Professor Sara Wilkinson chose her own path

She might be Australia’s first female professor of property, but if she’d listened to her careers advisor, Professor Sara Wilkinson would have wound up in another industry entirely. 

“In high school, when we were getting careers advice, my friends David and Christopher were told to become chartered building surveyors,” she says.

“I, who did exactly the same classes as them, was told to go into banking or insurance.” 

She didn’t. 

Instead, as one of four female students in her chartered surveying course, she came top of her class in her first year of study. 

What followed was a vibrant and diverse career that took Professor Wilkinson all over the UK, “up to Scotland one day and the next day down to Cornwall,” she says. 

No two days were the same — one day she was doing a technical due diligence report on the London Stock Exchange, while the next she was trying to light a singer’s dress on fire as part of a flammability test at the English National Opera House. 

But it was when she first discovered the world of green buildings that her interest was well and truly piqued.

“I was first asked to provide advice about green buildings in 1987 for a client, BP,” she says. 

"It was a totally new area for me. I couldn’t believe we hadn’t learnt about it at uni."

It was her first taste of what would later become a decades-long research career — today, Professor Wilkinson is globally recognised for her expertise in building adaptation, sustainability and resilience, and green infrastructure projects. Her work is currently focused on preparing cities for the impacts of climate change using biobased materials to mitigate urban heat.

When she’s not transforming the built environment through research, Professor Wilkinson is shaping the global property sector by writing articles and practice guidance notes for leading professional bodies, including the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and the Australian Property Institute (API). 

She also teaches in the undergraduate and postgraduate property programs at UTS. Here, she says, the blend of cutting-edge research and real-world practice prepares students to stand out from the crowd. 

“We’ve got a team of people that are engaged in developing new knowledge and new ideas, which means we’ve also got great connections to industry,” she says. 

“The other thing is the ability to work on real buildings for our assignments and what have you, we’re really translating the theory into practical applications. I think that’s a real strength.”

These days, Professor Wilkinson is no longer the only woman in the room — according to RICS, women made up nearly 20 per cent of built environment professionals in 2022, compared to a mere 5 per cent in 1990 — but her presence in the classroom shows female property students that women can and do rise through the ranks. 

While there’s still much to be done to achieve gender parity, the sector as a whole is taking action.  Professional organisations like the Property Council of Australia’s 500 Women in Property and the industry-led Women in Industrial are supporting women to grow their careers with guidance and mentoring from others in their field. 

The shift is happening in universities, too: UTS is also home to dedicated programs designed to support female students to excel. These include a female mentoring program that’s active across UTS, and a Women in Science and Technology group that’s open to Property students. 

In short? Women are no longer out of place in built environment careers. 

For Professor Wilkinson, it’s an exciting and welcome change. She recalls a moment early in her career when she was supervising a lovely but inept graduate surveyor.

“And I can remember the boss having a chat with me and saying, ‘How’s he going?’ And I was just about to say, ‘He’s a very, very nice person, but really needs to do a lot of work to get up to scratch.’ 

“And the boss’s next sentence was, ‘He reminds me so much of myself!’ And I thought to myself, okay, no one's ever going to say that about me,” she says. 

Now, the sector knows that a diverse workforce is much more resilient and robust, and so trying to make the profession as welcoming to people of all genders, cultures and life experiences is what we need to do.

“We all live and work in the built environment. Having a profession that’s more representative of society is very important.”

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