Sima Adhya’s professional journey is not a typical one in the insurance industry. Her path began with a deep and enduring interest in space. After completing a science degree, she went on to earn a master’s degree and then a PhD in astrodynamics. Her early career was rooted firmly in the UK space industry, where she worked on real engineering challenges rather than purely theoretical problems.
Sima Adhya | Active Underwriter | Carbon Insurance, Inc.
One of the complex areas she contributed to included asteroid deflection, a field that requires precision, advanced modelling, and a clear understanding of risk in extreme environments. At EliteX, we are proud to have Sima Adhya as part of the edition: Impactful Women in Insurance, 2026.
The turning point in her career came when she stepped into a consultative role at a satellite company. There, she began modelling satellite risks in a structured and practical way. She assessed what the risks were, how likely they were to occur, and what their consequences would be. This included analysing failure risk for UK Ministry of Defence satellites and other high-value missions where both the financial stakes and operational consequences were significant. By quantifying mission failure and translating technical uncertainties into measurable outcomes, she found herself naturally engaging with the language of underwriting. When you are pricing the probability of a satellite failing, you are already thinking like an insurer.
Leadership is clarity, courage, and compassion under uncertainty.
Through this work, she built relationships within the insurance market. Curiosity about the market side of risk grew steadily. She began to see insurance not just as a financial backstop, but as a system that enables innovation by absorbing uncertainty. Eventually, she made the move from the space sector into insurance, bringing with her a rare blend of scientific depth and commercial awareness.
Today, Sima serves as the Active Underwriter of a Lloyd’s syndicate focused on carbon markets and climate transition projects. In this role, she leads underwriting for the business. Her responsibilities fall into three broad areas. First, she sets underwriting strategy, defining the types of risks the syndicate will take and the principles that guide those decisions. Second, she builds and manages a high-performing team and underwriting culture. She believes that technical excellence must be matched by collaboration and trust. Third, she develops new products and opens new markets, particularly where risk transfer can unlock real-world climate action and attract institutional capital. Her work blends technical underwriting, product design, and long-term strategic direction.
Throughout her career, she has experienced several standout moments. Meeting the King in recognition of contributions to space sustainability was a significant honour. Collaborating with NASA and witnessing launches up close were also memorable milestones. Yet for her, the most meaningful achievements are not individual accolades but human ones. She takes pride in building teams that are both high-performing and genuinely happy. She values helping individuals grow in confidence and capability, and creating environments where intelligent and ambitious professionals can thrive without being constrained.
Mentorship has been a consistent theme in her journey. She has worked with students to inspire excitement about science and engineering. She is particularly committed to making technical careers feel accessible to girls and young women. By showing that these paths are real and achievable, she helps challenge the perception that science, engineering, and insurance are male-dominated spaces. She understands that representation and encouragement can create long-term impact that extends far beyond one individual career.
Technical careers should feel possible for every young girl with curiosity.
Within her organization and the wider insurance industry, her positive impact has centred on capability-building and perspective. She mentors and sponsors individuals who may be highly capable but lack confidence or do not fit traditional industry stereotypes. She is active in speaking engagements, industry talks, schools, and early-career forums, especially where technical careers can seem distant or intimidating. In product innovation, she has helped shift mindsets from reluctance to responsible possibility. By translating complex and emerging risks into clear, structured underwriting frameworks, she enables the market to participate in new areas with confidence.
Sustainability has been another important thread in her work. She has supported UK government and industry initiatives aimed at improving space environmental sustainability. In her current role, she is focused on helping high-impact carbon markets scale. By designing insurance solutions that de-risk carbon projects and clean energy finance, she contributes to building the infrastructure required for climate transition.
As a woman in technical and underwriting environments that were often male-dominated, she faced challenges early in her career. However, she reframed that experience as an advantage. Being the only woman in the room sometimes meant she stood out and was remembered. She brought a fresh perspective to complex problems. In organizations where diversity of thought is genuinely valued, she observed that teams perform better. Over time, her confidence, expertise, and results established her credibility beyond any stereotypes.
To stay updated in a fast-evolving insurance landscape, she relies on range rather than a single source. She stays close to clients and brokers, recognising that emerging placement difficulties often signal new trends. She engages in cross-market conversations with other active underwriters and technical specialists. She monitors innovation, including new managing general agents, distribution models, data sources, and underwriting approaches. She also looks beyond insurance to adjacent sectors such as climate, energy, space, and defence, understanding that major shifts often originate outside the market itself. Curiosity remains one of her strongest professional tools.
In terms of leadership, she believes empathy and compassion are not soft qualities but practical tools that build trust and performance. Clarity of purpose is equally important. A well-defined north star helps guide difficult trade-offs. She values sound judgement under uncertainty, recognising that underwriting and leadership both require decisions based on imperfect information. Courage is essential, whether that means declining a risk or building something new. She also believes that a sense of humour and the ability to maintain perspective are critical for long-term resilience.
Insurance can unlock innovation when risk is understood and structured well.
Looking ahead, her goal is to help build Oka into a market-defining underwriting platform for the climate transition economy. She wants insurance to become a core part of that market infrastructure, just as it became essential to the space sector. By de-risking carbon projects and clean-energy finance, insurance can make it easier for high-impact sectors to access the capital they need to scale. Through technically robust underwriting, meaningful products, and a strong culture, she aims to position her platform at the centre of the journey toward net zero.