People Spotlight: Helen Dunn
Our People Spotlight series gives you an inside look at our technical experts around the world. This week, we are highlighting our Technical Director, Natural Capital from the United Kingdom, and providing an insight into their inspiration and work.
Helen is a seasoned economist with extensive experience in consultancy and public policy, specializing in natural capital and environmental economics. At AECOM, she leads projects on natural capital assessment, nature strategy, and investment in nature-based solutions. Previously, she served as a senior economic adviser at Defra, contributing significantly to the early development of natural capital expertise in government. Helen also has broad experience in the water sector, where she led a program to enhance societal valuation evidence for a water company’s 2019 Price Review.
What inspired you to join the industry?
I was driven by the chance to apply my expertise in environmental economics and natural capital to demonstrate the value of considering nature-related impacts and dependencies in projects. This approach helps clients achieve better outcomes. Additionally, working with talented, multidisciplinary teams at AECOM has been a constant source of inspiration.
My motivation for entering the industry stemmed from a desire to apply economics to real-world policy challenges that have meaningful impacts on both people and the environment. At the time, environmental issues were often viewed as peripheral rather than fundamental to economic decision-making. This led me to pursue a Master of Science degree in Environmental Economics at University College London (UCL), where I gained the analytical tools to help integrate environmental considerations into economic policy and investment decisions more effectively.
What is your favorite AECOM project that you’ve worked on and why?
One of my favourite projects was working for a major water company in the UK on their natural capital strategy. The project took a holistic approach to embedding natural capital throughout the business from working on their strategy to developing tools and processes to embed natural capital in their business appraisal processes. We helped make the case for nature-based solutions such as a constructed wetland to remove pollution, which are cost-effective, and identified priority areas in a catchment where the water company could deliver the most benefits by working with partners.
One part of the project was to develop a first set of catchment accounts for the region. Catchment accounts provide a record of the natural assets in a region and how they are faring in terms of the services delivered. Monitoring these assets provides crucial evidence to help ensure sustainable delivery of water services. It was satisfying to see how this information could provide new insights for the company and help prompt thinking on priorities for working in catchments on nature-based actions. We helped demonstrate which sectors and what locations in the catchments were most influencing water quality which provided them an opportunity for better targeting of actions.
Tell us a story of how your work positively impacted the community.
Natural capital is all about showing how nature as an asset delivers benefits to communities and making sure that it is not forgotten in decisions. We recently worked with a client to provide evidence of the significant benefits of their investment in a site to open it up for recreation and access. The analysis demonstrated that there were significant net benefits of proposed investment actions – in addition to recreation, this also included carbon, biodiversity and resilience (flood risk mitigation) benefits. Having a chance to visit the site and to see first-hand the restoration activity and plans for the site was a great way for me to understand what an important greenspace resource it would be for local communities.
Share a piece of career advice.
Don’t be afraid to seek advice on your career from an early stage, consider a mentor to provide an external perspective and look for opportunities for new challenges to gain insight on what you want from your career in the long term.