Black History Month special, In conversation with Hanna Afolabi, Founder of Mood and Space

Please note that this article was published prior to the new brand name of PREACH Inclusion® on 25 April 2024, so you will notice references to BAME in Property.

To mark Black History Month (BHM) 2022, Founder of BAME in Property, Priya Aggarwal-Shah caught up with Hanna Afolabi, who recently launched her new development and ESG business, Mood and Space (MAS). Prior to entering the world of entrepreneurship, Hanna enjoyed a successful career as a Development Director for Balfour Beatty Investments and at Linkcity (Bouygues Developments), focusing on the Canning Town regeneration project. She is also founder of Black Women in Real Estate and part of the Property Development Book Club. In September 2022, Hanna was named as one of EG’s Rising Stars.

A force of nature, Hanna is spreading her wings across the built environment sector. Read on to find out how she ended up with her own venture, Mood and Space.

East London through and through

Hanna was born and raised in East London; she spent her childhood years in Hackney, went to secondary school in Tower Hamlets and to college in Leyton. Following her degree in Architecture at Sheffield University, Hanna rented a property in East Village, Stratford with her sister. Through renting a Get Living property herself, Hanna sparked an interest in BTR. She described how ‘tenure blind’ worked well in this property, enabling people from different backgrounds to live together.

Nevertheless, the low availability of plantain was an issue in East Village for Hanna! She said, “when looking for a property with my husband, access to plantain, along with West African spices, peppers and culture was a key requirement,” demonstrating the importance of ethnicity and culture when looking to establish your feet somewhere.

Although East London is very diverse, Hanna explained how she felt the shops in East Village were very Western and didn’t necessarily serve the Afro-Caribbean population.

“Over time New Stratford has become increasingly gentrified, despite pre-existing residents often being from lower socio-economic backgrounds. The new neighbourhood was for new people, rather than integration with former residents.”

A varied and successful career

Hanna’s first job was in Lagos, Nigeria, where she worked as an Architectural Assistant. “One of my clients was Standard Chartered Bank and I had lots of opportunities to work on site and refurb their branches.” Although Hanna was exposed to many aspects she learnt in her Architecture degree, she wished she had the opportunity to work on sites sooner, stating “it helped to bring the classroom to life.”

While Hanna enjoyed her work in Lagos, she preferred the project management side of it more, rather than the architecture. After working in Nigeria for nearly a year, Hanna returned to the UK and worked for Peabody Housing Association as a development officer. This was her introduction to development and regeneration. At Peabody, Hanna worked on the Borough Triangle in Elephant and Castle, a project, which consisted of two 30+storey blocks and what was to be Peabody’s new head office.

Following this, she moved onto Linkcity (Bouygues), where she worked in a development management capacity. Here, Hanna worked on the Canning Town town-centre regeneration – Hallsville Quarter, involving the build of 1,000 new homes and 20,000 sqm of commercial, office and student accommodation.

Working in Canning Town was all too familiar to Hanna, having grown up and lived in several other parts of East London already. *“The area had changed so much since the time my friend lived there. It was nice to be back in East London, working on a project which was investing in the local area.”

Hanna then moved onto Balfour Beaty Investments, where she worked at for four years on the East Wick and Sweet Water project, leading on the feasibility, business planning, budget, design, programming and planning of the mixed-use regeneration project of c.1,900 homes on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

As Hanna had worked within the Olympic Park for several years, I was keen to hear her views on its legacy.

“[The Olympics] were an amazing investment for London but not much of the investment benefited local people. In the ten years prior to the Olympics, Hackney (one of the legacy boroughs) was not adequately invested in and having lived in the borough at the time, it meant poor housing. Now, ten years later, the demographic has completely changed, and I think this is because the people who made the decisions about the legacy of the Olympics were not representative of local people, they have no lived experience of those communities.”

Extra-curricular activities

During her time at Balfour Beaty Investments, Hanna set up Black Women in Real Estate in November 2019, a safe space for Black women to connect and create a supportive network across the industry.

In her bid to set this up, Hanna literally searched for Black women on LinkedIn to invite to a dinner. That’s how the first 15 members were established.

“It was nice to sit and chat with other women who understood the nuances of my experiences and career.”

Following the initial dinner, the BWRE network started meeting regularly. During the COVID-19 lockdown, the group moved to online monthly calls, which then increased to fortnightly after the George Floyd murder, as members were discussing how their companies were responding to this.

Fast-forward three years and BWRE have a few partnerships, including with Space Plus, a global industry conference provider and enabler. Through this partnership, BWRE attend their events and push for further representation at their events – not just women speaking about diversity but for their expertise too.

“We want to humanise EDI and get people to understand that people are just trying to thrive.”

BWRE recently shared their #Iamwomen campaign, highlighting Black women in the industry.

As if BWRE wasn’t enough, during lockdown, Hanna became a founding member of the Property Development Book Club. What initially started as a ‘clubhouse’ chat with 1,000+ participants, has now evolved into a podcast created by developers, proptech experts, quantity surveyors and architects. The first season of the podcast has just been released.

Launching Mood and Space

After a successful decade of working in the industry, in summer 2022, Hanna took the decision to launch Mood and Space, a new development company that supports clients in embedding social value in their development vision and strategy, as well as managing the processes to deliver community focused buildings and neighbourhoods.

“Being an ambitious person, I’ve always wanted to own or lead a company… I thought it would happen later in my life but being a woman, I had to consider how my career would sit beside having a family. This was my ‘now or never’ moment. I’ve learnt and achieved a lot and I have gained the necessary skills. The autonomy and freedom of running my own business fuels my passion.”

Hearing this, it was evident that Hanna knows what she wants. Indeed, we discussed that setting off on your own to run a business wouldn’t be possible without self-belief.

“You have to be mentally secure in yourself to be able to push forward.”

Recognising Hanna’s achievements

Hanna’s successful career and empowering extracurricular activities have not gone unnoticed. She was recognised as one of EG’s Rising Stars 2022 and was a Black British Business Awards 2022 Rising Star finalist. This year she was also listed as Bisnow’s 41 Women in UK Real Estate. Last year she was winner of the We Are the City Rising Star 2021 in Infrastructure, Transport & Logistics.