Staff and board

Diarmid is Head of Policy for the National Trust for Scotland, overseeing internal policy development, and the Trust’s public policy work with agencies and the Scottish Government. He has worked for a wide range of public bodies, conducting project and programme evaluations, developing strategies, and overseeing the delivery of funding programmes. Areas covered by this work include economic development, area regeneration, skills and training, and environmental protection. He has worked extensively on European Union-compliant evaluations and is keen to see Scotland continue to draw on this body of knowledge. His current work includes developing evidence of impact for culture and heritage. Diarmid is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.

Dr Kevin Guyan joined the ESS board in September 2018. Kevin is a Research Fellow in the School of Culture and Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow and previously worked for a higher education organisation that focuses on equality, diversity and inclusion among staff and students in universities and colleges. He also delivers workshops on evaluating the impact of equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives in the higher and further education sectors. Kevin completed a PhD in history at University College London in 2016 and has presented his research across Europe and the USA. He is a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Young Academy of Scotland and sits on Young Scot’s Data Advisory Group.

Maxine has over 20 years experience of working in health and social care and has worked in the voluntary sector for 16 years in a variety of development roles. She is currently working with Leonard Cheshire as Community Engagement Manager (Scotland). Maxine is also a Doctorate of Education Candidate with the University of Glasgow with strong interest in involving people and learning from lived experience. 

Ricki is Senior Risk & Compliance Manager at Founders Pledge, a global charity whose mission is to empower entrepreneurs to do immense good. His role involves overseeing risk and compliance across the charity’s operations in the UK, USA and Germany. Prior to Founders Pledge, Ricki was Head of Internal Audit & Business Improvement at Historic Environment Scotland, a Scottish public body and charity, and before that worked in Risk Assurance at PwC. A Chartered Accountant with ICAS, Ricki also serves as the Treasurer for ESS.

Michael is currently Head of Strategic Planning at the Scottish Prison Service. He has worked in third sector health supporting evaluation and improvement in volunteer and professionally delivered services and in the children’s sector focussing on planning, quality and information management. He holds a PhD from the University of St Andrews and is a graduate of the NHS Scottish Improvement Leaders programme. Michael joined our board in September 2021.

Jacqueline has a long-held interest in and commitment to evaluation, developed over sixteen years in a funding context with the Big Lottery Fund (Director Scotland) and predecessor organisation the New Opportunities Fund and continued in her role as Director Scotland with the British Council. She is currently Director of Compliance, Equality and Human Rights Commission.

She has been involved with several charities – Culture Republic, Stepping Stones for Families and most recently Home-Start Scotland – where she has always taken an interest in and tried to support the embedding of a learning culture.

Key areas of interest to her have included trying to reduce the burden of evaluation on funded organisations; introducing and supporting self-evaluation among funded organisations and helping the funding community engage with this agenda; embedding and continually reviewing an outcomes approach to funding, and increasingly, encouraging discussion and understanding of co-production in relation to social change.

Lauren is Monitoring and Evaluation Manager at environmental charity Changeworks. Lauren designs and manages evaluation for projects delivered by Changeworks and external clients. With a background in social research, she also manages a range of research projects, specialising in consumer protection, fuel poverty, energy retrofit and decarbonisation. Lauren has a range of experience in third sector roles, including having worked for a social enterprise, two environmental charities and a housing association. Lauren is an advocate for effective evaluation and its important role in creating a space to reflect on projects, with the objective of improving outcomes for those they support; as well as utilising these findings to secure future funding. 

Jane is experienced in helping organisations to improve evaluation practice and the use of evidence for reflection, learning and service improvement. Over a period of nine years she was Director, Evidence and Learning at the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, one of the UK’s largest independent grant-makers. During this time, Jane led the Foundation’s approach to evaluating its own effectiveness and to supporting organisations funded by the Foundation to learn from the evaluation of their own work. Jane’s career has included wide-ranging experience of carrying out, commissioning and using evaluation and research for third sector organisations, to inform policy and practice. 

Jane joined our board in September 2021.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-whitworth-7029883/

Katherine joined the ESS board in September 2020. Katherine is the Head of Research & Evaluation at Scottish Book Trust, a national charity that believes books, reading and writing have the power to change lives. In her role, Katherine supports the staff at SBT to embed and carry out evaluation on the 25+ programmes the charity runs across all ages and stages; she is also working on an organisation-wide outcome mapping project. Katherine is particularly interested in the impact of arts and culture, both on individuals and on society as a whole, and the evaluation of social and cultural work carried out in complex environments.