In 1999, Mr Lubi started working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was an Economic Adviser at the Estonian Embassy in London 2002-2006. After that, he worked as a Director of the General Affairs Division in the EU Department. In August 2009, Mr Lubi took up the position of Economic Adviser at the Estonian Embassy in Washington, DC. In 2011, he was seconded to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications in Estonia. In 2013, Mr Lubi took up office in New Delhi as the first residing Estonian Ambassador to India. After 3 years, he served as a Vice Minister for Economic Development in Estonia. Since 2021, Mr Lubi has been the Ambassador of Estonia to the United Kingdom. 

Geoff Huggins is Director for Digital at the Scottish Government.  Previously he was Director of the NHS Education Scotland Digital Service working to create the NHS National Digital Platform.  From 2013 to 2018 he was Director for Health and Social Care Integration and from 2017 to 2018 also Director for Digital Health and Social Care.  Prior to that he was Head of Mental Health for nine years.  From 1991 to 1998 he worked for the Northern Ireland Office working on security and political development.  He holds degrees in law and criminology from Queen’s University, Belfast.  He is a non-executive director of Cornerstone, Penumbra and the International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership.  He runs a little, takes photographs and watches films.  

Ivan McKee was appointed Minister for Public Finance in May 2024 where he supports the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government. 

His career has involved a number of senior roles in manufacturing and business, managing companies in the UK as well as Poland, Finland, Croatia and Bosnia. 

Early in his career, Ivan spent two years with VSO in Bangladesh. He is currently a trustee of the charity CEI, which supports education and health projects in Bangladesh. 

Ivan has been MSP for Glasgow Provan since May 2016. He was brought up in Glasgow where he studied at the University of Strathclyde. He also studied at the University of Newcastle. 

He was previously the Minister for Trade, Investment and Innovation and Minister for Business, Trade, Tourism and Enterprise. 

Nia is an experienced leader of digital transformation who has helped the Scottish public sector deliver services that are more efficient to run and meet the raised expectations of today’s customers. She now helps organisations transition to working in the cloud.
Before that Nia spent 19 years working in both the Welsh and English public sector delivering policy improvements, community development, digital connectivity and business transformation.

Eilidh McLaughlin is the Deputy Director for Digital Ethics, Inclusion and Assurance and is head of the Digital Citizen Division.  The Division is within the Digital Directorate and covers the Connecting Scotland programme and the Ethical Digital Nation team.  It also comprises Information Management and Assurance teams, thus considering digital citizenry from an internal and external perspective. This role combines Eilidh’s previous experience in corporate governance, equalities and information management.  The ethos of the Division is to make sure that No One is Left Behind and to ensure that digital work is done in an ethical, inclusive way.  

Robbie has been Head of the Digital Connectivity Division in the Scottish Government since 2018, leading the delivery of a number of flagship infrastructure projects that are enhancing Scotland’s digital infrastructure and extending access to connectivity. Robbie has worked in several roles across Scottish Government – previously managing European Structural Funds programmes and helping to set up SPRUCE, the first investment fund specifically established to support urban development and regeneration activity in Scotland.

Before moving to Scottish Government, Joy held a number of posts across UK government. She is an experienced transformation lead. Driven by her passion for delivering excellent public services, Joy has been involved in designing some extraordinary services, recognised by their many awards. As Head of Digital Transformation, Joy’s goals include ensuring all services are designed in collaboration with the people who use them and that people are always encouraged to challenge the status quo.

Kimberley is the Head of Business Intelligence at Glasgow City Council, looking at how data can be used to support both council and city transformation.   She leads a broad range of innovative data analytics projects that inform policy, transform services, and ultimately aim to deliver better outcomes for the people of Glasgow. She is a champion of open data and an advocate for better data sharing across the public sector.  She is a member of the Digital Glasgow Board that is responsible for overseeing the development of the Digital Glasgow Strategy, and is also actively involved in developing data analytics capabilities across Scottish Local Government in collaboration with the Scottish Local Government Digital Office.  

