Q&A: National Grid’s Katie Jackson and Georgia Morgan

Katie, who began her career as an offshore drilling engineer at Shell, is president of National Grid Ventures. In this role she oversees the development, financing, construction and operation of some of the company’s large-scale energy assets, including electricity interconnectors, wind and solar generation, and competitive transmission. Since 2022, Katie has been the chair of POWERful Women, the professional initiative to advance gender diversity within the energy sector.

Georgia, who started off her career in the police force in Nottingham, is currently undertaking an advanced apprenticeship, primarily working at National Grid’s IFA 2 interconnector, in the south of the UK.

Georgia: What do you think the engineering profession could do to encourage greater gender representation?

Katie: Sharing stories of women in rewarding engineering roles can demystify the perception that engineering is not for girls.

I also think both the energy sector and engineering profession need to do more to challenge the idea that some young people may have of engineering as a slightly boring and staid field. This is in comparison to other sectors like tech, which are perceived to be more exciting and cutting edge. There’s a whole host of fascinating opportunities in energy from the work on interconnectors that you do Georgia, to all the really interesting technical developments that are being made to drive the net zero transition and the profession should do more to highlight this to young people.