We are always delighted to see our graduates establish their careers and are so pleased to announce that Catherine has successfully achieved her Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) chartership. Since joining us, she has rapidly grown into her professional role and has clearly proven her capability to understand and apply planning in practice.
Along the journey, Catherine has made the most of working closely with her peers on our Graduate Programme and will remain closely involved over the next couple of months with the graduate cohort as they reflect on recent study trips and prepare for the upcoming Park(ing) Day event this September.
A core commitment to mentorship
At Define, nurturing the next generation of planners, landscape architects, and urban designers is central to our professional identity. We welcome graduates across all three disciplines, supporting them both individually and collectively as they transition into professional practice through dedicated personal mentoring and our collaborative Graduate Programme, and the programme encourages them to explore their own personal growth and interests, as well as take on collective opportunities to share skills, experiences and learning with graduate colleagues.
For us, this commitment to future professionals extends far beyond our office walls and into the wider academic community. We recently hosted Urban Planning students from the University of Birmingham for an interactive workshop titled “From Vision to Reality.” Organised in collaboration with the university’s Urban Planning Society, the session followed our attendance at their Speed Networking event in March. During the workshop, our team guided students through a live project journey, peeling back the layers on site promotion, visioning, planning policy, planning and appeal strategy, and design evolution.
Inspiring future talents
Engaging young people with the built environment is paramount. Planning silently shapes our everyday lives, yet its impact often goes unnoticed by the wider public. Raising awareness of the profession early on can open doors to incredibly rewarding career paths.
With this mind, I have spent the past two years participating in the Raising Female Aspiration programme, an initiative led by the Grace Foundation (the charitable arm of IM Group). This programme provides a fantastic platform to share career insights with secondary school pupils in Years 8 through 11, introducing them to the sheer breadth of opportunities and varied entry routes into our industry. It has also been an immensely rewarding experience, made even better by the opportunity to collaborate with inspiring peers along the way.
