Our Board

Alison is currently seconded to the Digital Directorate of the Scottish Government under the First Minister’s Digital Fellowship Programme. Alison is the Regional Director for Scotland and Northern Ireland at Sopra Steria. Having been with the company since its days as Newell & Budge, Alison has been key to the company’s sustained growth in Scotland – particularly in Public Sector. Alison is passionate about the positive impact of technology – it’s potential to enable doing new things, doing things better and doing things more efficiently, and has over 20 years’ experience of public sector services across Central Government, Local Government, Health and Third Sector. Alison also sits on the Digital Participation programme board for Scotland.

Dermot has spent over 20 years delivering ERP solutions using Oracle technology. From an initial role as an Oracle developer, he has worked across a wide range of technology roles including analyst, consultant and project manager. He is now responsible for the Inoapps Product Development Technology division, which consists of a team developing Industry solutions for complex business processes using Oracle technologies. He is a keen advocate for promoting “Next Generation” into the Scottish tech market, and has worked closely with Codeclan and other training programmes to promote recruitment of the next wave of digital talent.

I am a Director of Head Resourcing, one of Scotland’s leading IT, Digital and Business Change recruitment consultancies. I joined Head Resourcing in 2005, when the business was a boutique firm, employing 10 members of staff with a turnover of £7.5m. Since joining Head Resourcing, I have been instrumental to the growth and transformation of the business, which is now widely recognised as a market leading recruitment business to clients across a range of sectors, employing 73 members of staff with a turnover of £43million. I have operated in the Scottish IT market for over 15 years and held senior positions with two Scottish based IT consultancy organisations prior to joining Head Resourcing. I am extremely passionate about the Scottish IT & digital skills industry and lead a number of key industry events designed to facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing. These include a quarterly Scottish IT Directors’ Forum, which attracts between 12-15 IT Directors from a range of sectors across Scotland and an IT Skills Panel, an initiative designed to look at how organisations can work collaboratively to address the short, medium and long term IT skills needs of the industry. I am also a member of the Women in Technology Steering Group established by ScotlandIS earlier this year and am going to be a contributor to the Gender work stream of the Scottish Digital Skills Programme, commencing later this month.

Andrew’s previous jobs have included Chief Technology Officer at Administrate, one of Scotland’s fast growing technology businesses, specialising in training management software, CTO with mobile apps developer Kotikan, where he built an Engineering department of 20 talented software experts, developing industry leading apps for clients such as Skyscanner, The Fringe and FanDuel. Since graduating from the University of Edinburgh in 2003, Andrew has been involved in various software companies and open source groups both in Scotland and in Silicon Valley. He has been a founding member of many different startups and is now focusing his efforts on open source projects, working hard to support the software community locally and abroad.

Callum Sinclair is Head of Technology and Commercial at leading Scottish law firm Burness Paull. He has a life-long passion for technology and almost 20 years’ experience providing technology and commercial contracts advice to some of the world’s largest technology businesses and buyers of ICT, as well as spin out and emerging tech. Callum is a former Board Member of ScotlandIS, and was recently named Leader of the Year at the 2018 ScotlandIS Digital Technology Awards. He also features in The Lawyer UK Hot 100 list as a “disruptor”, and in The Times’ 2016 Digital List of 100 people from Scotland’s digital technologies industry who are “changing the world”. He is a published co-author of “Outsourcing” (2015, Globe Law & Business), and sits on the Law Society of Scotland Technology Committee. Recent projects he has led include elements of enterprise cloud, IT sourcing (customer and supplier), regulated procurement and supply chain contracting, mobile/telecoms and emerging technologies. He also provides tailored advice on data protection and privacy and intellectual property matters. Callum lives in Paisley with wife Lisa, and 2 football-mad boys Daniel (13) and Mikey (11).

I am passionate about all things tech and data. Over the last 19 years I have helped organizations across the globe use simulation to achieve better business outcomes. At heart, I’m a maths geek turned developer, it’s my expertise as a business leader (and passion!) though that have helped grow SIMUL8 Corp from a start up to the global leader in the simulation market. I joined SIMUL8 in 1999 as an intern and spent my early career providing consulting to organizations helping them use simulation to improve their business processes. This is where I developed my passion for software, as a user. I wanted to be able to help shape and create the experience for the end user so moving into development was the obvious path for me. Now CTO for SIMUL8, I am responsible for the strategic direction of our products, it’s also my passion. I love software and every part of what goes into creating an amazing end user experience from the initial connection with our website, to how you interact with the software itself. Great products are a combination of software and marketing in my view.

