## Professional Focus **Researcher and board director who investigates how cultural heritage shapes venturing and organising.** Cultural heritage is the experiences, beliefs, practices, and artefacts that individuals inherit or adopt from past and present communities, and that persist through transmission. It informs how entrepreneurs develop their ventures, how communities evaluate belonging and worth, and how organisations structure governance. As a Lecturer in Strategy at the University of Edinburgh Business School, my research and teaching centre on cultural heritage. My work has received three Best Conference Paper Awards from the European and American Academies of Management, and four Excellence in Teaching Awards since joining the School in 2022. Previously, I founded and led CYALA (the Council for Young Africans Living Abroad), building leadership programmes for 800+ diaspora youth from 20+ countries navigating cultural heritage across borders. In 2021-2022, I designed decentralised governance frameworks for NFT communities preserving digital cultural production on public blockchains, including token-based voting systems and community charters for 2,000+ members. My non-executive director work connects cultural heritage to public governance. I currently serve on the boards of: - **Historic Environment Scotland (HES):** Governance of Scotland’s cultural and natural heritage, including 300+ historic properties that attract over 4.5 million visitors annually. Chair of the People Committee; Board Champion for the Climate Action Plan. - **Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS):** A Scottish Government agency distributing £1 billion annually to support 160,000+ students. Past appointments include roles on the advisory council of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Queensland Multicultural Advisory Council, and as Chair of the Global Shapers Community in Australia, an initiative of the World Economic Forum. ## Personal Philosophy I was born in Zimbabwe and moved to Australia when I was ten. In moving from one country to another, you quickly realise that you carry your culture with you: how your family talks about respect, what counts as a good decision, the stories that shaped how you see the world. At the same time, you pick other things up. New assumptions, new ways of doing things. Grappling with those differences is what initially sparked my interest in cultural heritage. As I’ve grown older, I’ve become increasingly interested in where that heritage comes from. My family’s history in Zimbabwe, the tribal history further back. There are limited records, but the knowledge spans generations, and some of it has been forgotten. Whether and how that information can be recovered is something I think about a lot. I notice the same thing in stories I’m drawn to. [Jiro Dreams of Sushi](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1772925/) is about a father passing a craft tradition to his sons with an intensity that only makes sense if you understand what that craft represents culturally. It’s not just sushi. [Children of Men](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206634/?ref_=ls_t_5) is about what happens when humanity loses its future, and the first thing to go is the will to preserve anything at all. The heritage of an entire species just stops mattering. [Paradise Season 1, Episode 7](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27444205/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_paradi) is similar territory: everything is falling apart and someone has to decide what to protect and what to let go. Those stories stay with me because they keep asking the same question my research does: what happens to what people carry when the conditions around them shift?