Dr Emma Gordon is Director of the ADR UK Strategic Hub and Director of ADR England.

She is responsible for setting the strategic direction for the programme, leading on the coordination of the partnership and engagement with senior stakeholders, to improve access and analysis of administrative data to inform policy decisions. She is also part of the ADR UK Leadership Committee, and is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Population Data Science (IJPDS).

Emma joined ADR UK from HM Treasury, where she led the team supporting government economists and social researchers across government.

Prior to this, Emma was Head of Health Analysis at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), and at the start of her career was a post-doctoral researcher on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.

Professor Richard Kerley is Professor of Management at QMU with a specific interest in public service management. He was previously at the University of Edinburgh and the Scottish Local Authorities Management Centre, University of Strathclyde . He has also been a visiting scholar at Yale University. Before entering academic life, Richard worked in advertising, hospitality and in prison education. He also worked for four different councils, in adult education and then latterly in staff and management development.

He is currently also a Non-Executive Director with Mainstreet Consulting and a Trustee of the Centre for Scottish Public Policy 2021. He has been on the board of various companies, charities, and arts organisations.

Richard is the author of various books, research papers, academic journals, and numerous articles in the quality print media. His most recent publications include an edited book on International Local Government, and he is currently working on a taxonomy of international local government.

Richard chaired the Working Party on Renewing Local Democracy; the report of which was published in July 2000, and which was legislated for in June 2004 as the Local Governance Act. He has carried out research projects supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Scottish Consumer Council, Alcohol Scotland, The Accounts Commission Scotland, Tayside, Edinburgh and Fife Councils, the Association of MBAs, and the Scottish Government. He has been engaged in consultancy projects by government; local governments; government agencies; voluntary organisations and international education providers.

Diarmaid is the Associate Director for  Place, Housing & Economic Investment at the Scottish Futures Trust.

He was previously Head of Urbanism with Architecture and Design Scotland. An urbanist, with a multi disciplinary background, he has worked on projects involving the shaping and implementation of change for clients in Ireland, the UK and Europe, for the public, private and tertiary sectors. He has almost 20 years' experience of helping clients make well informed decisions about complex, connected urban policy and investment challenges. He is an educator, communicator and collaborator who writes and speaks on creative approaches to making better places.

Peter has worked across the private and public sectors as a civil engineer, an infrastructure financier, and an advisor with one of the world’s leading professional services firms.

He joined SFT in 2008 when it was established by Scottish Government as a centre of infrastructure expertise and became its chief executive in 2018.

Peter leads SFT’s work encompassing long-term strategy development across infrastructure sectors, structuring and managing multi-billion-pound investment programmes and making the best use of existing assets in the transition to a net zero economy.

Peter is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Richard is Audit Scotland’s performance audit lead for Scottish devolved fiscal powers, wider public finances and the reform agenda. In recent years this has included auditing the Scottish Government’s approach to Covid-19 spending, the public sector workforce and financial planning. He began his career in financial audit in England where he gained his CIPFA qualification before moving to Scotland to focus on performance audit.

Richard has represented Audit Scotland as an expert lead for the fiscal framework, national long-term performance outcomes and equalities budgeting. He believes in the importance of the close links between financial and performance reporting to show the difference public money makes. Richard is a keen proponent of public sector reform, heading up Audit Scotland’s engagement with a wide variety of public sector leaders on reform activity and the role of public audit.

Mark is the Chief Architect for the Civil Division of Leidos UK.

Working across the Central Government, Devolved Government, Transport and Air Traffic Control sectors, Mark brings a wealth of experience to his customers. Mark is a seasoned professional known for introducing groundbreaking solutions to the market. His achievements include spearheading innovative projects such as Biometric services for Borders, Machine Learning applications, and Digital Twin technology for Intelligent Road Management.

Mark has also led initiatives in Robotic Process Automation for Passport Control and has contributed to Security Accredited Shared Services, significantly reducing ownership costs for Government Departments.