Colleen is the Business Change Manager at Aberdeenshire Council where she leads several teams delivering programmes of Digital and Strategic change across the organisation which will improve service delivery and build resilience. Colleen developed and is leading on the delivery of the Council’s Digital Strategy and is passionate about embedding User Centred Design to inform and improve user experience, leading the growth of this discipline across services. 

Colleen holds an MSc in Criminal Justice and is a Qualified BCS Business Analyst and PRINCE 2 Practitioner. Alongside certifications in Service Design and Leadership, she has held various Voluntary Board positions and is a 2022 graduate of the SOLACE Springboard Leadership programme. Colleen lives in a small village in Aberdeenshire with her young family and enjoys visiting the local beaches and forests, as well as spending time in her home city of Edinburgh.

Sarah is Programme Director for broadband initiatives at the Scottish Government. She leads the team delivering the £600m Reaching 100% programme, which is one of the most ambitious digital infrastructure programmes in Europe, taking faster broadband to some of the hardest-to-reach communities in Scotland.  

Sarah also leads the team playing a key role in delivering Project Gigabit in Scotland. The UK Government funded scheme, which is being managed by the devolved administration in Scotland, will help extend access to gigabit capable broadband, building upon the successful rollout of R100. 

With a commercial background in fibre and mobile deployment, Sarah promotes an inclusive and holistic environment on the regional boards and working groups that she sits on. She’s an advocate of collaboration and brings a unique mix of skills, experience, and knowledge to her work with a keen eye on delivering improved outcomes for the public sector and the citizens of Scotland. 

Alisdair is recognised by his peers as one of Scotland’s prominent professional advisers amongst Scotland’s technology, digital and engineering sectors. Alisdair leads the development of Glasgow City Innovation District – Scotland’s leading Innovation District and is the founder of Framewire, Scotland’s first advisory practice focused on developing Scotland’s Digital and Tech Ecosystem.

Alisdair dedicates his time to supporting founders create, develop, invest, and scale their tech, digital or deep tech business and through Glasgow City Innovation District, is guiding the development of Glasgow’s Tech Sector as Scotland’s leading Innovation Hub.

Alisdair led the creation of the first tech week for a Scottish City – Glasgow Tech Week and is the co-founder of the internationally acclaimed Turing Festival (now Turing Fest). At the inaugural Scottish Tech Startup Awards, Alisdair was awarded Scotland’s first Tech Ecosystem award where his peers independently recognised his expertise and commitment to developing Scotland’s Tech Ecosystem. Alisdair has also been awarded the Principal’s Special Award for his outstanding contribution to the success of the University of Strathclyde and was a Barclays Entrepreneur of the Year finalist for Scotland. Alisdair is an Independent board advisor to Barclays Eagle Labs and is a strategic advisor to Amiqus and VeryConnect and member of Johnston Carmichael’s Tech Advisory Board.  

Andrew began his career in Technology within Civil Engineering sector with a focus on technology solutions across transport systems. Following this he moved into leadership roles in Construction and Utilities sectors.  

Moving into Energy – He held senior leadership roles with a focus on Digital, Transformation and redesigned Target Operating Model development across global organisations. 

In September 2019 Andrew was appointed as Police Scotland’s Chief Digital and Information Officer. Joining the Police Scotland Executive Command & Leadership Team, Andrew oversees a wide portfolio which consists of Transformation, Digital Division, Service Design and Innovation.    

He is the Senior Responsible Officer for a range of programmes including Digital Evidence Sharing Capability and the National Body worn Video Programme. 

Paul has been working in the senior digital leadership team at Registers of Scotland for 4 years. A technology enthusiast who believes in delivering success through service aligned, autonomous, high performing teams. 

Registers of Scotland have been through several “digital transformation” iterations over the last ten years. Their journey has seen the delivery of several transformational services which benefit Scottish Citizens and underpin the Scottish Property Market, such as SCOTLIS and Digital Submissions Service.  

With many lessons learned on the way, and many more inevitably to come, Paul and the Registers of Scotland team would like to share their digital transformation journey with you. 

Cheryl Torano is the Business Development Manager for Abertay cyberQuarter.

