The Scottish board

The BT Scotland Board brings together senior figures from across BT’s lines of business to steer Scottish strategy and development. They work with non-executive members from outside BT who contribute expertise, external thinking and guidance. The Board's objectives support the delivery and exploitation of communications technologies to enhance innovation and business growth in Scotland. Its current focus is on areas including next generation broadband and the impact of Digital Britain, corporate business and public sector programmes, stakeholder engagement, skills, the environment and corporate social responsibility.

A BT factsheet about Scotland [1.06Mb] 
Download our new BT Scotland publication, Connecting Scottish Communities [2.6Mb]

Chairman

Brendan Dick
Director, BT Scotland, and Managing Director, BT Regions

Brendan’s prime responsibility is to develop BT’s regional activities across Scotland, Wales and the English regions, looking after BT’s group wide interests and driving BT’s local agenda across all BT Lines of Business.

A graduate of the University of Edinburgh, much of Brendan’s early career was spent in information technology designing, developing and deploying large systems across the UK. He is Chair of Scottish Business in the Community and Vice Chair of the Scottish Council for Development and Industry. He is Honorary President of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, a CBI Scotland Council member and a member of the the Lowland Reserve Forces Regional Employer Support Group. Married with two children, Brendan is a keen golfer and an enthusiastic, if slow, recreational cyclist.

Members

Rosemary Calder
GM Retail Custom Service Solutions, BT Retail

Rosemary has recently taken up responsibility for service relationship management for BT Retail's custom solutions channel. Rosemary has extensive experience in customer service, having worked across a wide variety of functions and sectors in BT. Rosemary is passionate about positive leadership and delivering exceptional customer service through highly motivated teams. A graduate management entrant to BT in 1980, Rosemary also has an MBA from Glasgow University. She lives in Glasgow and is married with a daughter.

Robert Cole
Head of Business Improvement, BT GSUK Customer Satisfaction, BT Global Services

Robert runs the customer satisfaction programme for BT’s public sector and large corporate customers both in Scotland and the rest of Britain, leading initiatives in support of BT’s aim to be number one for service. Robert has 22 years of experience in communications, including a 14 year span with BT, during which he has been responsible for holding a number of business improvement and programme management roles and sales management responsibilities with commercial and customer experience. He is a board director of conflict resolution charity, Scottish Mediation Network and was co-founder of the business networking organisation, SWAN – Scottish Workplace Networking – for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, which followed three years as Chair of BT Kaleidoscope, BT’s LGBT people network. With his partner, Nigel, Robert enjoys marathon running and hill walking. He is an active member of the committee of the Scottish community choir, Loud & Proud. Robert lives in Edinburgh.

Robin Farnan
Managing Director BT Financial Technology Services, BT Global Services

Robin joined BT in October 2000 having worked for GEC-Marconi for 15 years in the Defence Electronics Business. His first role was to run the Bank of Scotland (BoS) Network IT Services contract and he has since led various programmes across BT Global Services with specific accountability for Gross Margin improvement and Operational Excellence. In his current role he is globally accountable for the financial performance and delivery of all contractual commitments in GB&FM as well as the Business Operations function, Major Deals, the Sales Excellence Programme, Customer Satisfaction, Governance & Risk and Vendor management. With a passion for golf he spends much time on the links and enjoys all sports, cooking and Scottish history. Robin is married with a 18 year old daughter and a 14 year old son. 

Shonaig Macpherson CBE
Non-Executive Director

Born in Irvine, Shonaig Macpherson is chairman of The Prince’s Trust Scotland and The Prince’s Scottish Youth Business Trust. She was formerly senior partner of the law firm McGrigors, specialising in intellectual property, and was a member of the Cultural Commission and the Calman Commission. She was the first woman to chair the National Trust for Scotland. Shonaig is married with two sons and lives in Linlithgow.  

