Staff and Board
SSEC Staff
Antonia Swinson, Chief Executive
Antonia Swinson joined the Scottish Social Enterprise Coalition in November 2005. She is an award-winning business journalist who has written for both UK & Scottish national newspapers, including the Sunday and Daily Express and for six years wrote the weekly Passing Comment business column in Scotland on Sunday. A long standing champion of social enterprise, she has also been involved at small business policy formation at senior level. Antonia is a former Chairman of the Society of Authors in Scotland and has written five books including 'Root of all Evil?' on business and ethics. Most recently her popular Allotments Tales gardening column for The Scotsman became a book published in 2008: ‘You Are What You Grow: Life, Land & The Pursuit of Happiness’. She is a graduate of Edinburgh University and lives with her family in Edinburgh.
Donna Ferguson, Operations Manager
Donna graduated with a first class honours degree in Business and Information Management in 2003 from Glasgow Caledonian University. She then worked as a Marketing and Outreach Coordinator with a local economic development company in Glasgow, before moving to Oban, joining the Nàdair team, in 2004 where she was the Senior Project Officer for a £4.2million Landscape Partnership Scheme in Argyll. In 2007 she moved to Edinburgh to join SSEC as Operations Manager, responsible for finance, communications, events management and to develop the Coalition as a well run and sustainable organisation.
Callum Chomczuk, Parliamentary & Communications Officer
Callum is a graduate of Glasgow University, receiving a joint honours degree in Politics and Economics in 2004. In 2006 he joined the Scottish Liberal Democrats as a policy researcher and helped develop their 2007 manifesto with a particular focus on criminal justice and housing issues. Callum has also stood for parliament on 2 separate occasions, once in Falkirk at the 2005 General Election and then again in 2007 Scottish Parliamentary election in the corresponding Falkirk West constituency.
Kate Walshaw, Administrator
Kate joined the SSEC in November 2007 as Administrator, responsible for membership, administering events and MSP visits, and acting as PA to the Chief Executive. Prior to this she was working at the Scottish Government as a temporary Policy Officer. Her background is in publishing and she worked at Elsevier for 10 years producing medical textbooks and journals. Previous to this she studied Geography at Edinburgh University.
SSEC Board Members
Laurie Russell (Chair), Chief Executive, The Wise Group
Laurie Russell has been the Chief Executive of the Wise Group since August 2006. The Wise Group is a social enterprise, set up in 1983, whose main purpose is to help unemployed people into sustainable employment in Scotland and NE England. Its annual turnover is over £21 million (€30 million) a year and it employs 420 full-time staff. In 2007 the Wise Group worked with over 11,000 clients and through its employability projects 3,653 long-term unemployed people secured jobs. From 1989 to 2006, he was Chief Executive of Strathclyde European Partnership Ltd, the public sector company that managed European Structural Funds Programmes in Western Scotland. The Programmes invested over €1,500m of European funds in economic development projects and played a significant role in the economic and social regeneration of Glasgow and the surrounding region. Prior to 1989, Laurie was employed by the Chief Executive's Department of Strathclyde Regional Council and led a community regeneration initiative in Faifley, Clydebank in the early 1980s.
Naomi Johnson (Vice Chair), Executive Director, Firstport
Naomi joined Firstport in January 2007 as its first Executive Director. Having started her career as Operations Manager in a recycling based social enterprise back in 1996 Naomi has experienced first-hand issues in winning and sustaining new business growth. She moved on to the Community Recycling Network (CRN) UK where she set up a variety of work programmes for waste recycling projects including establishing business support services alongside a £35million lottery scheme, developing support programmes in four English Regional Development Areas and researching and designing a 'Measure Your Treasure' evaluation programme for recycling, reuse projects.
Douglas Westwater (Treasurer), Director, Community Enterprise Ltd
Douglas has a background in community development and regeneration and has worked in the voluntary sector for over 20 years. Most recently this was focussed on coalfield regeneration before his interest in the sustainability of front line services initiated a move into social enterprise business development. He currently co-directs Community Enterprise Limited, an organisation which has been involved in social enterprise development for 18 years.
Alastair Davis, Head of Investment Team, Social Investment Scotland
Alastair joined Social Investment Scotland in May 2009, after eight years with the Bank of Scotland, the last five of which he lead a team that specialised in lending to the not for profit sector. It is this experience, knowledge and network that he brings to SIS where he runs the investment area, and also has responsibility for delivery of the Scottish Government’s £30m Scottish Investment Fund. A graduate of Strathclyde Business School, he is also heavily involved with JCI- Junior Chamber International- and served as President of JCI Edinburgh in 2008.
Pauline Graham, Chief Executive, Social Firms Scotland
Pauline joined Social Firms Scotland in January 08, having previously spent just over 7 years at the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations. While at SCVO, Pauline managed a range of capacity building and regeneration projects but she is perhaps best known for managing the Social Economy Scotland Development Partnership funded under the EU EQUAL Programme (2002 -2007), which attracted significant funding to support new social enterprise developments in Scotland. She was instrumental in leading on policy work through the mainstreaming phase of EQUAL which had a direct influence on the first social enterprise strategy in Scotland - in particular around promoting public social partnerships and procurement opportunities for the third sector. Pauline also has extensive experience of working with partners across Europe to exchange good practice and share learning on social enterprise development. She managed a cooperation agreement with partners in Austria, Italy, Poland and Finland. Her varied career history includes marketing management within Further Education, the Arts and a Glasgow based Regeneration Company.