Her current role began in 2021 and is funded through Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Government.

Cheryl graduated from Abertay’s Ethical Hacking programme in 2017 having undertaken an accelerated BSc Hons degree.

Prior to that she studied HND Computer Networking and Internet Technology at Dundee and Angus College.

Following graduation, she worked in Abertay University’s digital marketing team until 2019 when she took up a role with Brightsolid as a Cyber Security Engineer. During this time, she completed an MBA in Business Administration in Cybersecurity.

Cheryl is on the Scottish Women in Cyber and Ladies Hacking Society committees, and a key member in the Scottish Cyber Cluster.

Jackie has been working collaboratively with Public Sector colleagues for over twenty-five years helping them to take a user centred design approach to transforming their citizen facing services. After a career in Energies and Utilities and Financial Services consulting she began to work with the Public Sector space, shaping, winning and delivering a variety of interesting assignments covering everything from low carbon energy projects to digital services, IT consulting and full business transformation.

She joined Sopra Steria in 2018 after working for Logica, Xansa and BT Global services and successfully running her own business. Since joining Sopra Steria she has tripled the size of the Scotland based consulting team who now comprising design team, change, technology consultants and business analysts. We work in multi-disciplinary teams with our colleagues delivering a range of digital services.

She is the co-chair of the Business Services Association (BSA) Scotland and represents Sopra Steria in Scotland at all events, conferences and leads our sponsorship of the Empowering Women to Lead Digital Transformation programme.

Jude McCorry is CEO of the Cyber and Fraud Centre – Scotland. She has over 20 years’ experience in the Technology sector and started her career with Dell computers in Ireland, she joined the Cyber and Fraud Centre – Scotland in April 2020 from The Data Lab where she was Director of Business Development working with industry and academia to maximise the value of data for Scotland.
She is one of the founders of the Unicef Data Hub for Children, and always ensures there is a social aspect to everything she does in order to benefit the people of Scotland or further afield. Jude is a board member of Parkinson’s Scotland and the Policy Board at SCDI.

Dr Sanna Rimpiläinen, Research and Skills Manager at the Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre (DHI) in Glasgow, leads on one of DHI’s key strategic areas, Skills and Future Workforce Development agenda. This work focusses on the development of a future pipeline of talent to support the digital transformation of health and care services in Scotland, engaging with a vast network of partners in schools, further and higher education, in digital health and care industry, the health and social care sectors, Scottish government and the third sector. She also manages the DHI’s Research and Knowledge Management team, whose outputs inform and underpin work carried out by the DHI and our partners. The team also administers master’s studentship funding in digital health and care for the Scottish universities, working to strengthen that domain across the Scottish education landscape.

Dr Rimpiläinen has a PhD in Education. Her work at the DHI pulls together the different strands of her career, including interdisciplinary research expertise and interest in workforce development questions with different aspects of technological innovations from inception and production to appropriation and use in diverse learning and working practices.

Deryck is a commercially focused C-suite executive, distinguished by expertise in cyber security and cloud, with global experience across both private and public sectors. His leadership in Consulting, Oil and Gas, and Healthcare provides Deryck with the platform for building and delivering IT and Security strategies and the application of emerging technologies, delivering a positive impact on both business goals and bottom line. In his current role at Check Point he acts as a security evangelist, advising C-Suite leaders on digital transformation, underpinned by security resilience and strategy. He is a recognized thought-leader and visionary, named in the top 20 IT influencers in the UK by Computer Weekly and winner of Holyrood’s prestigious digital leader of the year award, amongst others.  

Roger Halliday started as Scotland’s Chief Statistician in November 2011 and Served as Scottish Government’s Chief Data Officer role between 2017 and 2020.
Since March, he has jointly led a Covid Modelling and Analysis Division in Scottish Government and is the Chief Executive of Research Data Scotland.
Roger qualified with a degree in statistics in 1993 from St. Andrews University and joined the Government fast stream as an assistant statistician. He worked for various UK Government Departments and at the Scottish Government in a number of statistical and policy making roles.
He became an honorary Professor at the University of Glasgow in 2019.

