By Kate Whatley | Founder, Raise the Roof | Director, Elevate Roofing Advisory Limited
Women in Roofing has changed significantly over the last decade, and few people have done more to drive that change than Kate Whatley. I didn’t come into roofing expecting to change it. But somewhere between running a various commercial roofing and cladding businesses, sitting on boards, and watching talented people — especially women — walk away from an industry that should have fought to keep them, I made a decision: I wasn’t going to wait for the industry to get better. I was going to work to build the version of it I believed in.
That’s what the last few years have been about. Not one project. Not one organisation. A whole ecosystem — deliberately constructed, interconnected, and pointed at the same thing: an industry that is more professional, more inclusive, more sustainable, and genuinely worth staying in.
Raise the Roof: From Community to Movement
Raise the Roof started as Women in Roofing over 10 years ago as a space for women in the UK roofing and built sector to support one another, network, inspire, share, and be seen. Women in roofing held many suecessful and well attended conferences and events and built a community of like minded people.
What it’s becoming now is something bigger. After years of running it as a voluntary group, we are now turning it into a properly structured, commercially sustainable organisation — because good intentions don’t create systemic change.
Resources do. Infrastructure does. Ambition does.
This October, Raise the Roof is hosting its first annual conference with the theme— Rise. Lead. Redefine. — on 20 October 2026.
It’s a full-day event bringing together women across roofing and construction for real conversations about leadership, strategy, visibility, and what it actually takes to build a career — or a business —in this industry.
This isn’t a networking lunch. This is a professional development event with teeth. Keynotes, workshops, panels, and an evening celebration — all designed to send delegates back to their businesses and their teams with more clarity, more confidence, and a bigger sense of what’s possible.
We are also honoured to have National Women in America joining us for the day making it a truly international affair!
Rise. Lead. Redefine. isn’t just a conference theme. It’s a brief.
Elevate Roofing Advisory: Raising the Standard of Business in the Sector
The second strand of what I’m building is Elevate Roofing Advisory Limited — a specialist consultancy working directly with roofing business owners who are ready to operate at a higher level.
The roofing industry in the UK has an enormous skills gap, a professionalism gap, and — I’ll say it — a leadership gap. There are genuinely talented operators in this sector who are running businesses on gut instinct and graft alone, with no strategic framework, no structured people processes, and no clear vision for where they’re going.
Elevate exists to change that.
Working on a two-day deep dive model followed by flexible ongoing advisory support, I work with owners across four focus areas: strategy, people and processes, brand development, and long-term goal setting. It’s not generic business coaching. It’s built specifically for the realities of running a roofing business — the subcontractors, the seasonality, the client relationships, the pressure of being both the expert and the entrepreneur.
The businesses I work with come out of it with clarity. With a plan. And with someone in their corner who genuinely understands the landscape they’re operating in working alongside their teams and writing the next chapter with them.
The industry deserves better than operating by default. Elevate is how I’m helping to make that happen, one business at a time.
SPV Training Solutions: Building the Workforce of the Future
Training is where it all starts. You can’t have a better industry without better-prepared people entering it.
That’s why my work with SPV Training Solutions matters so much to me. SPV delivers specialist roof sheeting and cladding training — technical, hands-on, industry-relevant. It’s the kind of training that creates genuine competency, not just compliance.
This isn’t box-ticking. It’s about raising the baseline of what the industry expects from its workforce — and what its workforce expects from itself. When people are properly trained, properly supported, and properly valued from the start of their careers, the whole system gets better.
After partnering with Juniper Training in 2019 and setting up a training centre in conjunction, together we have been involved in bringing over 200 new entrants into the roofing sector making a real difference to the industry and the communities we live in.
Every one of those people is evidence that this industry, when it opens its doors properly, has more than enough space for the talent that wants to come in.
I have always been an ambassador of apprenticeships and apprentices bring fresh ideas, enthusiasm and are the future of the industry.
The Bigger Picture: What I’m Actually Fighting For
Let me be direct about what underpins all of this.
I believe the UK roofing industry is capable of being far better than it currently is — more professional, more diverse, more attractive to talent, and more respected within the wider built environment.
Everything I am working on currently supports my longer term vision.
Raise the Roof builds community, visibility, and professional momentum for women in the sector.
The Rise. Lead. Redefine. Conference creates the flagship moment that the industry calendars around.
Elevate Roofing Advisory raises the standard of how roofing businesses are run.
SPV Training Solutions ensures the next generation comes in better equipped than the last.
None of these exist in isolation. They’re part of the same campaign — the same argument made in different forms — that this industry is worth investing in, and that the people within it deserve to work in something they’re proud of.
I’ve spent years on boards, in governance roles, in voluntary leadership, and in the trenches of commercial leadership. I’ve seen what the industry looks like from every angle.
And I’ve never been more convinced that we’re at a genuine inflection point and that will only happen with collaboration and forward thinking.
Kate is the founder of Raise the Roof, Director of Elevate Roofing Advisory
Limited, and a long-standing advocate for professionalism, diversity, and leadershipdevelopment in the UK roofing sector. Kate is a Top 100 Influential woman in construction 2025.