Placing the Standard

Louisa Macdonell is the Scotland Director for Business in the Community (BITC) focusing on helping business champion social mobility, environmental responsibility, and community regeneration across Scotland. Louisa is Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Edinburgh Business School and a trustee on the board of Social Investment Scotland, the responsible finance provider. She also sits on the advisory board of Interface, which connects academics to businesses to stimulate innovation, and is a member of the Just Transition Commission, an independent advisory body that provides scrutiny and advice on delivering a just transition to a low-carbon economy in Scotland.

Heather is a qualified urban designer and town planner, with a background in geography. Heather has extensive experience of working on large scale urban regeneration, sustainability and town centres initiatives. She is currently responsible for directing multiple design advice teams, providing design leadership to support place-based initiatives. Previously Heather worked for Glasgow City Council, where she supported local and creative partnerships within Glasgow’s Canal Corridor and helped grow internationally recognised initiatives to activate vacant and underused spaces. She played a leading role in delivering Glasgow’s greener legacy projects for the 2014 Commonwealth Games. She has contributed to multiple complex green and blue infrastructure projects in the east end of the city. Heather has managed Glasgow City Council’s involvement in the international Lighting Urban Community International Association and has supported creative lighting projects locally. In 2019, Heather was seconded to Architecture & Design Scotland to develop thinking on ‘carbon conscious places’, working with the Scottish Government and local authorities in rural, islands and urban settings. Heather is a non-executive Board Director for the Academy of Urbanism, Charity Trustee of the Green Action Trust, an affiliate of the UN Habitat’s Planners for Climate Action, former Royal Town Planning Institute UK Young Planner of the Year and titled in the top 50 women of Influence for 2019 and 2020 in ‘the Planner’.

Johanna Boyd took up the post of Chief Executive in October 2022, bringing a wealth of experience and expertise with her as a dual-qualified (now non-practising) English barrister and Scottish solicitor, specialising in planning law. Planning Aid Scotland is a charity and social enterprise that helps members of the public, community groups and business start-ups to navigate the planning system and to shape the future of their place. Johanna was the first woman to lead Stirling Council and the youngest council leader in Scotland at that time, securing a historic City Region Deal amongst other achievements. Prior to joining Planning Aid Scotland, Johanna worked with the Equalities and Human Rights Commission on embedding equalities best practices into City Region Deals and worked in the Government, Regulation and Competition team at Brodies LLP.

Diarmaid is a designer, educator, and communicator who champions creative approaches to making better places. He has over 20 years’ experience working with communities and across sectors to make well-informed decisions about place-based policy and investment challenges. In SFT, Diarmaid leads on support to the Scottish Government Place Based Investment Programme, and works with public bodies across Scotland to shape place-based strategies for services, assets and investments.

Alan is Chartered Surveyor with over 30 years' post qualification experience; specialising in commercial and residential development and asset management and has worked across the UK, Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East, in both the public and private sectors. He joined SFT in 2016 and is seconded to the NHS boards in Glasgow and Lanarkshire to support their ongoing asset disposal programme.

Stephen is a Chartered Accountant, with a project finance background. Stephen leads the Net Zero Buildings team whose main priorities are the decarbonisation of heat, energy efficiency, delivering net zero infrastructure.