Homeward Bound and ACCIONA return to Antarctica with 108 STEMM women

• Seven Spanish women will participate in this expedition that will start in Ushuaia (Argentina) on January 28^th, 2025.

ACCIONA and Homeward Bound unveiled today the new edition of their expedition to Antarctica, which will take 108 women of 22 nationalities to the frozen continent. This scientific and informative journey will begin in Ushuaia (Argentina) on January 28^th.

The Antarctic expedition is the culmination of Homeward Bound’s annual female leadership program, which aims to create international and interdisciplinary networks of women in scientific or technological professions (STEMM) to help address the planet’s most pressing challenges, such as the climate emergency.

Seven Spanish women will participate in this edition: Edith Guedella Bustamante (an environmental biologist and the Sustainability manager in ACCIONA's Construction division); María González Fajardo (a civil engineer at ACCIONA); Alba Fernández Sanlés (a molecular biologist); Paula Moraga Serrano (a professor of Statistics at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology); Rosa Castizo (the director of the ‘La Rábida’ Observatory for Sustainable Development and Climate Change); and Anna González Manjón (a molecular biologist). Meteorologist Mercedes Martín will also travel with them as a guest, with the aim of helping raise awareness of both the Homeward Bound program itself and the problem of global warming, as evidenced in Antarctica. 

ACCIONA has been collaborating with Homeward Bound since 2017, promoting this initiative and contributing to its global dissemination. On this occasion, women from various parts of the world who work at the company are participating in the program. They are environmental biologist Edith Guedella and civil engineer María Gonzalez Fajardo, from Spain; civil engineer Kirsten Holston, from the United States; environmental engineer Walentina González, from Colombia; and engineer Alice Clark, from Australia.

LEADERSHIP AND SUSTAINABILITY

The expedition is the culmination of a year of training and knowledge sharing focused on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), so that participants can bear witness to the critical state of the planet.

Homeward Bound aims to create an international network of 10,000 female professionals from STEMM sectors, for them to collaborate on projects in various scientific and geographic fields, thus giving visibility to women in science so that they can become leaders with the ability to influence and make decisions to solve challenges such as the climate emergency.

ACCIONA promotes the full inclusion of women in the sectors in which it operates. The company is part of the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index, which includes companies around the world that have demonstrated greater transparency and better performance in terms of gender equality. It is also part of the Global Compact's Women's Empowerment Principles initiative, which promotes gender equality in the workplace. The company also has gender-focused recruitment programs that prioritize the search for female talent.