About Equasense
Equasense brings you experience in leading organisation level equality, diversity and inclusion strategies alongside expertise in quantitative analysis, research project leadership, coaching and communication of complex ideas built over two decades.
Ellie Highwood
Equasense founder Ellie Highwood has a decade of experience in building fair, equitable and inclusive workplaces. She led Equality, Diversity and Inclusion strategy at departmental and then organisational level within a large UK University for 5 years before founding her consultancy Equasense in 2019.
Since 2019, Ellie has worked as a consultant, partnering with organisations large and small, including businesses, universities and learned and professional societies. Ellie uses her wide range of research, strategy development and communication skills, honed in the complex and societally important world of climate change research, to support organisations to devise evidence-based strategies and action plans.
Ellie’s research and academic background makes her uniquely positioned to support Universities, Research Centres and Institutes in building more inclusive research environments and research teams. This includes supporting applications for external accreditation through the Athena Swan scheme.
Ellie has lived experience of being a woman working in male dominated environments, of working part-time and of having caring responsiblities.
Other expertise
- Henley Business School qualified coach. Accredited by the Association of Coaching.
- Speaker on gender equity in science and inclusive leadership in research
- 3.5 years of experience as Head of Department of one of the top ranking Meteorology Departments in the world with responsibility for the management of 50 academics.
- 20+ years of research leadership, raising £3M grant funding and supervising more than 10 PhD students
- Board level experience as a Trustee and President (2016-18) of the Royal Meteorological Society.
- Teacher and trainer of groups from primary schools to the WI. STEM ambassador and volunteer.
- Trained facilitator – Association of Facilitators.
Services
My most popular services are:
- EDI Strategy and action plan development: Substantial programmes of work including facilitated discussions with leadership team, quantitative data gathering and analysis, focus groups and 1-2-1 interviews and culture analysis resulting in recommendations for goals and actions.
- “Critical friend” review of existing Diversity and Inclusion Strategy including detailed written feedback and face to face meeting with leadership team if appropriate.
- Consciously Inclusive Leaders: 3-4 month programme of workshops and coaching to make sure your leaders are on-board with your EDI vision and confident in behaving inclusively
If you have a different specific diversity and inclusion requirement, please get in touch for a conversation about how I could develop that with, and for you.
Client feedback
Kind words from past clients
Just a quick note of thanks. I hope you enjoyed the visit which was extremely helpful for us in understanding not just how we can further shape our [Athena Swan] submission but also think more broadly around equality issues. Thank you also for taking the time to provide such a detailed analysis of the draft, which again is very helpful.
Prof Michael Young, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), University of Sunderland
Thank you very much for your excellent training in helping my leadership team and I be more aware of our unconscious biases. You’ve been brilliant in helping us collectively and individually critically examine our biases and start our adjustments. This will go a long way to help us make our organisations more inclusive.
Brig. P. Rowell, Royal School of Military Engineering.
