George took over as Chair of SIS in December 2023. He was previously Chair of the Scottish Housing Regulator and a Non-Executive Director of The Pensions Regulator. As well as his significant NED experience in Scotland’s public and third sectors, George spent nearly 30 years in the financial services sector with executive roles at Standard Life Investments and Friends Ivory & Sime, both in the UK and overseas. George’s experience includes several other board positions in numerous Scottish social and health care organisations including NHS Lothian, Waverley Care, Edinburgh & Lothians Health Foundations and as Interim Chair of the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR).

Carol-Ann is an experienced director with an international career spanning multiple industries. Carol-Ann’s commercially astute senior decision-making, leadership capabilities and focus on the continual development of staff have delivered sustainable improvements in organisation-wide performance during complex transformation programmes.

Carol-Ann has an exceptional track record of achievement with several industry-leading multinationals such as Intercell Biomedical (Valneva) and Aviva, where she successfully defined and implemented new operational models, driving meaningful changes in culture and integrating commercial objectives with talent management and development. Carol-Ann is currently the Director of People & Culture at Sight Scotland and Sight Scotland Veterans.

Claire is the founder of Bealach Advisory, a consultancy firm providing financial advice for growing businesses, covering strategy, capital and corporate structure. Prior to that, Claire held several senior appointments. She was Head of Risk at Valad Group, where she established policies, procedures and processes to manage risk across 13 countries and 20 offices, then Chief Financial Officer for Europe for the Cromwell Property Group. Claire has also spent time on multiple corporate boards, including investment committees, risk committees and debt committees.

Louisa is the Director for Scotland for Business in the Community (BITC), working with companies in the UK and abroad who are committed to improving their impact on society. She is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Edinburgh Business School, and she mentors a variety of small businesses, particularly social enterprises and companies run by women. She also sits on the Strategic Board of Interface, which connects businesses to academic expertise.

Louisa was previously the CEO of the Development Trusts Association Scotland (DTAS), the membership organisation for community-led businesses. Before joining DTAS, Louisa was Head of Economic Development at the Scotland Office and worked in energy strategy development at Scottish Enterprise.

Caroline has over 20 years of building and developing networks, partnerships and collaborations to create social impact in regions as varied as Australia, the UK, Asia, Atlanta and Turkey. Until recently, she was Chief Partnerships Officer at AVPN, and in 2022 she founded Heriot Row Advisors to support organisations and philanthropic networks to be catalysts for impact. Caroline also sits on the board of Alliance Publishing Trust and Amala Education.  

Kathleen has been the Chief Executive of NCM Fund Services, who act for over 200 funds, offering a range of different fund administration and depositary services including regulated operator, accounting, depositary, administration and fund management, since 2006. She first joined the corporate finance team of Noble & Company Limited in 2003, after a spell at EY as a corporate lawyer, and was involved in corporate finance advice focussing on financial services and then consumer clients.

As well as being responsible for the day-to-day running of the NCM Group Kathleen also acts as Compliance Officer for the group. Kathleen is a Scottish-qualified solicitor and notary public.

Samantha (Sam) leads the Treasury function for Wheatley Housing Group, one of the largest social landlords in the UK, managing the Group’s debt portfolio and investor relations. Prior to joining Wheatley, Sam worked in financial risk advisory services on interest rate, exchange rate and debt/capital markets matters following a number of roles in banking within treasury and risk management teams in the UK and Singapore. 

Ian recently retired from the role of Senior Manager at British Business Bank, where he focused on raising awareness of access to finance for SMEs across equity and debt.

Ian has over four decades of experience growing and strengthening customer relationships across a number of well-known organisations which include the Bank of Scotland and Scottish Enterprise.

Thomas led the development of SIS Ventures and became Chair of the board in February 2024.

He is an experienced technology leader, having held executive positions in software companies at various stages of development from Series A to growth equity. Thomas is passionate about purpose-driven entrepreneurship and connecting enterprises with mission-aligned investors and support, in the pursuit of greater positive social and environmental impact.

Thomas is CEO with fintech scale up BR-DGE and a non-executive director at purpose driven drinks brand Brewgooder.

With over three decades of experience in professional services, Scott is an audit and assurance partner with Johnston Carmichael, where his focus is financial services.  Scott specialises in asset management business, including venture capital, private equity and associated funding structures from listed funds through to limited partnerships.