A designer at Amazon’s Swansea fulfilment centre has been shortlisted for a national award recognising women shaping the transport and logistics industry.
Mariel Ruartes is a finalist in the Industry Champion category at the everywoman in Transport & Logistics Awards 2026.
Originally from Argentina and now living in South Wales, she leads the team that designs the internal layouts of Amazon fulfilment centres around the world — from a base in Swansea.
The Industry Champion award recognises a woman whose sustained support for others in the sector has driven measurable change.
An architect by training, Ruartes relocated from Buenos Aires to South Wales for the role and is now international operations design manager.
Her route into logistics spanned continents and industries, taking in housing, engineering on hydropower projects, and designing offices at scale for WeWork.
When the Amazon job came up, she has said, she had to look up where Swansea was on the map — and now calls the move the best decision she ever made.
Her team designs the “composite” — the detailed internal layout of an entire fulfilment centre, coordinated in-house across safety, operations and dozens of trades.
The scale has grown sharply on her watch. When she joined, the team delivered designs for 17 new buildings across the UK and Europe.
Today it handles around 280 projects across the UK, Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific and the Middle East, covering new builds and retrofits.
Ruartes said good design always came back to the people using the building.
“Our customer is the associate, and they are our North Star,” she said, describing how the team weighs everything from walking distances to where the water coolers sit.
Her team has reached a 50/50 gender balance, and she mentors women across the business — work her director cited in putting her forward.
Ruartes said her background had shaped her outlook. “It doesn’t matter where you come from — what matters is what you do and how you build things for the future,” she said.
She admitted the nomination caught her off guard. “I never imagined I’d be nominated for something in the UK,” she said. “When the email came through I actually thought it was a scam and nearly reported it.”
A mother of two, she credited her family for making her career possible.
The awards final takes place later this year.
