Sarah Fraser
Head of the Willmott Dixon Foundation
Sarah Fraser has been at Willmott Dixon for over 15 years. She has been Head of the Willmott Dixon Foundation since 2017, moving over from the Group People team, where she accumulated over 11 years’ experience in people engagement and organisational development.
She holds a BSc in Psychology and is a senior member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. She has over 20 years of management and leadership experience across retail and IT services as well as construction.
The Willmott Dixon Foundation was established in 2011 to guide and monitor our social value activities. The Foundation has since evolved and now Sarah, through the Foundation, leads the business on our Building Lives theme within our sustainability strategy, Now or Never. The ambitions within Building Lives revolve around Community, Business and People (more information on Building Lives and our targets can be found here).
The Foundation is the umbrella for all of our community activities. We strive to deliver them:
- With compassion and consideration to what is really needed and wanted within a community.
- With an understanding that our social value work enhances our brand, supports our people and helps us win business.
- In collaboration with internal and external partners (supply chain, customers, competitors, community organisations) to enhance impact, keep us true and make us more efficient.
Using this approach, we have:
- Been awarded the Queen's Awards for Enterprise (2018), where we were only one of six companies to achieve this accolade in the category ‘Promoting Opportunity’ through social mobility.
- The Sunday Times Best Companies special award for ‘Giving Back’ in 2019 (between 2018-2020 we were named as a top 5 employer)
- Between 2011-2020 the Foundation made it possible to enhance the life chances of 10,000 young people - a target we hit 19 months early.
- moved from ad-hoc delivery to programmes of activities that are more efficient to deliver whilst having greater impact.
Sarah’s key appointments
Pagabo Foundation Trustee (2020-present) |
HRM Queens Award Judge (2021 – present) |