Ms Fiona Cousins

Biography

Fiona graduated from Trinity Hall in 1989 in Engineering Science. She took a Master of Studies in Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment from Wolfson College, graduating in 2000.

She has worked at Arup since 1989 and is currently Arup Americas Region Chair, a member of the Arup Group Board and an Arup Fellow, a designation awarded to those who demonstrate world-class vision and initiative through their work. She believes that engineers, as key designers of the built environment, have an enormous part to play in addressing our current social challenges including climate change adaptation and mitigation, social inequality and biodiversity threat, and that the key to doing this is a design mindset.

Her built projects include the US Embassy in London, Fulton Street Station in New York and the Frick Chemistry Building at Princeton University.

She was the chair of the United States Green Building Council, the developers of the LEED rating system, in 2016. She is the 2024-25 president of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers and has held board roles at the Beverly Willis Foundation, American Institute of Architects New York Chapter, Urban Green Council, the National Institute of Building Sciences and the Architectural League of New York. She was a mayoral appointee to the New York City Advisory Board for Local Law 97, She won the AIA NY Award of Merit in 2017 and gave a TEDx talk in Manhattan Beach in 2023.