Ivan McKee was appointed Minister for Business, Trade, Tourism and Enterprise in May 2021. His career has involved a number of senior roles in manufacturing and business, managing companies in the UK as well as Poland, Finland, Croatia and Bosnia. Early in his career, Ivan spent two years with VSO in Bangladesh. He is currently a trustee of the charity CEI, which supports education and health projects in Bangladesh. Ivan has been MSP for Glasgow Provan since May 2016. He was brought up in Glasgow where he studied at the University of Strathclyde. He also studied at the University of Newcastle. He was previously the Minister for Trade, Investment and Innovation

Nick Ford has been Director of Procurement and Property since July 2020 and is responsible for providing a range of commercial, property and project management services to the public sector. Prior to this, Nick spent eight years as Head of Commercial and Procurement at the Department for International Development. Following over 25 years within the private sector specialising in procurement, commercial and project management in roles across the UK, USA, Australia and Spain, Nick joined the public sector as part of HMG’s Commercial Functional Leadership Group.

Rona Dougall hosts the Scottish news programme Scotland Tonight.
Formerly the Scotland reporter for Sky News, Rona applied for the Scotland Tonight job when
co-host John MacKay posted a Facebook message about a new STV current affairs
programme. After enquiring whether they were looking for a reporter, Rona was surprised to
be offered the anchoring role on Scotland’s leading news programme.
As well as news presenting, Rona also writes for The Scotsman.

Andrew joined CCS in 2018 as a commercial lead. Andrew is now CCS’s environmental and sustainability guru working hard at delivering a better planet for all and helping on the relentless march towards Carbon Net-Zero. Andrew works with the NHS, Local Authorities, Councils and Cities assisting with their plans to deliver Carbon Zero. Andrew works across all CCS agreements to support the development of customer focused solutions that can contribute to the public sector net-zero journey.

Gillian Cameron is the Programme Manager for the Supplier Development Programme (SDP), a business support initiative, supported by Scottish Government, Scottish Local Authorities and Agencies. The Programme’s aim is to help Scottish SMEs improve their performance in winning contracts in the public sector. Gillian has over 25 years’ experience in public sector procurement, previously working on many high-profile supplier engagement projects with the Ministry of Defence, the NHS and London 2012 Olympic games. She is a member of the Scottish Government’s Procurement Supplier Group, which aims to inform, influence, and engage with procurement strategy and derive the maximum economic benefit from public sector purchasing.

Under her management, SDP has continued to grow substantially, with all 32 Scottish Local Authorities, several government bodies and larger contractors taking up membership ensuring that it is a Scotland wide initiative. More than 18,000 businesses having access to the Programme’s free tender training services.

Specialising in connecting the public and private sector, Gillian’s work with the SDP has seen the reach of the Programme grow through bespoke supplier engagement; raising awareness of contract opportunities and connecting training as an early intervention to assist Scottish SME’s get tender ready, driving economic recovery and supporting the public sector and most recently the NHS with Community Wealth Building initiatives.

Dan Rawling is a Director in the Cartel Enforcement team at the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Dan has worked in competition enforcement, consumer protection and economic regulation for over 15 years.

At the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), Dan worked on a variety of competition and consumer law investigations, including cases on payment card interchange fees and current account overdraft charges. Subsequently, Dan helped to establish and operationalise the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) and spent a year at the Bank of England working on the financial stability supervision of market infrastructure. Dan was formerly Director of Policy & International at the CMA, where he led on cross-cutting policy with an emphasis on reform of the CMA’s powers and tools, and how they are used. As part of the CMA’s Covid-19 Taskforce, in 2020, Dan led the organisation’s policy response to price gouging behaviour on products like hand sanitiser, including advising the Government on options for emergency anti-profiteering legislation.

