At the 2025 Women of the Year Lunch and Awards in October, Jaz Rabadia MBE (BEng Mechanical Engineering, 2006, and MSc Energy, Environmental Technology and Economics, 2009) was announced as Linklaters Pioneering Woman of the Year. Jaz has built an impressive career working for well-known brands such as Starbucks, WeWork, and JustEat, with a mission to improve sustainability through energy management and advocate for women in STEM. The Women of the Year award comes at a time when Jaz is thinking about next steps.
Jaz Rabadia’s work has not gone unnoticed. Jaz was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours in 2016 for her contribution to sustainability in the energy management sector and promoting diversity in STEM. She received ‘Special Recognition’ in the City St George’s STEM Alumni Awards in 2023, and she has won several sector-specific awards. In October 2025, she was announced Linklaters Pioneering Woman of the Year by organisation Women of the Year.
“I definitely didn’t set out to win awards,” Jaz says.
“When I took on this topic [sustainability], it really was because it felt like a calling.
“Winning awards gives you a platform to speak about these topics, and I think it’s quite a nice reminder of what amazing things can happen when you combine your passion and purpose. I think it’s also helped the career of others because they realised that careers like this even exist.”
Jaz likes to tell the story of how she got into sustainability because her career path looks straightforward, but in reality, it was something she stumbled upon while studying Mechanical Engineering at City St George’s and working as a Customer Service Assistant at the supermarket chain Sainsbury’s.
“I had to choose two modules, and I picked the ones that sounded the least scary, which were renewable energy and energy management,” Jaz explains.
“But honestly, that was like the penny drop moment for me. It was like, OK, this is how engineering makes sense to me in the real world. This is how I’m going to help solve a real-life problem.
“We have this one planet we need to take care of, and only then can it take care of us, essentially.”
When it was time to choose a dissertation topic, her workplace lent itself perfectly to the task.
“I did my dissertation as an energy study in a Sainsbury’s store that I was working in at the time, and at that point, I became mission-driven.”
Jaz could first-hand see how the solutions she implemented had an impact on the store’s energy consumption.
“This wasn’t just a theoretical write-up; this was a real-life challenge that I’d solved in one store. How would I do it in 1000 stores?”
A year after completing her undergraduate degree, Jaz became Energy Manager at Sainsbury’s, and over the next 15 years, she would be appointed to senior energy management and sustainability roles at global brands such as Starbucks, WeWork,and JustEat.
What attitudes do large companies have towards sustainability these days?
“It’s gone through change in the last 20 years,” Jaz says.
“We’re feeling the impacts of climate change more now than ever; extreme weather, extreme temperatures, it’s affecting our supply chains in many cases. So, it’s not this arbitrary thing that’s happening over there affecting everybody else anymore; it is now starting to affect businesses.
“It has gone from a little CSR department over here, to How do we embed this into the strategy? What is the governance around it, and how do we make this part of our culture? I think the more progressive businesses are doing a great job, and they’re doing more to embed it. They realise it’s not a separate thing from business goals. That being said, it is a huge challenge.”
According to Jaz, sustainability projects compete with the large challenges businesses face to even remain open. While sustainability requires a long-term vision, some business leaders struggle to look beyond the next week, month, or year.
“The challenge as a sustainability professional is how do you get businesses to start thinking beyond their usual three to five years, sometimes to the next 10 to 20 years?”
Jaz received the Linklaters Pioneering Woman of the Year Award for her work as a sustainability champion, but also for her mission to create a more diverse community of STEM practitioners.
When Jaz embarked on her undergraduate degree, she was the only woman on her engineering course. While things have changed in the past 20 years, Jaz still sees a need for improvement.
“The challenge is not just getting people to enter it [STEM]. It’s getting people to stay, to grow, and to become leaders in this space.”
Jaz explains how several sectors, not just those involving STEM subjects, struggle with retention due to misconceptions and biases.
“I think certain environments still aren’t set up to help women succeed,” she says.
“Business is challenging for women to navigate, particularly for my generation; being everything at home, being everything at work, being everything to everyone all the time. It can be quite exhausting.
“There are so many layers you have to navigate to even get to the levels of seniority where you become a subject matter expert.”
Making sure female professionals are seen and heard is one of the reasons Jaz believes organisations like Women of the Year are important.
“I think it shines a light on women doing incredible work that may not otherwise be recognised, and I think it’s also about inspiring the next generation.
“I also think it’s just beautiful to celebrate each other’s successes because again, we’re often quite tough on ourselves. We’re in our heads a lot, and I think celebrating your own success and the success of others is key to your personal growth.”
What are some of the professional successes Jaz is proudest of?
“I would probably say it’s the tangibility of the carbon reductions that I’ve been able to contribute to and the energy savings. These are kilowatt hours and tonnes of carbon that have not been emitted. But I’d also say what I’m most proud of is the fact that others have pursued this career as a result of seeing what I’ve been able to do in it.”
The award in October coincided with Jaz’s decision to, at least temporarily, step away from the corporate world and take an “intentional inhale”.
“The last few years have been a really challenging time to be a sustainability professional. If you think about it from a political landscape, from a business perspective, from actually 20 years of fighting the good fight, it really tests your own resilience,” she says.
“On a very personal level, I’ve been working for 20 years, almost reached a bit of a milestone birthday, and it felt like What do I want my next 20 years of work to look like? And rather than deciding on a whim or kind of falling into the next role, which is what I feel like I’ve done throughout my career, I was like, OK, what next? Where next?”
Does Jaz have any sense of what that might be?
“I absolutely know it will be around using my experience to help embed sustainability into organisations,” she says.
“I will also be using my voice and the platform I have now to inspire more women to take on leadership roles, sustainability roles, STEM roles, whatever it may be.”
In the meantime, Jaz is enjoying the opportunity to delve deeper into the things that bring her joy, like photography, cooking, and being sociable.
“When I’m not doing it on top of a gazillion other things, and I’m just in the moment, that really recharges me.”
What then makes a good day good for Jaz Rabadia?
“I mean, apart from chips? I think for me, it’s connection, in all honesty.
“Having people either digitally or in real life with me is what keeps me going.
“I’ve probably not had a good day if I’ve not spoken to people, and that sounds bizarre because most mothers will be like, I just want a hotel room, and I want no one to speak to me. But that for me would almost be the worst thing I could imagine for myself.”
With two children at home, Jaz doesn’t have to worry about too much silence or solitude, but more time has offered her the opportunity to reflect.
“I don’t know if there’s a way to just say thank you to City without sounding really, really cheesy?” she asks.
“It was a bit unconventional what I did in terms of taking my dissertation into my own hands, doing it in the workplace on an engineering course, but there were people who believed in me and championed me.
“I really wouldn’t have achieved any of these things if I didn’t have a credible backbone to what I’m talking about, “she says.
“I’ve got a mechanical engineering degree and a master’s in environmental technology from City, and it’s allowed me to walk into rooms with my head held up high.”
A big congratulations to Jaz Rabadia MBE on receiving the Women of the Year’s Linklaters Pioneering Woman of the Year Award! Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.