How to put community at the heart of your career (and proactively create new ones)

Hanna Osundina’s career has been devoted to regeneration, hoping to give the communities she works with a far better experience than she grew up with.

Who says project management isn’t a childhood dream job? Hanna Osundina got the idea aged 11. “I was inspired to enter the industry after reading As Stars Shine Down by Sidney Sheldon,” she reveals. “In this novel, the protagonist, Lara Cameron, is an architect turned property developer and dominates a traditionally male industry. I was inspired by the strength and determination of Lara, and understood what I wanted to achieve in my own career.”

Sidney Sheldon’s heroines are famous for being strong women. “The thing I remember most was thinking, ‘Oh my god, she is epic.’ I read loads of books with women in romantic leads. Lara is surrounded by men and doing something no one expects of her. I thought this was super cool.” The idea of being the heir to Lara stuck. Not only did Osundina study architecture at university and then enter property project management, her CV is in keeping with her original mission.

Osundina’s current job is development director at Balfour Beatty Investments. To which we can add (deep breath): guest lecturer at Greenwich University and vice‑chair of its Construction, Property and Surveying Practices Industry Advisory Board; founder of Black Women in Real Estate; D&I advisor to Estates Gazette; and board member of E16 Community Land Trust.

A passion for regeneration

In all of her passions there’s a common thread, namely the idea of giving back to the community she came from. “I grew up on a council estate in Hackney. The council effectively let it go derelict. For 10 years we were promised regeneration and nothing happened. It was so frustrating. I don’t think anyone should be living in a left‑behind space.”

Her career has been devoted to regeneration. “Always at the back of my mind, when I’m doing a project, I am thinking: ‘How would I have liked to have been consulted? How could my parents have been made part of the process? How do you get the best out of a neighbourhood?’”

Her first big role was with Peabody, the housing association with 67,000 homes. “I mostly worked on Section 106s [community impact agreements between councils and developers], but I also worked on a regeneration scheme in Elephant and Castle, and I realised regeneration is where my expertise and preference lie.”

Making the leap to the big time

She soon jumped ship for Linkcity, formerly Bouygues Development. “It’s a huge organisation. I was working on the Canning Town regeneration project over multiple phases. Phase 3 was for 620 homes.” Her ability to understand the community, and the detail of the project thanks to her architecture training, and natural high energy meant she was able to help the project move at pace.

From there she scaled up again: this time to Balfour Beatty Investments to work on the East Wick and Sweetwater projects. She was responsible for planning permission for 1,500 homes by the Olympic Park – essential work in a district crippled by under‑development and soaring house prices. In June 2021, another promotion made her development director of the £860m project.

An impressive day job. So why the plethora of extra gigs? Osundina speaks passionately about her desire to help others succeed in the profession. An instinct borne of her own realisation of how different her upbringing was.

“The biggest setback I had was when I got to Sheffield University,” she recalls. “I had an identity crisis. I had grown up in Hackney, where everyone was black and minority ethnic. My friends were Turkish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian and Pakistani. An eclectic culture. Suddenly I was one of only four black people on my course out of a hundred. There was one other black person in the year above, and no black teaching staff. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m a minority, I’m different.’ I didn’t know how to handle that.”

Taking action to connect and support

She’s not the first person to find the culture shift at university a shock. Fortunately, she learned to see her upbringing as an advantage. “In the end, it helped my career. Now I can relate to people of all backgrounds and find it easier to connect with people.” And she ensures her industry offers support to those in a similar position.

“I founded Black Women in Real Estate to help women connect to each other. There aren’t many of us! I reached out to a bunch of amazing women on LinkedIn and asked if they wanted to have dinner. That was the start. During Covid we did fortnightly calls. We discuss our careers and what we are working on. At its core it is a friendship group. If we’ve got an issue we can just pick up the phone to speak to someone. We make sure black women feel encouraged to enter and stay in our industry. Because at the moment there’s not much representation of black women.”

Her work at Greenwich University is also about helping the next generation. She advises course directors on whether their material is relevant for the workplace.

There’s also her work with the E16 Community Land Trust (CLT): “I live in Canning Town, E16. The CLT lobbies the local authority to give them land or properties for local people who are either in temporary accommodation or going to be displaced.” Naturally, her skills in project management and experience of working with council officials on property and planning issues are a huge help in the challenges faced by the CLT.

After all this, does she have time to relax? “I was doing a pottery course before lockdown. It just calms me down. It’s one of the nicest ways to decompress.”

It’s a formidable career. Osundina relied on a fiction writer for her inspiration as a girl. Today she’s ensuring young women have a real‑life role model, and active helper, to get them on the right path.

Hanna’s top tips for project professionals

1. Work on your emotional intelligence

Project management requires great communication. So it’s important to work on your emotional intelligence to understand people better. It’s not easy. I’ve been on a few courses, which worked well. Myers‑Briggs can help too. You can determine whether people are in the green, red, blue or yellow quadrants of personality types. If they are more process‑driven, you know how to talk to them. If they are more sociable, then take that approach. And it’s important to get 360‑degree feedback from your colleagues, to check your assumptions about yourself. High emotional intelligence means you get the best out of people.

2. Research diversity and inclusion

There is so much you can read to be better informed. For example, Renni Eddo‑Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. The information is out there if you really want to understand the issue. A question I ask is: what is your motivation? Is diversity and inclusion a marketing tool for you? Or is your aim to be genuinely more diverse and inclusive. Strong businesses need diverse voices. Not just race, but sex, creed, religion and background. This is what we should be striving for.

3. Run your life with to‑do lists

I have a lot of to‑do lists! They are my saving grace. Make a weekly to‑do list. Then prioritise. When I started managing people, I made to‑do lists for them as well – what I’m expecting from them. I find it very satisfying to tick off each task as it gets done. I list absolutely everything, including what I need to do in my personal life. If I tick something off, but it’s only partially done, I’ll add a new task until it is complete. It’s a great way to monitor not only what you need to do, but what you’ve achieved as well.

4. Be inspired by what you read

I really like the book Untamed by Glennon Doyle. It’s about being your most authentic self. I recommend it. It challenged me during the lockdown period, when I was managing a huge team, not to be who I am not supposed to be. When I get feedback, one of the things people mention a lot is that I am authentic in the way I approach leadership. I learned a lot about the concept from this book.

CV: Hanna Osundina MRICS

Current job
Development director, Balfour Beatty Investments

Previous jobs
Senior development officer; Linkcity UK
Development officer, Peabody

Other roles
Diversity and inclusion advisor to Estates Gazette
Founder, Black Women in Real Estate
Volunteer, Habitat for Humanity
Guest lecturer, Greenwich University
Board member, E16 CLT

Qualifications
MSc, project management for the built environment, Oxford Brookes University
BA, architecture, University of Sheffield
CSCS Managers and Professionals

 

Hanna Osundina was speaking to Charles Orton‑Jones

 

THIS ARTICLE IS BROUGHT TO YOU FROM THE WINTER 2021 ISSUE OF PROJECT JOURNAL, WHICH IS FREE FOR APM MEMBERS.