## Leadership I have spent over a decade leading across public governance, social impact, and emerging technology. The common thread is cultural heritage: how organisations preserve it, how communities transmit it, and what happens when the people making decisions do not understand what is at stake. ### Cultural Heritage I bring expertise in how cultural heritage operates when people, communities, and organisations move across contexts. In practice, this means: - Identifying where cultural assumptions create blind spots in decision-making, investment, or policy - Designing governance and programmes for communities navigating cultural heritage across borders - Understanding how digital infrastructures restructure the way communities verify, authenticate, and govern cultural production - Recovering and contextualising heritage from historically distant and systematically excluded societies for contemporary governance and strategy ### Governance I have served on public, government, and non-profit boards for over a decade, with particular depth in organisations where cultural heritage is central to the mission. Much of what I bring to boardrooms comes from understanding how cultural assumptions shape decision-making, who gets heard, and what gets overlooked. **Current roles:** - **Historic Environment Scotland**: Governance of Scotland's cultural and natural heritage, including 300+ historic properties. Chair of the People Committee (organisational culture, workforce strategy, senior leadership performance). Member of the Audit, Risk, and Assurance Committee. - **Student Awards Agency Scotland**: Strategic oversight of a Scottish Government agency distributing £1 billion annually to support 160,000+ students. **Core governance skills:** - Risk management and assurance - People, culture, and senior leadership performance - Governance design: building committee structures, mandates, and accountability mechanisms from scratch - Crisis governance: navigating leadership transitions and organisational disruption - Policy influence: advising government on culturally sensitive policy and presenting at parliamentary inquiries **Previous roles:** - **Australian Broadcasting Corporation**: Advisory Council member (4 years). Provided strategic guidance on content accessibility and cultural relevance for Australia's national public broadcaster during the shift from analogue to digital broadcasting, including navigating the sudden departure of both the CEO and Chair. - **Queensland Government Multicultural Advisory Council**: Advised the Minister responsible for a $2.3B AUD portfolio on state-wide social cohesion strategies and co-led the Council's submission to a Parliamentary Inquiry into Hate Crimes (3 years). - **World Economic Forum Global Shapers Australia**: Chair of the national charity (3 years), overseeing 7 city hubs and 250+ members delivering social impact projects. **Beyond board roles:** Co-lead on a £41,499 Wellcome Trust-funded project across the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and St Andrews, building capacity for academics to contribute cultural, scientific, and policy expertise to public sector governance (2025). Ten years with the World Economic Forum Global Shapers, developing and evaluating social impact projects in culturally diverse communities across Australia and Scotland. Professional speaker represented by Saxton and ICMI Speakers Bureau, translating research on cultural heritage, cross-cultural dynamics, and entrepreneurship for corporate, government, and non-profit audiences (2017-2023). ### Organisation-Building I have founded and built organisations that serve culturally diverse communities and create governance structures where none existed. **Core skills:** - Taking a venture from idea to operations: fundraising, team building, product development, and go-to-market strategy - Building programmes for culturally diverse communities, including designing content, recruiting teams, and establishing partnerships at national scale - Designing governance frameworks for decentralised communities: voting systems, community charters, and accountability mechanisms **Ventures:** - **CYALA (Council for Young Africans Living Abroad), 2015-2018:** Founded and led a social enterprise building leadership programmes for 800+ diaspora youth from 20+ countries navigating cultural heritage across borders. Recruited and managed 30+ volunteers and built national partnerships across Australia. - **NFT governance, 2021-2022:** Designed governance frameworks, token-based voting systems, and community charters for online communities preserving cultural production on public blockchains (2,000+ members, $1M USD in sales). The core challenge was building trust and accountability in communities where cultural artefacts were being created, traded, and authenticated without any central authority.