A warm welcome to Inge Woudstra and our readers from the Big Fish Academy!

We’re delighted to announce that Inge Woudstra is joining the Voice At The Table family. Inge will be joining as COO and Principal Consultant (alongside CEO Rina Goldenberg Lynch) and is bringing with her not only her expertise but also her following from the Big Fish Academy.

Inge is a specialist in diversity and inclusion and brings over 10 years of experience working in gender balance, mostly in the tech and engineering industry. She applies her deep expertise in gender difference to develop a gender inclusive culture and gender inclusive processes, thus increasing performance. Clients she’s worked with include: Hiscox, Qualcomm, TalkTalk, OECD and the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Inge says, “I am really excited about joining Voice At The Table, as working with a larger team means I will be able to run bigger projects for clients and have a positive impact on more people. I love helping people get results, and enjoy making complex concepts tangible and easy to understand and implement.

“I am really looking forward to working with Rina and the team. Rina and I have worked together on a number of projects over the last two years and have found that we enjoy that. Rina naturally gravitates to people and culture, whereas I tend to focus on process and structure.

“That’s also why it’s so natural for me to take on the COO role. In that role I aim to bring more structure and efficiency to the back office so Voice At The Table is ready for growth.”

We at Voice At The Table are excited to see Inge join us too. She has some impressive projects to her name. She has written D&I Best Practice Guides for several industries in tech and engineering and she led on the “Closing the Gender Pay Gap” research for WISE and The Royal Academy of Engineering. She is also the author of “Be Gender Smart – The Key to Career Success for Women” and is a sought-after keynote speaker on the topic.

In addition, jointly with Rina, she developed a digital solution for embedding Inclusion in a telecoms company and founded The Big Fish Academy, training those responsible for implementing D&I.

Inge says, “It sounds impressive, but it hasn’t all been plain sailing. I had worked for Siemens and Shell for over a decade, both large corporates. Starting out on my own was a massive shift.  I thought that once I followed my passion – empowering women – I would have my dream job.  Next, I learned that when ‘women’ as a focus is widened to more general ‘inclusion’, the work I do for women is just more effective.”

“Similarly, then, I realised that bringing The Big Fish Academy to Voice At The Table makes a lot more sense, as we can serve our clients and their D&I needs much better that way.

“Work-life balance is as important to me as my work passion, so I make sure there’s enough time for my husband and teenage son. In my spare time you will find me on long walks with my two spaniels on the beach or in the Surrey hills, or rock climbing and camping.

‘I really look forward to getting to know the audience of Voice At The Table and introduce my own audience to a more varied offering of consulting and thought-provoking content.”