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The latest recruit to CSaP’s Policy Leaders Fellowship – now in its fourth year of activities – is the Permanent Secretary of the Scottish Government, Leslie Evans.
Leslie is the principal policy adviser to the First Minister and Secretary to the Scottish Cabinet, and is responsible for the propriety and regularity of Government finance and for economic, efficient and effective use of all related resources in Scotland. She joined the Scottish Government in 2000, after spending twenty years working for local authorities in Scotland and England; she was promoted to her current post in July 2015, having previously been DG Learning and Justice, Head of Public Service Reform, and Director of Culture, External Affairs and Tourism.
The Policy Leaders Fellowship brings together the most senior members of CSaP’s network of policy professionals, including Permanent Secretaries, Directors General and Chief Executives. It next meets on 18 November to discuss “the future of cities” under the chairmanship of Lord Wilson; previous meetings of the Fellowship have focussed on subjects as diverse as neuroscience, infection, the use of modelling in government, artificial intelligence, and conspiracy, democracy and trust.
One of the first members of the Fellowship, Clare Moriarty (Permanent Secretary, Defra) recently described her experience at CSaP’s 2016 Annual Reception. “One of the great things I’ve found about the Policy Leaders Fellow scheme is that it gets you thinking about things that you might not otherwise come into contact with… the termly roundtable discussions which are at the heart of the programme are wonderfully eclectic. I feel proud and privileged to have been part of the start of the programme,” she said, “and I would encourage anybody who has the opportunity to work more closely with researchers to take it.”
Other recent recruits to the Fellowship include Lindy Cameron (DG, Country Programmes, DFID), Julian Kelly (DG, Public Spending and Finance, HM Treasury) and Ashok Vaswani (CEO, Barclays UK).
(Banner photo: Stormy Calton Hill, Edinburgh (Remixed), flickr)