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Staff Profiles

Amy Shephard Elaine Cooper Paul Buchanan
Claire Woods Emma-Reetta Koivunen Rob Shipway
David Gourlay Jeremy Wyatt Steven Ross
Denis Donoghue Katrina Watson Ute Johnston
Analysis and Technical team

  • Amy Shepard

    Amy is an experienced consultant and has worked on a wide range of consultancy projects. She first worked for Groundwork developing community engagement skills in the delivery of environmental projects. Amy then moved into consultancy and has developed a wide range of skills and techniques for the delivery of consultancy projects.

    Several of the projects Amy has completed have included the physical aspects of regeneration including feasibility and workspace demand studies. In addition Amy has done feasibility studies and written business plans for developing new Groundwork Trusts. Amy has also worked on several evaluation projects including a three-year evaluation of the Access Centre programme run by EMDA in Leicester and Leicestershire.

    Amy has also worked on socio-economic impact assessments for private and public developments and developed a GIS tool for tracking the progress of physical regeneration projects. She is undertaking a Masters in Sustainable Development.

    Tel: 0161 212 1104

  • Paul Buchanan

    Paul Buchanan is a director and heads our tourism and strategy practice. His background is in tourism and economic development and he maintains an interest in education and training. He has had substantial involvement in development planning at local and regional level and has expertise in European funding and tourism skills issues.

    Recent assignments have included several studies looking at the social and economic impacts of tourism developments. These include several reports on the regeneration impacts of casino development, contributing insights into the effect of new legislation on different locations in the UK.
    Paul has led an evaluation of the St Andrews World Class project, continuing an association that started in 2001 with an economic impact study and strategic planning exercise for the historic town.
    He has carried out extensive work in rural tourism development working with communities and local area partnerships to develop sustainable tourism plans. These include a revised tourism strategy for Dumfries and Galloway, a tourism framework for rural communities in the Loch Lomond & the Trossachs National Park and an economic impact study in the Cairngorms National Park, linked to a new tourism action plan.

    In an international context, he recently developed the Estonian Tourism Quality Programme for Enterprise Estonia, a cross border tourism strategy for Latvia and Estonia and in 2005 completed an assessment of the Falkland Islands tourism industry.

    Paul has over 15 years experience in public sector tourism and held senior posts in tourism organisations and local authorities. He holds an MBA as well as a Master’s degree in Tourism and an honours degree in Geography.

    Contact Paul on 0141 225 5517.

  • David Gourlay

    A community regeneration specialist with 20 years experience of implementing projects and performance improvement. He covers a wide range of public sector interventions. He has managed multi-annual, national evaluations.

    He has worked for a full range of clients including the Scottish Government, Community Planning Partnerships, The Big Lottery Fund, Scottish Enterprise, national Government departments, local authorities and the voluntary sector.

    He has built local regeneration initiatives, established social enterprises and helped move policy into practice. An expert facilitator with extensive funding experience, David has Programme Management experience of European Structural Funds. He has advised on bid-writing, monitoring and claims.

    Tel: 0141 225 5511

  • Katrina Watson

    Katrina is a consultant specialising in data management. Katrina has advanced IT skills and knowledge of systems analysis giving her a strong grounding in information handling and management.

    Using various data platforms in many business environments, ranging from manufacturing to business services, she understands the nature of data in relation to the quality and value of the information it can produce. Her past database experience ranges from creating an employee training database tracking and monitoring progress, to administration and maintenance of a manufacturing process system.

    Prior to joining Hall Aitken, she held a range of positions co-ordinating and monitoring training programmes and administration systems.

    Tel: 0141 225 5515

  • Denis Donoghue

    Denis is the Research Director at Hall Aitken and is responsible for maintaining research quality in the company and designing research questions and tools. He will use his wide-ranging experience in primary research design and analysis to ensure that the methods meet our stringent requirements.

    Denis is an expert in economic development with experience in carrying out regional and national economic research. He managed the South of Scotland Labour Market and Economic Intelligence project for and also led the ex-ante evaluation of the Lowland and Upland Scotland European Structural Funds Programmes which required a critical review of the programme’s economic analysis of the region. Other large-scale primary research includes evaluations of the UK online and Active England programmes. Denis has a Degree in Town and Regional Planning and a Masters with Distinction in Local Economic Development.

    Tel: 0141 225 5502

  • Ute Johnston

    Ute is a Senior Consultant and experienced project manager. He work has a focus on evaluation and demonstrating impact, as well as project development, funding and tourism. She holds an MSc in information science and a degree in business studies and international marketing.

    Ute manages our evaluation of two government funded projects that aim to promote SROI (Social Return on Investment) as an approach for measuring the value created by a project, programme or organisation. This work is about assessing and describing the difference the two projects are making to awareness and use of SROI, and identifying lessons for project partners’ future activities. Ute has been trained in SROI and is doing an SROI analysis of Sunderland’s XL Youth Villages project for Sunderland City Council.