As a Professor in Data Science and Head of Department of Computing at Glasgow Caledonian University, I am passionate about the use of data and AI to transform the way that industry operates and teaching the next generation how to utilise and advance these techniques. AI offers vast potential for industry to rethink how things are done and can be made more efficient, yet this can be at the expense of vast computation. To harness the real power of AI, the ethical considerations of its use need to be considered at every step; not only to build public confidence in the use of AI but because this is the right thing to do!

Anne has 30+ years in business and technology. Her experience ranges from small enterprises to the world’s largest companies. Anne joined IBM in the 90’s and enjoyed a very successful career rising to a senior position. In 2012 she left her role as a Global Director to start up her own businesses – Fuze Tech Services. Anne has excellent analytical, planning, negotiation and communication skills in addition to substantial experience as a board chair/director. She is an inspirational leader with a proven track record in technology leading multi million pound transformations in complex global enterprises. Anne has always balanced her corporate responsibilities with un-paid work, she has held a number of high profile positions, as vice-chair of a UK governmental advisory body on Women in Science, Engineering and Technology (SET); Founder and Chair of a Women’s Technology Center; Established and chaired the Scottish SET at Napier University; Chaired the Helix Trust (£43M Urban Transformation project) which delivered the world famous Kelpies. She is a passionate advocate for the Highlands, where she lives, and for start-up companies. She is active in a number of Lochaber community roles including RNLI and environmental campaigning.

I hold the senior management position of Head of Finance for 2i Limited. 2i are a Software Testing and Quality Assurance Consultancy based in Edinburgh. We are an SME who have various clients across the public and private sector in Scotland and are currently in a phase of growth. I have worked in Finance for over 16 years, 7 of these in the tech sector. I sit on 2i’s Board as a Financial Advisor and have done so for a number of years. I also sit on CIMA’s Edinburgh Committee as Chairman and their Scotland Board as a member and have experience of what these roles require, both in terms of time, planning and reporting commitments.

Sharon is degree educated, with over 25 years’ experience in IT. She is an inspirational leader who is highly motivated and exceptionally driven who thrives on achievement. As UK Managing Director Sharon is responsible for all UK entities within the Eurofins Digital Testing group which generate £30m of revenues across development, cyber and testing business lines. After graduating in Business Studies in London, she moved into software testing. Since relocating to Edinburgh in 2003, Sharon has worked for consultancies and been in senior positions since 2011 and became managing director for Edge Testing Solutions Ltd in 2018. Sharon believes that technology never stands still and is actively pursuing with her teams new and more efficient ways of undertaking highly automated approaches to quality assurance. In addition, she is key in the drive to progress Eurofins Digital Testing capability to support IoT and robotics. Passionate to increase Eurofins Digital Testing’s BAME and female worker ratios Sharon has been very active in developing and building workgroups and forums to support Women in Technology and a UK Youth forum which, gives a voice to our newest recruits. Sharon is extremely passionate about bringing new talent into the sector and developing a highly skilled workforce.

I am currently Head of Delivery for BJSS in Scotland I have several responsibilities, including ensuring we deliver great quality to our clients, support the sales to bring in sustainable, exciting work for our team, hiring and supporting a team of highly skilled IT professionals and ensuring BJSS in Scotland is a great place to work. A key part of my role is also to increase our involvement in CSR and we have done that, supporting initiatives such as Critical Friends, Stem Aspire, and Digital Xtra Fund. In 4 years at BJSS, I have grown the permanent team to 120, from 20 people, grown the number of local clients, from 1 to 10 in Scotland and increased the number of locations in Scotland with a BJSS office. Prior to BJSS, I was IT consultant having started my career in software testing. I have undertaken a range of senior roles, including Head of Delivery, Delivery Director, Head of Testing and Quality Assurance and Head of Governance.