Profiles

Sally Smith (Chair)

Prof. Sally Smith, is the Head of Graduate Apprenticeships and Skills Development at Edinburgh Napier University and project director of SFC-funded e-Placement Scotland. She is Director of the Centre for Computing Education Research at Edinburgh Napier University and also leads on their Graduate Apprenticeships.  She leads the Data Education for Universities work of the Data Driven Innovation Skills Gateway. Sally became chair in October 2019.

Mavis Amadi

Mavis Amadi is a chartered engineer, a STEM ambassador and a mentor to young women. She currently works as a GFA  Engineer at Babcock International and was nominated as one of the top 50 female engineers in the UK in 2016.

Michael Divers

Michael is People Director with Sir Robert McAlpine, and has a wealth of business and HR experience.  Michael is passionate about building truly inclusive organisations where people policies and processes not only meet the needs of the business but meet the needs of everyone in the organisation.

Eileen Flanagan

Eileen is the Head of the Gender Equality Policy Team in the Scottish Government’s Equality Unit. She provides a national overview to the group on upcoming Government initiatives and policy areas which Equate Scotland should be involved in, as well as ensuring we are delivering against our funding bid.

Stewart McKinlay

Stewart is Skills Director, NMIS Manufacturing Skills Academy. Previously working for the Engineering Academy at Strathclyde University supporting widening access, and with SEMTA, Stewart has a wealth of expertise in directly supporting employers to improve skills and productivity, including engineering Modern and Graduate Apprenticeships. His skills in partnership working and knowledge in engineering are of particular benefit to the group.

Lynn Killick

Lynn is the Equalities Lead at the Scottish Funding Council working to embed equality into all their work. She is also Director of Leading Kind, a culture consultancy supporting organisations to create inclusive workplaces where people thrive.  Lynn has led significant change projects focussed on achieving inclusion in the workplace and she specialises in inclusive, evidence based, policy making.

Anna Ritchie Allan

Anna Ritchie Allan is Executive Director of Close the Gap, Scotland’s expert policy advocacy organisation working on women’s labour market equality. She participates in a range of external policy working groups related to women and work, employer equality advisory groups, and is a member of the Ministerial working group on the gender pay gap. She is also chair of the board of Scottish Women’s Aid. Anna’s background is in research, labour rights, and violence against women.

Ceri Shaw

Ceri Shaw is the Chief Delivery Officer for CodeClan, she has over 20 years of experience in the tech industry as a software engineer and technical manager. She has a passion for helping other people succeed in technology and is one of the founders of the WomenWhoCode Edinburgh meetup group.

Elissa McKay

Elissa McKay graduated from the University of Glasgow in 2015 with a Masters degree in chemistry. She has since worked as a process engineer in the electronics and photonics sectors, and in 2020 returned to the University of Glasgow to pursue a PhD in nonlinear optics. Elissa aims to bring a student’s perspective to the Steering Committee.

Pauline Howie

Pauline is Director of Products & Customer Experience at Scottish Enterprise.  Pauline started her career at Monster.com during the early advent of online recruitment sites. She spent 15 year at BT, ending her tenure as CIO for System Integration.  Pauline’s passion is for process re-engineering and simplification, digital enablement and data driven decisioning.   It is these areas of interest that Pauline is excited to bring to her role on the Equate Scotland steering committee.