Doreen leads Scottish Government’s involvement in the Open Government Partnership at both a National and International level. In Scotland, Open Government supports the reform and development of trustworthy public services, the renewal of democracy, promotes openness, transparency and the use of innovative participative processes to help transform how people interact with public services. 

Doreen moved into Scottish Government during the extraordinary times building up to Scotland’s Independence Referendum, which as an Archaeologist and Historian, seemed a really interesting way to observe history at first hand.  The change has provided her with a broad perspective on the world in which we live and the systems that affect us over time.  

As a volunteer Doreen is also a co-founder and chair of Wellbeing Economy Scotland, because change matters and how we have a society that works for people and planet – working with an extraordinary team of people who are inspiring the change in Scotland and beyond. 

Julie Snell has 35 + years’ experience as a business leader having successfully established new technology markets and leading technology innovation in telecoms / digital IT. 

 Julie was part of the leadership team that developed BT’s first public Wifi project, BT Openzone. She spent five years on the board of the global telco group Wireless Broadband Alliance, two years as Chair. In 2017, Julie was appointed as director and CEO of Bristol’s Smart City infrastructure and computer network company Bristol is Open. 

Currently Chair of Scotland 5G Centre, Non-Executive Herefordshire & Worcestershire Health & Care NHS Trust, Non-Executive Director Worcester Local Enterprise Partnership Vice President of the Urban Technology Alliance, a global community of international smart city players,  Non-Executive at Col8, and an Enterprise Advisor for The Careers & Enterprise Company mentoring to help young people realise their employment ambitions. 

Michael has worked in AI for over 20 years as an academic, focusing primarily on methods to coordinate the activities between multiple intelligent agents in both cooperative and competitive settings, such as transportation networks, supply chains, and markets. Over the last few years, his research has aimed at developing systems that are better aligned with human values, e.g. fairness and diversity, contributing to the development of more responsible AI technologies. Since 2018, he has led the development of The Bayes Centre, a data science and AI innovation hub that brings together nearly 500 researchers and industry experts. Michael is part of the leadership team of the Scottish AI Alliance, and represents the University at the Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national institute for data science and AI. 

Gary’s breadth of technical knowledge and experience combined with his pragmatic leadership skills and strategic thinking has made him a notable figure in the world of Atlassian software. He specialises in technology adoption, IT service management, enterprise service management, and DevSecOps. 

Davie is based just outside of Glasgow and is the Leidos UK Director of Technology Strategy & Innovation. Creating innovative solutions to customers’ complex challenges is what he’s all about.

Davie started his Career in IT as a YTS in the ‘80s (think, an early version of Modern Apprenticeships). After many adventures in different industries including public sector, banking and manufacturing, to name a few, he joined Leidos. Davie is one of Scotland’s inaugural Digital Fellows. Davie was seconded to the Scottish Government Digital Directorate in 2018 as Chief Technologist. He is passionate about technology and the amazing things we can achieve by harnessing the collective power of people, process, information and technology through collaboration between Public and Private sectors, fellow tech companies, customers and our customers’ customers.

The pace at which technology evolves means there are always new ways to innovate that weren’t even considered yesterday…

His extracurricular activities include fine dining, mixed with the odd kebab, and he describes himself as a family man who is a PC gaming nerd and car enthusiast.

Over the last 20 years Michelle has been working with leading technology in order to automate processes.   Michelle has worked with companies and holds qualifications in working with suppliers in the leading quadrant of  Gartner companies as well as emerging as leaders in automation.  She has travelled the world advising companies in how to automate processes, especially in the invoice automation arena. 

Michelle joined Aberdeenshire Council 5 years ago and has introduced this expertise across services.   Now more than ever councils and other public bodies need and have to reduce processing cost and can see that Process Automation is a tool to achieve those goals. 

One of Michelle’s experiences was to travel to Ivory Coast to introduce invoice automation.   An experience that followed travelling to Australia, Continental Europe and South America.  Outside of work, Michelle loves spending her time at home with her Labrador Hattie and Husband Tom.

