Speakers

Sebastian Wood is Group Managing Director of Whitby Wood, an international engineering consultancy he co-founded with Mark Whitby in 2016. Under his leadership, the practice has placed ESG, Resilience & Adaption not at the edges of its business model but at its core, embedding measurable commitments into project delivery, people strategy and commercial decisions.

Seb believes that engineering leadership carries a direct responsibility for environmental, social and financial equity, and that responsibility must be backed by evidence, not aspiration. Whitby Wood's own stated goal half-zero carbon by 2030 reflects his conviction that credible disclosure starts with setting targets you are prepared to be held to.

With major project experience spanning the UK, Europe, the Middle East and South-East Asia, and governance responsibilities across a group of companies operating in multiple countries, Seb brings a practitioner's perspective to the challenge of meaningful reporting: how engineering and design consultancies can move beyond compliance tick-boxes toward the kind of transparent, accountable disclosure that actually enables conversation that can change how buildings are made.

Sebastian is also a Board Director of the Schumacher Centre for a New Economics, a founding trustee of the Construction & Development Partnership (CODEP) and the Whitbybird Foundation, and is a former trustee of the humanitarian engineering charity RedR UK.