Cost of Living Crisis: Practical Approaches with Inspiring Scotland

Kieran started his career as a youth worker at The Prince’s Trust, devising and delivering training programmes. He has held senior management roles in business development for a range of arts, volunteering and youth organisations for over 15 years.

Kieran was Chief Operating Officer at food waste and food poverty fighting organisation, FoodCycle. While there, he grew the organisation’s presence from 14 to 30 locations around England in under two years, through a social franchising model. He was also responsible for FoodCycle’s income generation and operational functions.

Most recently, Kieran was Scotland Manager for Big Issue Invest, where he delivered a multi-agency partnership, engaging the private, public and third sectors in mentoring and lending money to early-stage social ventures. He is a keen cyclist who enjoys giving back by being on the Boards of Scottish social enterprises, MsMissMrs and the TIE campaign.

Associate in Brodies’ Charities & Third Sector team, Rhona Delaney specialises in provided corporate, governance and charity law advice and guidance. Rhona comes with over six years’ experience in working with a wide range of charities, including setting up new charities and social enterprises, to providing advice to existing charitable organisations, development trusts and social enterprises.

Neil is a chartered engineer and Fellow of the Institute of Chemical Engineering. After graduating, he worked in the pharmaceutical sector before going back to Uni to gain a masters in Energy Systems and the Environment. From there he moved into consultancy with a focus on energy and water efficiency, carbon management and legislative compliance. He now heads up the technical projects team at Boxfish, helping clients to minimise their impact on the environment, reduce their operational costs and ensure they remain complaint.

Jackie started her career in HR for a retail group tasked with recruiting staff for over 30 branches throughout Scotland and the north of England. Returning to Edinburgh in 1990, she worked for a large national recruitment agency and in 1998 set up her own business sourcing staff for temporary contracts and permanent placements for predominantly office-based staff within a variety of large and small employers.

Clients included the former Lothian & Borders Police, Bovis Construction, Changeworks, Marie Curie – contact centre, City of Edinburgh Council and lots of professional service and smaller financial clients.

In 2016, she downsized to work from home, still placing/sourcing similar candidates but with a client based of smaller businesses, charities and support staff within education along with hospitality staff for a client with ski chalets in France. Her strengths lie in recruitment and during the start of Covid joined the volunteers at Inspiring Scotland to support several of their clients with writing job specs and ads and have also helped recruit for a few of their members.