Margaret is Head of Innovation for Care and Wellbeing.  She has over 20 years experience working with Scottish Government,  in strategic and programme delivery roles, bringing experience of significant change programmes along with  her clinical experience and  delivery roles with NHS Fife.    

Up until January 2024 Margaret led the   national cross sector TEC Programme in partnership with the NHS, Local Government, Third, Housing and Independent sector  providers aimed at supporting scale up and deployment in Scotland. This centred around the citizen and focused on improving access to services by using digital technologies and approaches to enable improved outcomes.  Margaret also championed a number of Digital Inclusion programmes and continues to lead the Digital Lifelines Scotland portfolio.  

Margaret leads the national Digital Health and Care Fest  proving a national and  international focus to developments in Scotland.  She is also involved in international projects and collaborations. 

Within DHI, Margaret’s role is to champion and lead the opportunities for digital innovation for integrated care and wellbeing bringing a spotlight to wider social care and housing opportunities.  

Margaret is a Trustee/Board member  of ENABLE Scotland and Hanover Housing Association. 

Since joining Sophos in 2011 Jon has enjoyed numerous roles from Channel Manager via Firewall Specialist to sales engineer. In his current role, Jon brings his passion for all things cybersecurity to the presentation stage talking about all the wonderful technologies and services that Sophos offer to keep your users secure. 

Trust and Transformation in Digital Government: Delivering secure and user-centric online services

Keith has extensive experience in senior business and digital executive leadership roles held in government and public sector organisations and in transforming and improving profile public facing services. Keith is responsible for COPFS’ corporate and business service functions, which includes digital and information services. Current digital transformation priorities include maximising the use of data and digital technology to transform the delivery of citizen services and to improve the way the organisation works. Keith completed an MBA (with Project Management) in 2015.

Brian joined the Scottish Government as Director for Corporate Transformation and Workplace in March 2021. He is an experienced leader in the world of business, IT, process & people change delivery. Building portfolios of change and transformation, and the teams required to deliver them, has been the central theme in his career. The majority of Brian’s career has been within Financial Services, primarily with Standard Life Investments/abrdn group of companies where he was Head of Change, followed by senior operations and change roles in Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank Group/Virgin Money plc, and Skyscanner Ltd.   

Antony Clark was appointed Audit Scotland’s Executive Director of Performance Audit and Best Value in May 2022after an interim 14-month period having joined Audit Scotland in 2003. As Executive Director, Antony is responsible for delivering a world-class programme of performance audits that respond to the key issues Scotland’s public sector faces and positively affect the lives of Scotland’s people. Prior to joining Audit Scotland, Antony worked for the Nursing and Midwifery Council in London from the mid 1980s until joining North Tyneside Council in 1991 as a community care planner. He joined the Audit Commission in the mid-1990s where he spent six years managing health and local government audits across the North of England. After a short period back in local government, working on political modernisation (elected mayors and cabinet constitutions), he joined Audit Scotland.

Lee Dunn is the Head of the Scottish Digital Academy, which is part of the Directorate for Digital at the Scottish Government. The Academy provides high quality professional learning and training in relation to service design, agile transformation and digital skills.

Lee began his career as a secondary school teacher of Design and Technology before taking up various posts as Data Lead for post-16 learning with the Scottish Government, Senior Lecturer in Education and Technology at the University of Glasgow and Head of Education Services at the Institute of Chartered Accountants Scotland. Before taking up his current post, Lee was a Lead Specialist Professional Learning at Education Scotland. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and the Moderator for Education and Digital Skills at the UNESCO Inclusive Policy Lab.

Lee is passionate about education and developing digital skills for learning, life and work.

David is currently the CEO of SSC, an organisation focused on supporting the adoption of technology across a broad range of sectors.  He is a member of the UK Government’s Digital Economy Council and holds other directorships including tech membership organisation Dynamo North East and deep-sea science company Armatus Oceanic.  David chairs Citizens Advice Scotland’s (CAS) recently established Digital Committee as we as being the deputy chair of CAS’s People Committee.

