International Women’s Day 2024

This International Women’s Day, Greater Anglia is taking the opportunity to showcase some of its women who have been nominated by colleagues for doing a sterling job in both helping others and taking the business forward.

Renata Sorokinaite (Operational Production Manager, Train Presentation) was nominated as our leader of the year in 2023.

She talks about her career and what it’s like being a woman on rail.

What is your job role, in a nutshell?

I work in Train Presentation, taking care of our teams at Southend Victoria station, Orient Way sidings and Ilford depot.

I have nine team leaders who manage the teams across all shifts working for me and they are working 24/7.

I ensure that the teams make the trains spick and span consistently, ensuring high standards at all times both inside and out: cleanliness is what you notice first of all when seeing a train.

What is your career history?

I have been at Greater Anglia for 10 years now and have worked my way up through the jobs, as well as being at various stations, including London Liverpool Street and Southend Victoria.

In December 2017 I started to cover this role and then, in April 2018, I got the permanent position – and I’m still doing that now.

Every day is a different day at Greater Anglia! One day I might be having a meeting with contractors and other day I might be working with our teams in control trying to get the correct trains to the correct locations for the servicing and cleaning.

What is it like being a woman in rail?

It is not always easy being a woman in rail as it is traditionally a very male-dominated environment so can sometimes be quite challenging.

You have to learn to reinforce equality and stand up for yourself - I have definitely developed a thick skin! I have often found myself being the only woman in a meeting, but things are changing as there are now many women in my department – and in the management team, there are more women than men.

What would you say to a woman thinking of coming into the rail industry?

I’d say simply ‘go for it’! There are lots of possibilities within the industry in all sorts of departments and disciplines and more and more women are coming into the railway all the time.

Keely Lopes (Head of Business Readiness)

What’s your current job, in a nutshell?

My role is the Head of Business Readiness, working in or leading on a number of different projects to ensure we are ready to deliver for our customers.

The role requires collaborating with all areas of the business to ensure success and can cover anything and everything.

Some of my current projects include how we manage and deal with service disruption, how we prepare for extreme weather, our on-call processes and procedures, and large infrastructure projects, which ranges from new stations delivery to the installation of additional ticket machines.

What’s your career history?

I joined the railway industry on a graduate scheme in 2004.

I started at Liverpool Street station and worked in customer service. I then remained in the customer service department across various different routes until I joined the new train delivery team in 2018.

We were responsible for the introduction of our new trains onto the network.

This included the class 720 commuter trains, across the majority of our network, as well as our class 745 trains, which you’ll see on our London – Norwich Intercity and Stansted Express routes and the class 755 fleet which runs on our unelectrified lines, mainly out of Ipswich and Norwich.

What’s it like being a woman in rail?

I have certainly had a varied career working in rail and experienced many different situations and events.

I always feel that I am contributing in a positive way and that my opinions are respected. I have never felt out of place as a woman in any role that I have undertaken.

What would you say to any woman wanting to apply for a job in the rail industry?

Apply today! There are so many job roles and opportunities, it is a wonderful industry to work in.

How you can find jobs at Greater Anglia Take a look at and bookmark Greater Anglia’s careers page. You can also sign up for job alerts too. Good luck!