As a leader, Victor believes leadership is a matter of collaborating, listening and understanding. “To be successful, there should always be an emphasis on constantly seeking improvement,” adds Victor. “As such, I’m determined to see the engineering industry become a more balanced workforce”.
“Within our team, we have leaders who are female and who are working part-time. As someone who has a young family and who works flexibly as well, I think we have made great strides recently.”
However, Victor admits there are challenges that remain. He says, “Hiring female talent at the principal level is tough. There is a huge gap in the market that needs to be addressed.
“I also think that as an industry; we need to address the level of intake amongst females in STEM at school, rather than University. That way we are encouraging greater pathways and accessibility into the engineering field. Hopefully over time we can continue to see improvements and ideally reach a point where we don’t need to push the conversation.”
Taking a proactive stance, Victor has recently been appointed as Chair of the WSP Diversity and Inclusion Council.
He adds “The Diversity and Inclusion Council has helped to push the conversation since it was established many years ago. We run activities, meetings and support networks for the benefit of our people so that they continue to feel as though they belong in a safe community. To me this is extremely important.”
Hailing from a large Italian household, family time is important to Victor. He says, “With two young kids and a large extended family, our weekends go by pretty quick. My brother lives overseas so naturally travel is a big part of our lives as well. We love getting to the US and Canada whenever we can!”
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