Emma Cariaga

My career progression, I suppose, started when I left school. And I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go, but knew some of the themes that had come up in that study course were of interest: a passion for places and buildings, a passion for social geography—understanding what makes cities work, what drives people to live or work in certain places.

So, I went off to study a degree in town planning at UCL. And at the end of my degree, I ended up writing to a range of different developers saying: “Can I have a job?” And I was invited to join Barratt’s [Barratt Development plc] fresh from university and I joined their team who were focused on buying land. I thought I knew how to get planning permissions, having done a degree in planning—reality is I didn’t. And I ended up staying in housebuilding for the first ten years of my career. Loved it. There’s something quite magical in a way about buying a site, seeing it built, and then seeing people move into it.

But I suppose after ten years, my passion for places was more than just about homes. I wanted to do bigger developments. I wanted to do developments that created places for people to work, to come and shop. Mixed-use, really. So, in 2007, I joined Land Securities, now Landsec, and I spent seven really fun years there working on a whole range of mixed-use developments, high-rise inner-city developments, which really, I think, cemented my passion for the value of place and what we can bring through creating something quite special. And then in 2014, I left Landsec, who had at that time come to the end of their development pipeline and joined British Land, where I’ve been for the last eight years, having a really super time.

I think ESG is a major reason why people choose where they want to work increasingly. I heard a fascinating story last week about a graduate recruitment exercise in one organisation where the graduates were not only looking at the corporate mission and sustainability target, but very keen to know what the personal carbon footprint was of the senior leadership team. And so, it’s important that companies not only have an overall target, but the employees have confidence in its delivery amongst the leadership and the broader staff.

We’ve seen individuals coming to work at British Land because they admire our way of working. They admire our commitment to sustainability in what we deliver, the real estate that we provide. And I think that will only increase as climate change continues to be the rightful cause for all of us that it is.