Reflections from last year’s chairman: Sabrina Ihaddaden
“I am now celebrating my fourth year in the rail industry, and I have loved my experience so far. I work as a Signalling Project Engineer for Bombardier Transportation (in Derby), on all the rolling stock projects based on the Aventra platform.
“I started my YRP journey just a few months after joining Bombardier, as the chairman of its first regional committee in the East Midlands, where I established a community in a region that is a world leader in rail technologies.
“The year after, I was elected as National Vice-Chairman of YRP. In early 2016, I was elected as the National Chairman of YRP. I became the first woman to lead YRP nationally, and also leading a perfectly gender-balanced executive committee!
“I chose to focus the year while I was chairman on ensuring the foundations of the organisation were strong enough to cope with our ambitions, while providing quality development events to our members, and reaching out to more and more students to inspire them to join our exciting industry.
“We delivered the first Leadership Conference for our committee members, provided CPD-accredited development events, launched our new Ambassador programme ‘Into Rail’, and delivered the first Rail Week.
“What I enjoyed the most as part of my role was to create a real team spirit among the YRP committee members - all volunteers, working in various functions and companies within the industry. Understanding that we can count on each other, trust and help each other in delivering YRP’s mission, while having fun, really is empowering. I feel a great sense of achievement when I see people I have encouraged to join YRP taking on leadership positions within the organisation.
“I have now handed my role as chairman to Paul Case, whom I fully trust will take the organisation to the next level! I am now part of the YRP Advisory Board, which gathers all the former chairs and founders of YRP to provide support to the current chairman and a forum to share experiences, best practices and lessons learned.”