverty, energy management, EPC data and climate change. Part of this includes managing the Energy Advice Service, which carries out bespoke energy related visits to customers’ homes, ranging from debt related issues to help with fuel switches and heating upgrades, combined this produces great savings for customers. Natalie is continuing to successfully implement a flexible procurement strategy, this not only secures energy demands a year in advance but also on average this saves the organisation 11% per year on energy costs compared to market prices and in turn this ensures service charges or communal energy costs are sustainable and best value for customers.
Jo has a strong passion for equality, diversity and inclusion and has been instrumental in helping set up our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Forum at MSV, raising its profile and influencing and driving positive change across the business. Jo’s work on supporting gender and other forms of equality has meant that MSV placed 56th out of 100 in the National Centre for Diversity’s ‘Most Inclusive Employers 2019’ list. Jo will also be assisting on work this year to gain the Investors in Diversity accreditation to further demonstrate our commitment to equality and inclusion for all. Jo always strives to do the right thing and is a very caring colleague.
Hassan has passion for helping residents and getting things right the first time. He always leads by example and encourages others to rethink and question how we work. He gives support to any team or colleague who needs it. Hassan sees the bigger picture – for example spotting the impact of responding to residents in time was having on our reputation and trust ratings. Hassan easily adapts to different situations, and example is when he took lead on our Joint Working Group on Fire Safety. This was not in his area of work but he stepped up and made sure it was resident-led and attended as a priority by the fire brigade borough commander and our chief executive.
She has always had a strong enthusiasm for the environment in her personal life and her career prior to joining Orbit included an energy and climate change research internship where she contributed to government consultation responses on behalf of clients. After 12 months, Jessica felt Orbit could to more to tackle climate change and reduce its negative impact on the environment. So, with support from her line manager, she was able to find some time each week to establish a new environmentally-focused programme – called Orbit Earth – that has since continued to create momentum right across the business. As part of this, Jessica successfully demonstrated a business case for a dedicated management function to drive our Orbit Earth programme to be sector leading.
I have never worked with someone with same levels of focus, commitment and determination at such an early stage in their career. She has traveled significant distances to gain experience – this has entailed wearing staff proof vests when she was an anti social officer in London, spending time as a special constable, working with data and carrying out traditional housing officer functions. At the same time as working full time she has self funded courses she requires and has put herself firmly in the middle of the Scottish Government’s agenda to reduce homelessness by being one of very few people across Scotland who are ‘Change leaders’.
Naomi has demonstrated that she respects diversity and promotes equality in her role as Neighbourhood Officer. She recently had a complex Anti-Social Behaviour case involving a tenant who is deaf. In order to ensure inclusion and fairness in investigating the case, Naomi arranged for a deaf direct representative to be present at all meetings and interactions with the tenant to translate. This was despite him having the ability to lip read and a family member supporting him. Naomi understood the importance of giving the tenant an equal stance to the other party involved in the case.
In her early days with us in a very male oriented hostel she took the lead and developed a women’s wellbeing group offering a space for female clients to talk about self-esteem and sexual health. In her role as client involvement and skills leader, Abbi led and supported our client scrutiny and involvement team – a team of ex service users who visit and assess our services and champion changes that benefit all clients. Abbi developed and led a programme for the National Citizenship Scheme in which young people learnt about homelessness. The young people would often arrive with preconceptions about homelessness, drug use and mental health issues. The programme allowed these young people to see the truth behind homelessness issues and to develop compassion and understanding.
While balancing the bread and butter work of a Neighbourhood Management Officer, Catherine is constantly looking for ways to innovate and create more effective ways of working. Within her team, she is a champion of working flexibly around the needs of tenants, visiting customers out of hours to help maintain contact and drive up engagement. She is working to create a Tenancy Management workflow and process that will be rolled out across the Neighbourhoods Team, which will provide more clarity and structure to cases. Catherine is enrolled on SLH’s ‘Accelerate’ programme, which gives colleagues the chance to work across departments to develop innovative projects that change the lives of customers. She is currently working on a project to make Heaton Close in Speke more environmentally-friendly and aesthetically-pleasing, while using the project to stimulate tenant engagement.
In her role as Community Connector, Rachael is one of the most passionately proactive people at Beyond Housing. She genuinely wants to make her communities better places to live and enact positive change, coming up with the vision and action plan to make this a reality. This is what makes her a promising young leader that will be a great asset to the future of housing. Rachael demonstrates extensive accountability, tenacity and enthusiasm, evidenced in a project she currently leads to bring a pop-up cinema to her most deprived communities.
Harry Forshaw is the Youth Volunteer Coordinator and has significantly changed the lives of young people living in Tower Hamlets. At just 28, Harry shows that he is not just a future leader but an ambassador for youth empowerment. He has created a legacy at Spotlight: his commitment to working with young people has led to an 8% increase in youth volunteering. He achieved this by setting up Youth Committees around East London to champion youth leadership and teach young people key skills such as communication, confidence and time management.
Shahaveer brings vast experience of working voluntarily in borough’s across London to empower vulnerable people and campaign for a better community. Shahaveer has been working on our vision to aspire and to deliver a joined up, innovative and sustainable service to residents in our properties throughout the lifecycle of their tenancies. He has been dealing with young people and anti-social behaviour not through enforcement but sitting down with young people and trying to look into root causes of problems. Some of the findings were overcrowded situation at home and not in employment or education. He has worked closely with young people and referred them into training and relevant departments to seek advise and keeping tabs with them.
Halisha is an outstanding individual. She is assertive and confident and has a versatility that allows her to integrate with other departments and external agencies bringing her core values to the agenda. Halisha has a great understanding of the value and need for diversity across the housing sector. She has demonstrated by identifying a gap in the market for a social networking group for young people in housing associations. Halisha set up her own network, bringing together trainees from other housing associations to develop NGen – the next generation of leaders in construction.
Still in her early twenties, Molly is already the authority on her area of expertise within PA Housing. She has come such a long way in such a short amount of time, and this has been a result of her pushing herself to gain the knowledge and skills she has needed to make her projects work. Molly is big on innovation and keeping up with the times, and it is inevitable that, throughout her career, she will learn, adapt, and expand her expertise, and remain on the cutting edge of digital services and customer engagement. Molly is a problem solver whilst also being a realist meaning she will always have the bigger picture in mind whilst thinking of achievable ways to get there.
As the Development team’s Aftercare & Quality Manager, Connie puts customer service at the heart of everything she does, that’s why she’s established a new team from a standing start with an absolute focus on our customers. The success of this team is evidenced by praise from other parts of the business, satisfaction from other teams, resolving long-standing complaints and reducing complaint numbers. Connie has reimagined the way we deliver the service, she’s influenced other stakeholders to buy into her vision and significantly improved satisfaction. Despite the challenges Connie always approaches her role with a positive optimistic attitude and her vision and approach for re-designing our service from a customer standpoint makes her standout as an inspirational leader
