Naomi Sandford-deQuincey

"My personality types are a very close match to me. My job requires me to be curious and ask lots of questions so I can find environmental risks and help reduce the risks. I am motivated as I'm passionate about what I do and we have to be in the sustainability world. I enjoy leading my team and helping them do the best they can do. Being honest helps me in my job as I need to have that understanding with the people that I work with what the real situation is so we can develop the right solution."

"I'm responsible for making sure our company does not break any environmental laws or commitments. I look for environmental risks and work with my team to develop what we call controls. This could include new processes, training people, creating documents that clearly outline environmental laws and how they apply to us. I spend a lot of time with the wider business and talk to all sorts of people as our environmental commitments cover every part of the business from engineering, running offices and even our stationary suppliers. I enjoy the variety and being able to work all over the business as I learn and experience a lot of cool stuff. Starting salary for my role is £45,000."

"I started as an ecologist, researching how we can apply the best watering schedules to our crops during droughts to help farmers. While I love researching, I wanted to get into working for a business where I could help reduce our contribution to climate change. I did an MSc in Environmental Management and was offered a job in the railway as an Environment Specialist, focussing on waste management and reporting. I love being at Network Rail because I genuinely believe that public transport is key to helping us reduce our impact on the climate. Over the years, I've been a Compliance Auditor which meant I had to investigate people and how they did their jobs. I've lead projects in Circular Economy which tried to keep materials in use as long as possible before I became the National Environment Manager for a company that has over 40,000 people!"

"I have a big family who I love and spend a lot of time with. One of my biggest inspirations for being a female STEM role model is my niece. She's an inspirational young girl and I want her to have every opportunity available to her. We love our niece/aunty dates where we try lots of new things to explore the world - this time we're going to the Xscape to do some big sledding! I love watersports and do a lot of open water swimming, paddle boarding and kayaking with my partner and family and run Park Run with my Dad. I have an adopted cat called Jasper who is incredibly grumpy but I love him lots! I travel a lot, especially around South Africa where my brother lives but love having quiet time by going on long walks and watching ITV dramas."

"My day can be very different - one day I could be holding virtual meetings from home where we are writing risk reports or I can be sitting in an office in Scotland having drop in sessions. I try to spend the morning answering emails to provide people with the information they need or connecting them to the right people. A lot of my job is understanding situations and advising people on what they can do. This could involve working with our environment regulators like Environment Agency or our teams who actually build the railway. I've just finished helping our drainage engineers write a water management strategy. My wider team work to achieve the objectives we've set in our Environmental Sustainability Strategy but I work closer to the ground and try to make use the best at the basics we can."

"A Levels in Maths, Biology, Chemistry and Psychology; BSc (Hons) Ecology and Conservation; MSc Environmental Management for Business"