Liz Mallinson
Business Development Director, Next Generation Access Scotland, BT Group

In her current role, Liz is leading BT’s response to public procurement exercises for next generation broadband access in Scotland. She joined BT’s local network division Openreach in Scotland as a general manager in 2006, commanding a field force of around 800 engineers responsible for more than a million communication lines, before being promoted into a series of strategic UK management roles. Before joining BT, Liz was operations director of the charity ProjectScotland and development director for NHS24 at its launch. She spent her early management career with the Scottish Development Agency and Scottish Enterprise in a range of business and technology development roles. Liz is currently a member of the charity Action for Children’s Byte Night Scotland Board. Married with two children, she enjoys hillwalking, mountaineering and skiing.

Jim McInally
HR Director, Reward & Employee Relations, BT Group

Jim is responsible for the functional leadership of Reward and Employee Relations across BT Group and advises the Remuneration and Pensions Board Committees. He is a member of the Transformation Leadership Group and the HR Leadership Team. His earlier career was spent in senior roles at Reuters, Scottish Power and the Mobil Oil Corporation. Born in Glasgow, Jim is a keen sports fan, particularly football and golf, and can be heard broadcasting his analysis of Scottish football on British Forces Radio’s Saturday programme “The Score”.

Barry Millar
NGA Programme Manager, BT Group

Barry moved into his current role with BT Telconsult, a consultancy within BT Global Services specialising in telecoms and professional services, in July 2011. He joined BT seven years ago, most recently leading a team of 200 engineers in the North of Scotland as Senior Operations Manager with Openreach, BT’s access network division. His earlier career outside BT was spent in various IT and recruitment roles. During 2011, Barry completed his MSc in Telecom Engineering from UCL in London with a dissertation topic of 'Digital Scotland'. He is heavily involved in talent development in Scotland, both within BT and through wider involvement in cross-organisational talent networks. A past president of Junior Chamber Scotland, Barry is married with one daughter and lives in St Andrews where he is a keen golfer.

Jim Preston
Vice President Global Contracts, BT Technology Service & Operations

Jim is responsible for BT’s global ICT deployments to major worldwide customers in industry sectors (Global Banking, Manufacturing, Logistics, Pharmaceuticals and Consumer Products) and also its domestic products in Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Latin America, the US and Canada. He also heads up one of five strategic Global Development Centres, based in Glasgow, which lead the innovation, design and deployment of a range of BT’s global systems and networks. Jim has enjoyed a long career in software engineering since graduating in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from Strathclyde University, where he was sponsored by BT. A member of the board of eSkills Scotland, which develops links between Scottish universities and the ICT industry, he currently lives in Ayr. 

Martin Southern
Client Partner, Scottish Water, BT Group

Martin leads all consulting work with Government clients in Scotland and Wales, identifying ways that clients can benefit from ICT solutions. A recent focus has been on helping local authorities create business cases for workstyle transformation. Martin joined BT in 2002, working on its partnership with the City of Edinburgh Council. His earlier career was spent in business transformation consultancy for a long list of blue chip clients in the UK, Europe and Australia. A member of the Scottish ICT Forum tasked with driving economic growth from ICT, he lives in Edinburgh with Jean and is kept busy entertaining their three children, leading Scouts and training for sprint triathlons.

Anna Steven
Senior PR & Corporate Relations Manager, BT Group

Anna is responsible for BT’s corporate and media relations across central Scotland and leads climate change communications for GB regions. She joined BT in June 2000 to manage internal communications for BT Scotland. Previously Anna was an account manager for a leading Scottish public relations agency and spent 12 years as a journalist in regional newspapers. She is a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and the National Union of Journalists and her interests include social media, the environment, reading and being with her family.

Ian Stirrat
Director Fibre Broadband Enterprise Programme, BT Technology Service & Operations

A senior player in BT’s plans for the delivery of next generation broadband technologies, in the last decade Ian has held a series of posts with responsibility fornetwork and systems programme definition and delivery. He also works as part of the BT Group wide management team. Earlier roles included the management of BT’s local loop unbundling (LLU) programme; sales & operations planning processes and field engineering team working. He has a background in operational management roles in the access network. Ian joined BT in 1971 as an apprentice technician. He has an MSc in telecommunications management, an MBA from Edinburgh Business School and is a chartered engineer and member of the Institute of Management.