Meet the Cranfield alumna named among sustainability’s brightest rising stars

For Julia Anukam, working in sustainability is about being part of the solution. A conscious consumer and long-time vegan, she found her true calling after a re-evaluation of her career priorities during the Covid-19 pandemic led to studying for a master’s degree in sustainability and then Cranfield’s Sustainability Business Specialist Apprenticeship.

Now Senior Sustainability Manager at leading housebuilder Vistry Group, she was recently named in edie’s 30 Under 30 Class of 2024, a prestigious list showcasing the best up-and-coming talent in the field.

“I think Covid encouraged a lot of people to think about what they really wanted to be doing with their lives,” Julia says. “There were a lot of ‘looking in the mirror’ moments, and I think I had mine. I don’t look back; aligning my career to my values was probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

“The apprenticeship was great. By allowing me to base assignments on the business I was working with, it really elevated my ability to operate with confidence and with trust that I knew what I was talking about. I very quickly saw progression and by the end of the two-and-a-half years I was looking after a team that I had coached and mentored, and all of it could be trailed back to what the apprenticeship empowered in giving me all the tools, skills, frameworks, know-how and the network to apply sustainability in all of these different scenarios and situations.”

And in the housebuilding sector, as Julia explains, there is a lot of work to do.

“The Government has big ambitions for the energy efficiency of homes by 2030,” she says. “This includes phasing out boilers and replacing them with air source heat pumps and improving the energy efficiency of new build homes. These ambitions are really informing the houses that we are designing and looking to build in the future and are very closely linked to our own path to net zero emissions by 2040 and that of our colleagues in the industry.

“Among our big focuses are the use of energy and fuels at site level and the embodied carbon in the building materials we use, as well as the human impact of where those materials come from.

“We are looking at transition fuels such as hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO) to get us to a place where we can perhaps electrify the machinery that is being used on the ground.

“Also, a lot of the materials we use, from metals and wood to the solar panels we are using to decarbonise as an industry, can be sourced back to developing countries with very high risks for modern slavery including child or forced labour. So, as well as thinking about how to build sustainable homes and what materials they are made from, we are increasingly investigating who is providing us with those materials through our supply chain.

“To ensure we are providing sustainable homes built for a net zero future, we are exploring innovative technologies that allow a house to run as efficiently as possible, using as little energy as possible in the long run, as well as the place-making in communities for the homes that we build. How are they built? How is the community involved and how are we complying with biodiversity net gain?

“We have an Innovation Centre in Leicester where we showcase ‘the home of the future’ and which we are using as a test case to inform the houses that we are building on a larger scale. We’ve worked closely with hundreds of different suppliers to feature a lot of innovative technologies that have not yet found their way to market on a mass scale but demonstrate what it would look like to live in a home that is future-proof and adaptive to a different climate but also runs purely on renewable energy – and very little energy at that.

“For example, there is something called brick slips, which are about a third of the size of a normal brick. Better from an embodied carbon perspective, there is also less of a skill requirement to build with them, helping to combat some of the skills shortages we face within the industry at the moment where there are not enough brick layers to build the number of homes we need at the pace we need them. Following a successful test case at the Innovation Centre, we are now looking at a wide-scale roll-out of brick slips as part of our standard house build and are starting to incorporate them into design specifications.

“Being able to do the test case has been invaluable in helping us start to think about how we can integrate these sorts of innovative technologies into our work and align them with our long-term commercial aims.”

Working in such a complex and quickly-evolving industry has its challenges, but Julia cites collaboration as key to success.

“We have a lot of industry working groups where we get together with our peers and candidly discuss how we can jointly approach the issues we face,” she explains. “I think collaboration is so key because the scale and chatter of the issues we face is absolutely beyond just one company to solve alone.

“Housebuilding is a major economic sector for the UK: people need houses. But the climate crisis, human crisis and cost of living crisis are all inflecting within the industry and because of that there are a lot of drivers for the industry to respond, from customers, from investors who see the long-term trajectory and requirements for sustainable practice, and also just to sustain us as a business.

“Part of the reason why I took this job was the potential to make an impact. There is an urgent need to decarbonise and to improve the quality of homes that are built and provide safe communities and spaces for people to live in. This sector is a real key player in doing that and in bringing together the right people to ensure we are able to respond to the challenges we face as effectively as possible.”

Despite the scale of the challenge, Julia is positive about the future.

“As much as the situation is dire right now, it is ok to think about, dream of and aim towards a very different scenario,” she explains. “We can reimagine existing systems, challenge what has been and try to create the world we want – one that is better for ourselves and for future generations.

“I believe in people being change agents and being able to actualise the kind of world that we’re looking for. So, I’m optimistic. We’ve just got to keep going, evolve to perfection and remember it’s a marathon and not a sprint.

Speaking to Julia and hearing her positivity and ambition, it is easy to see why she caught the attention of judges for edie’s 30 Under 30 list. The initiative aims to shine a spotlight on talented sustainability and net zero professionals – aged under 30 – who are delivering on efforts to build a better future and showing great promise.

Julia said: “I had heard of the 30 Under 30 list and knew people who had been named on it, but I didn’t think I would ever be nominated – let alone selected – for it.

“So, when my manager told me he had nominated me, I was just happy he considered me worthy. I definitely never expected to be selected for the final list, but I am delighted I was.

“I’m a passionate believer in bringing lots of diverse voices into the conversation and demystifying sustainability as a topic, because it can feel very elusive sometimes and yet there is so much that people can contribute, often without realising.

“I come from a low income background, and a lot of opportunities some of my friends and colleagues had growing up, I didn’t. I always felt like I had a ceiling to what I could do and achieve, and it has taken time and the encouragement of some great coaches and mentors for me to realise my potential to really contribute to this conversation.

“Now I want to do that for other people. I want to be the leader that creates other leaders, that mobilises people within and outside of a business to see that they can contribute to this and be part of this too, because we all need to join together if we are going to make it happen.”