WISH Scotland: Celebrating One Year of WISH Scotland

WISH Scotland Event

Celebrating One Year of WISH Scotland

Date: Thursday 21stSeptember

Time: 1.30 pm to 5 pm

Venue: Wheatley Academy, 25 Cochrane Street, Glasgow, G1 1HL

Kindly hosted by Wheatley Group and Altro

Our Guest Speakers include

Gemma McNair, Head of Workforce Enablement. NatWest Group

Gemma is a commercially focused senior transformation director in the banking industry. As Head of Workforce Enablement at NatWest Group, Gemma leads the bank's strategic workforce planning and fulfilment capability.

Deeply passionate about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Gemma is in her own words 'on a mission' to shake things up a bit. She has things to say and an opportunity to influence, firmly believing that women supporting women is the way forward and a critical enabler to closing the gender gap.

Gemma was voted Champion of The Year 2022 at the TechWomen100 Awards and received personal recognition from her CEO for the work she has undertaken to champion everything that she does in building the capability and skills of the future.

Gemma believes that diversity of thought leads to more innovation and creative problem solving and is a role model to all women who have been called out for being 'too much'. She is determined to change things!

Dr Vikki McCall, Senior Lecturer in Social Policy (Housing), University of Stirling

Dr Vikki McCall is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy and Housing in the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stirling. Vikki’s work includes leading projects focusing on housing, ageing, stigma, co-production the role of front-line workers, service users, volunteers and the policy process.

Dr McCall currently leads projects around improving Adaptations funding by Age Scotland and the UKs Housing evidence centre (CaCHE) alongside UK-wide projects on Intersectional Stigma of Place-based Ageing (ISPA) (an ESRC funded project 2022-2027) and Inclusive Living support for older people in residential care (the INVITE project funded by the Longleigh Foundation). She is also Co-I on the UKRI funded Designing homes for healthy cognitive ageing: co-production for impact and scale (DesHCA) project.

She is Honorary Secretary for the Social Policy Association Executive Committee and Editorial Board member of Social Policy & Society.

Dr McCall teaches the Postgraduate MSc/Diploma of Housing Studies at the University of Stirling and won the RATE award for excellence in teaching in the Faculty of Social Sciences, 2023.

Clare MacGillivray, Director, Making Rights Real

Clare is a community worker, activist and campaigner for human rights who is deeply invested in exploring how community development practitioners globally are using human rights in practice. She is a founding member and Director of Making Rights Real, a grassroots charity in Scotland, established in 2020, that works alongside marginalised groups using the power of human rights to make economic, social and cultural change.

Clare's interests have always been around connecting the local to the global. A passionate community development practitioner, she has over 20 years’ experience of working with communities campaigning for equality and social justice. Beginning her career in peace-building work in Hyderabad, India, then in editing works on Palestinian culture whilst living in Jordan, Clare returned to her native Scotland and spent 18 years supporting collaborative efforts to address inequalities in housing, working with tenants’ associations around housing issues.

She co-led the Housing Rights in Practice project, a key action of Scotland's National Action Plan for Human Rights and the first project of its kind in Scotland using a human rights-based approach in practice. 

Shona Marshall, Director, The ASM Difference

Shona Marshall is a people, talent and culture development specialist with a passion for unlocking talent to drive personal, team and organisational performance.

With over 20 years corporate experience primarily in the engineering, construction and house building sectors, she gained a reputation for having an inquisitive yet challenging approach to enable individuals to be the best they can be. Her drive is to deliver meaningful and sustainable behaviour change by creating interventions and framing conversations to help others be and do what they want most creates success at an individual, operational and strategic level.

She is now enjoying being able to satisfy her passion by working as an executive coach, facilitator, and consultant.

Gemma Stow, Founder, No More Hiding Ltd

No More Hiding Ltd partners with organisations to build inclusive cultures that identify, develop and retain female talent and encourage senior level progression to close the gender gap. This is through consultation, training and coaching.

The founder, Gemma Stow, specialises in the importance of visibility when it comes to women’s career progression and helps ambitious women have the confidence to promote themselves in a positive and constructive way so that they own and showcase their expertise. This allows them the space to see what is really holding them back and breakthrough their own ceiling and limitations, realise their potential, take responsibility and act on it.

She also supports leaders and the wider organisation so that they can be better allies with the appropriate processes and procedures in place that support greater gender equity in the workplace. Gemma also hosts the ‘No More Hiding: Self Promotion at Work’ podcast.

The Isle of Cumbrae Distillers,  (FREE gin tasting included!)

Isle of Cumbrae Distillers is owned by five full and part-time “Millportonians,” distinctively positioned as being one of the few all-female distilling teams in Scotland, and the only international women’s team, drawing representation from the UK, Canada and the USA.

A love of the island…and gin, first brought them together, probably in one of Millport’s 5 pubs; certainly, the conversations blossomed during Thursday quiz nights at the Twa Dugs! Conversations evolved from the general idea for an island distillery to raise funds to support the campaign to save Millport’s historic Town Hall building – a commitment that remains near and dear to them - to the realization that with their collective life experience, skills, enthusiasm, and “why the hell not” attitude, they could be the ones to start up a distillery for the island!

And so their story began in 2019. The first gin launched in September 2020...in the middle of the pandemic! By the end of their first year, they had produced two international award-winning gins. The signature gin, Nostalgin, won gold at the Gin Masters and bronze at IWSC as well as finalist standings at the Scottish Gin Awards and the Gin Guide; Croc Rock won silver at the Gin Masters and bronze at IWSC...a huge accomplishment for any distillery in its first year. To add to those accolades, their team was also a finalist for Best Newcomer for the Scottish Gin Awards!