In Conversation With...#1

Emma Foster

Emma has 20 years of planning and development experience and joined the Mount Anvil team in August 2015. She is a champion for diversity and inclusion in a male dominated industry and has been the reason for many of the initiatives Mount Anvil has involved itself in.

Alongside Makers and Mentors, which is Emma's brainchild, she has worked with the GLA/MoL to agree a first of its kind £50m partnership. The collaboration supports Mount Anvil’s strategy to deliver 10,000 homes in London before the end of the decade, which at least 50% of will be genuinely affordable for Londoners. Again, Emma was a driving force in the creation of such a unique deal that will facilitate thriving communities.

Gabrielle Appiah

Gabrielle has a background in urban planning and geography and currently works as a Project Coordinator at Soundings, community engagement consultancy.

At Soundings she has worked with communities across London on a number of major cultural and educational regeneration developments including Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (QEOP) and Canada Water as well as for social sustainability projects in Kings Cross.

She is also a member of the RTPI General Assembly and International Committee, and Co-Vice Chair for the Women in Planning London Committee.

She is passionate about ensuring diverse groups are included and can meaningfully participate in the planning system. In her various roles, she advocates for greater progress in diversity and inclusion efforts, especially for women and the BAME community, both within the profession and in places we create as she strongly believes that the planning profession should reflect the diverse communities it serves

Zoe Ellis-Moore

Zoe founded Spaces to Places in 2019, keen to disrupt and transform the way commercial property is used. With the root of an idea that changing occupier and employee needs necessitated a shift in the market she established a framework that would help building owners, office operators, asset managers, and property investors turn their spaces into places.

Zoe has been in the industry for 18 years in the property industry, Zoe has worked with high profile clients including Derwent London, LandSec, Savills, and Tonstate.

She pioneered the UK’s first Business Improvement District in Kingston upon Thames a five-year action plan that increased town centre footfall by 2 million year on year and has presented at the ICSC conference, among other events.