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Grace brings over 30 years’ experience across the public and third sectors, including senior management, consultancy and governance roles. Her work has a strong focus on equity and inclusion, community engagement, lived experience participation, partnership working and place-based approaches.
Grace's approach is practical, collaborative and values-led. She has supported a wide range of organisations (from national government to volunteer-led community groups) strengthen both their strategic direction and day-to-day practice, navigate complexity and stay focused on what matters most to the communities they serve. She is known for her engaging, thoughtful and accessible facilitation style, and for using participatory approaches that enable people to contribute meaningfully, particularly those who are often excluded or face the greatest barriers to participation. Advancing equity and inclusion is a core strand of her work, including sector-leading contributions in LGBTQ+, neurodivergent and gender equality and inclusion. Alongside her consultancy work, she brings extensive board-level experience. She was founder and Managing Director of the capacity-building social enterprise Sleeping Giants and served for eight years as a Non-Executive Director with NHS Dumfries and Galloway. In that role, she scrutinised the work of both the NHS Board and the Integration Joint Board and chaired the Public Health Committee and the Clinical and Care Governance Committee. Across these roles, she has consistently advocated for equity, access, meaningful community engagement, participation and power-sharing within complex public systems. Read on to find out more about some of Grace's work.
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Through a commission from the Holywood Trust, Grace is providing organisational development support to a number of the Trust’s funded projects across Dumfries and Galloway. This work helps community-led organisations take time to step back from day-to-day delivery, reflect on their strengths and challenges, and strengthen the foundations they need for the future. Support is shaped around each organisation’s context, and can include strategic planning, governance and board development, partnership and stakeholder engagement, community participation, communications, funding, team development and leadership support. Current work includes supporting organisations such as LIFT D&G and Midsteeple Quarter as they move into their next stage of development, with the aim of leaving them clearer, more confident and better equipped to sustain their work and impact over time.
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Grace is supporting Gatehouse Development Initiative with governance and organisational development work linked to the Woodside Community Housing Project. The work is helping trustees step back, understand the responsibilities involved in a complex community-led housing development, strengthen Board ownership and clarify the structures, risks and priority actions needed to take the project forward safely and sustainably. This work is being delivered alongside Community Enterprise, bringing together governance, Board development and community enterprise expertise. Grace is working with Dumfries and Galloway Health and Social Care Partnership to support new ways of doing change that are rooted in people, place and shared power. Through the Delivering Change programme (part of the Scottish Approach to Change), this work supports the emerging vision of “Best life, best place, time matters” and connects with key priorities including frailty, long-term conditions, palliative care, multiple disadvantage, and ethical and collaborative commissioning. It explores how partners can build trust, strengthen relationships, learn together and involve communities in ways that go beyond consultation. It brings together Grace’s experience in public systems, governance, community development and equity-focused facilitation to help create the conditions for practical, meaningful and lasting change. Grace is working with The Stove Network to design neurodiversity training that responds directly to staff experiences and learning needs. The work will support the team to build a shared understanding of neurodivergence, strengthen communication and supportive conversations, and explore practical changes to workplace systems, meetings, management and team culture. The aim is to help create a working environment where neurodivergent staff feel better understood and supported, and where different ways of thinking and working are recognised as part of the organisation’s strength. |