Carole O’Neil has seen a fair bit of the world. “We moved around quite a lot when I was growing up,” she says. “My parents are both British, they are both from the North-east of England originally, but growing up we spent time in Europe – Belgium, Paris, Germany – and over in the Far East, Malaysia, South Africa…”

O’Neil is reminiscing about a childhood during which she spent a lot of time overseas as her father was a QS for an international construction company and later a commercial manager in the oil and gas industry. She was later sent to a boarding school in the North-east of England as her parents sought to ensure some continuity in her secondary education.

Fast forward a few decades and O’Neil is looking internationally again, this time as managing partner at Cundall, a fast-growing multi-disciplinary engineering consultancy with around 1,200 employees and 26 offices around the world. The firm, which is well-known for its focus on sustainability, is looking to derive a greater proportion of its income from abroad.