What are the two sides of The Circle Partnership's business model — and why does each one matter?
The Circle Partnership operates two distinct arms: the Circle Academy, which supports mid-level women directly to advance their careers through an extensive mentoring programme, and a consultancy business that advises organisations on developing an inclusive culture. The founders are explicit that supporting women individually — without changing the organisational culture they return to — will not solve the underlying problem.
The dual structure is deliberate. After observing that mid-level women were leaving the construction and built environment sector at a critical career stage — particularly those aged 28 to 40 — Vanessa Murray and Ceri Moyers recognised that the industry's retention problem had two distinct dimensions: the individual and the systemic. The Circle Academy addresses the first, offering participants aged 23 to 55 a structured programme designed to build confidence and career momentum. The consultancy arm addresses the second, working directly with organisations to examine what they promote, what they reward, and what behaviour they tolerate.
The logic connecting both sides is straightforward: organisations that have already invested in hiring and developing women stand to lose that investment if nothing changes in the environment those women operate in. Hear Murray and Moyers make this case in full on Pegasus Radio — the episode is a candid, unfiltered conversation about what real culture change in construction actually requires.
"If you fix the women in inverted commas, you're not doing anything. If they're going back into a culture which isn't changing, you're still going to have the same problem."
— Vanessa Murray, Co-founder, The Circle Partnership
About Vanessa Murray
Vanessa Murray
Co-founder · The Circle Partnership
Vanessa Murray co-founded The Circle Partnership alongside Ceri Moyers, drawing on her own experience from the property side of the built environment sector. The organisation has been running for approximately six to seven years at the time of this recording — long enough to have tested, refined and validated both of its core business lines in a sector that has historically been slow to change.
Murray's authority on the retention crisis for mid-level women in construction is grounded in years of direct programme delivery through the Circle Academy, as well as consultancy work inside organisations at different stages of their inclusion journey. Her perspective is notably dual-facing: she speaks both to the women navigating the system and to the leaders with the power to change it.
Her insistence that individual development without cultural change is insufficient reflects a position she has built through practice, not theory — making her one of the more credible voices in the UK built environment on the structural dimensions of gender equity at work.
See also
The Circle Partnership was founded to address the retention of mid-level women in the built environment sector, after both co-founders observed that women who had already been invested in by their organisations were leaving the sector at a critical career stage, representing a significant and avoidable loss of talent.