Based on his doctorate, David has given talks on economic development through supporting tech sector growth in a number of countries including China, South Korea, the USA and in Europe.  David also holds an MBA from Durham University and BSc from Abertay University.

Jackie has been working collaboratively with Public Sector colleagues for over twenty-five years helping them to take a user centred design approach to transforming their citizen facing services. After a career in Energies and Utilities and Financial Services consulting she began to work with the Public Sector space, shaping, winning and delivering a variety of interesting assignments covering everything from low carbon energy projects to digital services, IT consulting and full business transformation.

She joined Sopra Steria in 2018 after working for Logica, Xansa and BT Global services and successfully running her own business. Since joining Sopra Steria she has tripled the size of the Scotland based consulting team who now comprising design team, change, technology consultants and business analysts. We work in multi-disciplinary teams with our colleagues delivering a range of digital services.

She is the co-chair of the Business Services Association (BSA) Scotland and represents Sopra Steria in Scotland at all events, conferences and leads our sponsorship of the Empowering Women to Lead Digital Transformation programme.

Jason Whittet leads the city advisory practice for AWS based out of London. He previously led the Smart City Innovation Center at Arizona State University for AWS. He’s worked in smart cities for 100 Resilient Cities at the Rockefeller Foundation, General Electric and IDC Research. He previously spent 10 years in government service with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He studied political science at ASU and has a Master’s In Public Administration from Northeastern University. He currently services as the Co-Chair of the Data Supercluster for the US National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Jon is the CTO at Brightsolid and has over 20 years’ experience of enterprise technology environments. For the past 8 years he has focused on helping customers across all industry sectors design, build/migrate, secure, manage and optimise applications and services in public cloud environments. He is an experienced technology leader and an expert in the major public cloud providers. At Brightsolid, Jon is accountable for the delivery of our hybrid cloud products and services. 

Alex is an experienced Programme Management professional. He has spent 15 years working in technology and business transformation delivery. This includes 8 years at Sky leading technology and business change projects. 

  Alex began his automation journey in 2015 before founding VKY in 2016. As Director of Intelligent Automation, he is accountable for our customer delivery. He leads engagements with a wide variety of organisations across local authorities, utilities and financial services sectors. Alex is a recognised pioneer of automation delivery, particularly in the public sector. 

  Outside of work Alex champions sustainable living in his local community of Muckhart. When not coaching the juniors section of his local rugby team he can usually be found out in a local forest with his family foraging for mushrooms. 

 Patrick is the VP of Marketing at Queue-it, a SaaS virtual waiting room provider based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Patrick is a passionate technologist and has a particular focus on how modern technology can be used to solve complex challenges that face private and public organizations around website infrastructure, providing equal access to digital services, and creating a consistent and positive citizen/user experience.

Ross joined the Scottish Government in 2000, initially in agriculture, moving to Digital Communications in 2007 working on the intranet and website, latterly as Website Manager for gov.scot. Ross moved to the Cloud First Programme within Digital Directorate as Product Manager in 2018.
The Cloud First Programme’s main aim is to promote cloud & support public organisations to move to the cloud. Ross also has a leading role within the Cloud Community which has been established across the public sector in Scotland.

Rachael Greaves is the CEO and Co-Founder of Castlepoint Systems. She is a records and information management and cyber security thought leader. Rachael designed the Castlepoint command and control products. Rachael has consulted on large-scale records, security and audit projects in government and regulated industries with complex integrated environments. She developed Castlepoint in response to the tension seen in organisations between compliance, usability, sustainability and cost. 

Rachael is a Certified Information Professional (CIP), Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Certified Data Privacy Systems Engineer (CDPSE), and is certified in project, change, and records management. 

Douglas has worked at the forefront of digital technologies and new media in Scotland for over 20 years. He is the architect, driving force and brand manager behind myjobscotland, having led the project from its inception in 2006 to become a UK award-winning jobs portal for Scotland’s councils, universities, charities and other partner organisations. Since becoming Chief Digital Officer for COSLA, he’s an authority trusted across the sector regularly lends his expertise to many digital public sector projects across Scotland. 

