Engineering alumna appointed new CEO of Royal Academy of Engineering

Engineering Alumna Dame Tamara Finkelstein will take up the role substantively in February 2026, following a long and successful career as a senior leader in the civil service, most recently as Permanent Secretary of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). In this role, she led the department through Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic, during which she oversaw the government’s response to food supply issues.

Tamara graduated from Oxford (Balliol) in 1989. Professor Lionel Tarassenko, former Head of Department who supervised her final year project, says, “I am delighted that Dame Tamara Finkelstein is the new Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the institution which provides leadership for engineering in the UK. I have known Tamara since 1988-89, when she did her final-year project under my supervision during my first year as a professor in the Department. When I was Head of Department, I asked her if we could feature her in our Alumni Newsletter in 2018 and she wrote a very thoughtful piece, which you can find here. Tamara has had a stellar career in the Civil Service and is the ideal person to represent the views of the engineering community to the UK government.”

After completing a Masters in Economics Tamara led a successful career in the Civil Service. As Director General, Building Safety, at Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Tamara created the government’s building safety programme in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire. As Leader of the Policy Profession in government she also worked closely with the science and engineering profession to raise science and engineering capability in policy professionals, raising the percentage of STEM graduates in the policy fast stream from 9% to 31% over the last five years.

She has supported the work of the Royal Academy of Engineering in government as a champion of the Policy Fellowships programme, and participant in the pilot Senior Policy Fellowships programme. She has also fulfilled a number of charity leadership and advisory roles, including as Vice-chair of Norwood, a charity for vulnerable children and people with learning disabilities. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath (DCB) in the 2025 New Year Honours for public service.

Commenting on the appointment, President of the Academy Sir John Lazar CBE FREng said: “We are delighted to appoint Tamara Finkelstein as our next Chief Executive. She has a wealth of experience that the Academy will benefit from in its next chapter, from driving complex policy change at scale, to embedding engineering expertise and mobilising experts to respond to national and global events. She is a proud advocate for the role of engineering in society, and is deeply committed to the Academy’s values: her commitment to inclusion in particular is well known in the policy profession. I am looking forward to working with her as we begin our 50th anniversary celebrations and to deliver on our strategy commitment to engineer better lives."

Dame Tamara Finkelstein DCB commented: “I am delighted and honoured to become the next Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Having started my career in engineering it is an immense pleasure to return. In my career in public service I have seen how engineering and technology can provide the solutions to the big public policy challenges of our day, from tackling climate change and improving health outcomes, to unlocking economic growth. So I am looking forward to working with the Fellows of the Academy, the most accomplished engineers and technologists in the UK and beyond, on delivering the mission to engineer better lives. In government I had the opportunity to work closely with the Academy and saw that its excellent reputation for shaping policy, supporting entrepreneurs, and championing the profession is built on a strong community of Fellows, amazing staff and superb leadership. I hope I can build on this to lead the organisation to continued success in its 50th anniversary year and beyond.”

Alumna profile