Muhammad Basit is a qualified (MBA) and accomplished Business Development Director with more than 20 years' experience in driving successful digital transformation for both corporate and public sector clients. He believes that collaborative and innovative solutions are the key to success for any IT transformation projects, while keeping a ‘people first’ approach at the heart of the process. As an ambassador for SMEs, he has a wealth of experience in providing SME expertise and agility to address a variety of today’s challenges;

• Digital transformation and change management.
  • Multicloud and collaborative solutions
  • Cyber Security
  • Business process improvement 
  • Business continuity and disaster recovery
  • Unified communication

Not only an IT 'athlete', Muhammad is also a Level 2 Badminton coach and regularly coaches league and intermediate level players at various schools and badminton clubs. He is also a keen cricket player, an all-rounder, and has been playing for IBM Hursley, Hampshire cricket Saturday league for the last 5 years.

Sustainable energy specialist Phil Bryant helps public sector bodies drive cost effective decarbonisation – to deliver on their net zero ambitions. 

His energy industry career spans more than 20 years. During this time he has partnered with organisations of all types to design and implement low carbon energy strategies that balance both commercial and environmental goals.

In his current role he leads a team with vast experience of developing, funding and managing large and complex integrated energy saving projects across the NHS and wider public sector. This delivery partnership includes supporting the accelerated delivery of multi-asset, estate-wide projects within tight deadlines and in accordance with grant programmes and procurement frameworks.

Steph has been with Bunzl as a Sustainability Advisor since May 2022.  Since starting with Bunzl she has supported the enrolment of the sustainable Product Award within Safety, supported both customers and suppliers on their sustainable journeys, and supported inhouse operational changes to more sustainable alternatives.  Steph’s passion for sustainability partnered well with her physics background during her time at university when she led a research project on bioreactors for air filtration systems harnessing microalgae.

Graeme Walker is the Managing Director for Scotland at leading cloud contact centre provider Content Guru. Graeme has extensive leadership experience in the telecommunications sector, having held senior roles Vodafone and Virgin Media Business prior to joining Content Guru, where his focus is on delivering exceptional citizen engagement and experience technology to clients across the UK. Graeme and his extensive team specialize in crafting bespoke, cutting-edge contact centre solutions, tailored to an organisation’s individual citizen communication needs.

Eddie is BiP Solutions’ Principal Procurement Consultant and working alongside the Client Services team, he frequently assists public sector organisations with clarification and interpretation of EU Directives and a wide variety of legislative issues. For the last 21 years Eddie has lectured regularly on procurement policy and processes at conferences and events, both on behalf of BiP and for a variety of other organisations. He also provides in-house training on the tendering process to personnel in both the public and private sectors. 

Phil regularly provides advice and support to both public and private sector clients, handling a wide variety of procurement and tendering-related questions and challenges.

Phil has delivered presentations on procurement regulation, policy and processes at numerous public sector tendering and training events covering a diverse range of procurement-related topics, on behalf of both BiP Solutions and other organisations including the Scottish Government, the Supplier Development Programme and the Higher Education Procurement Academy.

During a two-year secondment to the Scottish Government’s procurement policy team Phil supported the transposition of the new procurement legislation, created and delivered a comprehensive training programme on the legislative changes and also delivered support to the Government’s Single Point of Enquiry and their European Structural Funds Team.

Before joining PASS, Phil spent three years as Interoperability Manager for the UK Government’s Supply2.gov.uk service. During this time he worked with public sector organisations to increase the number of opportunities available to SMEs through the portal, and with business support organisations and trade associations to help the SME community take advantage of this resource.

More recently, Phil has delivered a wide variety of procurement projects both in the UK and internationally, including providing UK defence exporters with a comprehensive guide to supplying the Japanese Ministry of Defence and wider defence sector (a Foreign and Commonwealth Office project); and delivery of a tailored procurement function to a UK contracting authority (including knowledge transfer, handbook and ongoing procurement support). He is currently writing a Foundation Course on public procurement for the Caribbean region.