Shona Croy is Strategic Advisor and Project Director for Orkney Islands Council, with responsibility for renewables and connectivity. Orkney is the worst internet blackspot in Scotland with just 64% of premises connected to superfast broadband compared to the UK average of 94%. Only 1% of households have ultrafast broadband, compared to the UK average of 59%, and locals face the slowest download speeds in the country. 

Given the challenges of living and working in a rural area, delivering improved connectivity across Orkney is a high priority for the Council, to mitigate against the effects of distance and isolation, to allow businesses and the public sector to modernise, and to deliver improved quality of living including improved opportunities for remote learning and employment for residents. 

Shona has been at employed by the Council for over 30 years and has worked in a variety of roles primarily in the field of economic development. She has extensive knowledge and experience of the issues facing remote communities and in developing measures to overcome market failure.  A strategic and practical thinker, she has developed and delivered a number of innovative projects in Orkney. 

Paul is an entrepreneurial technologist with a substantial track record for applying innovation across multiple market sectors spanning academia, government, SMEs and international PLCs.

Paul’s early career was with UK MoD, then with QinetiQ where he held a number of leadership roles CEO of QinetiQ Inc. Subsequently, Paul has founded and ran an SME and then was the inaugural Executive Director Innovation and Investment at the UK Defence Solutions Centre. He joined CENSIS in 2019 where he has been pivotal in the development and implementation of digital solutions across the public and private sectors in Scotland.

Paul’s business skills include leadership, substantial international P&L experience, capital raising and realising value from technology.

Paul is a member of the Board at South of Scotland Enterprise, Scotland’s enterprise agency for Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish Borders. Earlier in 2022 the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) appointed him to its Science Engineering and Technology Board (SETB). The SETB is responsible for identifying and championing new research challenges at the cutting edge of engineering and physical sciences for future investment.

Paul is a co-founder of the Smart Things Accelerator Centre, a dedicated Scottish IoT accelerator for SMEs, scale up and start up companies.

Steve Roud is a change agent who specialises in digital technologies. He is a past chair of SOCITM Scotland which is a professional body that represents digital leaders across the public services. Steve has achieved success with public sector organisations such as Angus Council, NHS NSS and Aberdeen City Council.​

After spending more than 30 years in public services, Steve has expertise in leadership, portfolio delivery and transformation.​​

Steve has an MSc in Leadership as well as a  PgDip in Information Technology and  a BA in Information Management.​

Linda brings an entrepreneurial mindset, with a wealth of experience in pushing commercial growth and engaging with governance to CodeClan.

In her role as Chief Marketing Officer, her main objectives are to build a recognisable and highly commended brand to reflect the valuable and life-changing activities that take place at CodeClan. Linda leads the commercial side of CodeClan, building the partner network to support CodeClan students and Alumni, bringing in industry insight and building a positive reputation throughout the tech industry.  Also working with CodeClan partners to upskill and reskill employees to support the skills needed in Scotland.

Declan is a tireless advocate of promoting STEM skills to the younger generation and is an active mentor and coach to the next generation of cyber security professionals in Scotland. While we have been working with Declan since Jan 2018 at the Cyber and Fraud Centre – Scotland, he has designed, curated, delivered, hosted and organised a huge number of cyber education, cyber exercising, and cyber security related events.

One of Declan’s most celebrated strengths is that whether working with internal or external group of people, he looks to find the best outcome for all involved and truly exemplifies the core values of our organisation, where we strongly believe in having the people at the heart of it all.

Declan has and continues to take an active role in the success of all of the Ethical Hacking students from Abertay University working with the Cyber and Fraud Centre – Scotland. As Head of Ethical Hacking & Professional Services, his role involves shortlisting, interviewing, hiring and subsequently supervising, mentoring and coaching Cyber and Fraud Centre – Scotland’s Ethical Hackers for all Cyber Education and Cyber Exercising activities and projects.

Ian has over 30 years of experience in the IT industry working across a variety of organisations and roles.  For the last 8 years Ian has been working with Objective focusing on helping its customers identify opportunities to improve how they govern information and processes and maximise their investment in Objective. 