Gerry Higgins, Chief Executive, CEiS
Gerry is the current Chief Executive Officer at CEiS leading a team of 81 people to provide business advice to social enterprises and support the social economy in Scotland. CEiS delivers innovative employability solutions through outreach teams and Childcare Works, manages a range of social economy support programmes and through DSL provides business finance to social enterprises and SME's. Gerry was previously the founding CEO at Social Firms UK from 1999 to 2006 and he was a founding director of the Social Enterprise Coalition and worked with the DTI in developing the Social Enterprise Strategy. Prior to this Gerry spent time working to develop innovative training and employment services for the NHS and voluntary sector organisations.
Neal Mackay, Marketing and Communications Director, Forth Sector
Neal has overall responsibility for all marketing and communications functions within Forth Sector as well as representing Forth Sector Development, which offers business support services to organisations looking to develop social enterprise anywhere in the UK (and beyond). He was involved in the establishment of Social Enterprise Edinburgh, which Forth Sector operates as a member of the Local Social Economy Partnership, which also currently includes the City of Edinburgh Council, Scottish Enterprise Edinburgh and Lothian, Communities Scotland, the Capital City Partnership and EVOC. Neal has been instrumental in developing the mentoring approach which characterises the work of Forth Sector Development and which focuses on building the trading capacity of organisations.
Duncan Osler, Partner, MacRoberts LLP
Duncan is a lawyer, qualified as a solicitor in Scotland and in England and Wales. Since 2004 he has been a Partner with MacRoberts LLP, where he heads the Public Sector & Government Group. He has spent over ten years advising on a variety of government contracting and he is accredited by the Law Society of Scotland as a specialist in Public Procurement Law. With MacRoberts, Duncan advises many public sector bodies in procuring what they need, ranging from hospitals, schools and other buildings to body armour, satellite dishes and the like. His procurement expertise also includes advising bidders trying to win competitive tenders and using their remedies to challenge breaches of the procurement rules, on shared service and other collaborations, state aids and the use of community benefit clauses. Duncan has advised on the public procurement aspects of a number of regeneration schemes and, as a member of the Procurement Lawyers Association he led a PLA working group producing (in July 2009) a paper on public procurement and land development schemes after the landmark European Court judgment in Auroux v Roanne.
Craig Sanderson, Chief Executive, Link Group
Craig was conceived in Auchterarder, born in Worthing and grew up in Rothesay. He has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Edinburgh. He joined Link in 1975 as Administrative Assistant and progressed to become Director (then Chief Executive) in 1987. Link is one of Scotland's largest RSLs operating in 26 local authority areas with over 6000 social rented houses and providing management/factoring services to more than 3000 customers. It develops 100 new homes each year. The Link group comprises the parent company (Link Group Ltd.) and a number of subsidiaries including Link Housing Association, Linkwide, Horizon Housing, LinkLiving and Larkfield Housing Association. Link has pioneered several initiatives during its 48-year history, including co-ownership, shared ownership, supported accommodation in 'ordinary housing', student flats, self-build, a Foyer, a dental surgery and - most recently - LIFT. Having become active in community regeneration projects, Link is supporting the establishment of social enterprises and local development trusts.
Louise Scott, Director, Media Co-op
Louise is a director and founder member of workers' co-operative mediaco-op, an ethical company specialising in film production and media training with the third sector. Before setting up mediaco-op Louise was a freelance consultant to media organisations, from broadcasters to screen agencies, specialising in post-16 education, training, equality and social inclusion. As a former Director of the audio-visual industry’s Sector Skills Council, Skillset, Louise worked in partnership with trade unions, employers, trade associations and local and national government across the UK nations and regions developing strategies for skills development and employment. She spent 6 years working in Brussels both inside the European Commission and latterly as a lobbyist on arts and heritage and had a stint as an archaeologist in Iraq, prior to that. She has an MBA from the Open University and MA from Cambridge and is a member of the Glasgow Children's Panel, a Befriender and former Board Member of Equality Network, Glasgay and Glasgow Film Theatre.
Brian Weaver, CEO, Highland and Islands Social Enterprise Zone
Brian Weaver was appointed CEO of HISEZ in July 2008. He graduated from Stirling University in 1975 and worked for a multi-national pharmaceutical company before falling in love with the Highlands and one of its natives. He then found himself paying the mortgage by working for 20 years in the finance industry, 3 years as a partner in a small specialist sawmill and 5 years as Business Starts Manager in Highlands and Islands Enterprise. He brings to HISEZ a wide experience of private sector management and finance which is combined with knowledge of social enterprise gained by 10 years in Alness Credit Union. He is still married to the same Highland native and has one son.
Phil Woodhead, Chief Executive, Institute of Occupational Medicine
Phil has been Chief Executive of the Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM) since February 2005. The IOM, founded in 1969, is an independent provider of research and consultancy services in the fields of occupational and environmental health. It is a registered charity and a social enterprise, and employs 125 staff, mostly in Scotland. Prior to joining the IOM, Phil pursued a career in the pharmaceutical industry, having originally qualified as a pharmacist. After completing a Ph D, he worked for the Glaxo group of companies for thirteen years in drug development and new product introduction. He then joined Quintiles, a global pharmaceutical services company, where he was Head of their Pharmaceutical Sciences Division in Europe for approximately ten years. Phil is married with three daughters, and lives in East Lothian.