 His experience includes requirements gathering, business analysis, stakeholder management and the architecture and design of web portals, collaboration sites and information management systems.

Jen Holland was appointed Director of Strategic Commissioning and Partnerships within Scottish Borders Council in October 2022.  Within this remit is IT, Social Care and Social Care Commissioning.   

Jen’s background is a Chartered Accountant and her career has spanned a number of senior financial roles mainly in the Public Sector.  Jen has worked at Scottish Borders Council since April 2019  

The majority of IT services are outsourced to CGI and Jen manages a small team internally and the partnership with CGI.  Jen also has responsibility for developing the digital transformation programme with CGI. 

Muhammad Ali Imran (M’03, SM’12) Fellow IET, Senior Member IEEE, Senior Fellow HEA is Dean University of Glasgow UESTC and a Professor of Wireless Communication Systems with research interests in self organised networks, wireless networked control systems and the wireless sensor systems. He heads the Communications, Sensing and Imaging (CSI) research group at University of Glasgow and is Director of Centre for Educational Development and Innovation. He is an Affiliate Professor at the University of Oklahoma, USA; Adjunct Research Professor at Ajman University, UAE and a visiting Professor at 5G Innovation Centre, University of Surrey, UK. He is also the Principal Investigator for Scotland 5G Centre’s Urban Testbed in Glasgow and an advisory board member for UK5G. He has over 20 years of combined academic and industry experience with several leading roles in multi-million pounds funded projects. He has filed 15 patents; has authored/co-authored over 400 journal and conference publications; has authored 2 books, edited 8 books and authored more than 30 book chapters; has successfully supervised over 40 postgraduate students at Doctoral level. He has been a consultant to international projects and local companies in the area of self-organised networks.

Steve has been with Cisco for 15 years and looks after the Cisco Security business in Scotland. Passionate about ‘doing the right thing’ for the customer, something that is part of the Cisco culture.

Before Cisco, Steve helped design some of the largest Optical networks on the planet, aged prematurely when working on ATM networks and laments the demise of IBM OS/2, a misunderstood OS ahead of its time.

Bob Stewart is a Professor at Strathclyde University where he leads a 5G Software-Defined-Radio team, and where he is also the lead on the University 5G Industry Cluster within the Glasgow City Innovation District.
He has more than 30 years of experience in wireless and mobile, from 1G to today’s 5G architectures. He was previously a Visiting Professor at UCLA Extension School for 20 years, and a founder and the Director of the tech company Steepest Ascent Ltd, prior to acquisition by MathWorks in 2013.
Most recently Bob led the University’s 5GRuralFirst project activity, and now chairs and manages the 5G New Thinking project co-funded by DCMS with lead partner Cisco.

Gary has worked within the IT sector for over twenty-five years for a wide selection of technology companies, ranging from large enterprises such as Novell and Veritas through to smaller boutique companies offering specialised solutions.  

His roles in consultancy have seen him work in multiple countries with a wide variety of Clients and verticals including Finance, Legal, Corporate, Manufacturing and Public Sector. 

Recently joining CGI as Director Consulting Services for Scotland East, his clients include Scottish Borders Council and The City of Edinburgh Council. 

Stephen is the Founder of Calba, your partner in agile.

He strongly believes in focusing on people before process and tools, influenced from his past experience as a personal development leader with charities Venture Scotland and Raleigh International.

He started his career as a software engineer in 1980s with Hewlett-Packard, who were pioneering new manufacturing techniques, many of which we term as agile or lean today. He has worked on agile and digital transformations with organisations across Europe, Japan and North America, and lived in Silicon Valley for 5 years.

Stephen founded Calba in 2010 and Lean Agile Edinburgh in 2013.

David is passionate about improving the lives of the end-users of a service, especially those run by public sector, charity and other service-based groups.  He has a strong background in leading major transformations in the public and private sectors including Cognizant, Infosys and in the Cabinet Office, including working as a CIO/CDO.  David focuses on empowering people and building healthy diversity in any organisation.