    She project manages our evaluation support to the Wansbeck LEGI programme which is about stimulating economic growth through enterprise. As well as analysing the impact the programme is having overall she works with projects to assess their contribution towards Go Wansbeck outcomes.

    Ute also manages the Leading Practice strand which is at the core of the myplace Support Team’s work. myplace is a capital programme that funds world class youth centres across England. The leading practice work is about identifying good practice and lessons across the programme and facilitating their sharing through case studies and other resources, such as an expert panel.

    Ute holds a degree in business studies from Pforzheim University, Germany, and an MSc in Information Science from University of Strathclyde. Ute is qualified in Prince2 and trained in SROI

    Tel: 0141 225 5516

  • Steven Ross

    Steven is a consultant working with the Information Consultancy team.

    Steven carries out primary research with online questionnaires and telephone interviews, secondary desk research, and carries out the analysis of the results. With experience and post-graduate qualifications in both web development and European law, Steven also works on the creation and maintenance of websites and databases for internal use and for client projects, and assists with giving advice on European legislation and funding programmes. Recent work includes interviews for Badminton England and The Forestry Commission, data analysis for The Lottery fund, and creating electronic newsletters and maintaining the websites for several projects.

    Prior to joining Hall Aitken, Steven worked for 6 years in the Euro Info Centre in Glasgow providing European information to the Scottish business community, and in the export department of a large private organisation ensuring compliance with both transportation and customs regulations around the world.

    Tel: 0141 225 5501

  • Rob Shipway

    Rob has over 20 years regeneration experience working across the public, private and voluntary sectors, specialising in project and programme management, regeneration funding, stakeholder engagement and social enterprise. He worked as a tourism project manager in Clwyd before managing a tourism programme for the WTB in Llangollen.

    He then worked for the European Secretariat at Government Office North West, providing application support to Objective 2 partners in Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Cumbria. His expertise in regeneration funding helped Warrington secure SRB support for an employability programme and helped partners in East Lancashire to secure substantial European and National funding as he managed a number of SRB, Sure Start and European funding programmes.

    As Principal Economic Development Officer for Warrington Council, Rob provided support to new businesses and managed a social enterprise programme. He later worked for Impact Community Developments, a Housing provider for young people in Bradford where he helped establish a number of social enterprises to support the Charity’s operations. His social enterprise experience has helped him deliver a number of projects for Charities and regeneration partnerships since his move into consultancy.

    Rob’s wide range of experience has enabled him to lead many different consultancy projects. He has managed a large number of programme evaluations, including SRB and European programmes in Sheffield, Luton, Corby, Nottingham and London. His projects have required effective community and stakeholder engagement skills, enabling him recently to deliver projects as diverse as five Masterplans for partners in Belfast, a Regeneration Framework for South Shields and Drug and Alcohol Support projects in Glasgow. . He has worked with Community Planning Partnerships in Dumbarton and Glasgow and supported community development projects in Sedgefield, Hull and East Lancashire. He is currently directing a number of our projects, including Community Spaces, a four year programme of evaluation and support for Groundwork and its partners.

    Tel: 0161 212 1101

  • Jeremy Wyatt

    Jeremy is a Principal Consultant and Managing Director of Hall Aitken - providing strategic leadership to the Active England evaluation. He has worked in regeneration and skills development for over 20 years in both public and private sectors.

    Immediately before joining Hall Aitken, he was a member of the senior management team of a major Optical retailer. Prior to this Jeremy worked in management consultancy with large private sector companies (delivering training and performance improvement projects), with Public Sector organisations and with a number of local economic development projects, largely in Scotland. His earlier career included setting up and running one of the West of Scotland's first neighbourhood based economic development agencies, and developing early approaches to training for new and existing entrepreneurs.

    Over the last five years he has led a wide range of evaluation and strategy development projects, for example:

    • Developing a strategy and action plan for a new national training organisation for Scottish Tourism;
    • Evaluating the DfES UK online centres;
    • Evaluating and innovative approach to engaging young people in training through media in Liverpool;
    • Evaluating the EU Leonardo da Vinci programme in the UK; and
    • Examining the ways large employers in Northumberland procure training and learning services.

    Jeremy is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CFCIPD), holds an MBA with distinction (Glasgow), a B.Sc.(Hons.) Biology (Salford), and is a Member of the Institution for Economic Development and Member of the Evaluation Society.

    Tel: 0141 225 5505

  • Dr. Elaine Cooper

    Elaine is a Senior Consultant with specialist knowledge of public policy and of health and wellbeing. Her particular interests are in health and educational inequalities among children and young people and in policy and interventions which seek to change patterns of entrenched behaviour.

    She is a skilled researcher and analyst with more than twenty years background in both journalism and academic research. She has worked with national and local government and within the children’s legal system in Scotland. Elaine has a a doctorate in political science, a BA (Hons) in politics and an MSc in Public Policy.

    At Hall Aitken, Elaine has most recently been involved in analysing policy and funding context for several projects working with young people in London, Wales and Cumbria.

    Tel: 0141 225 5510

  • Claire Woods

    Claire has ‘real world’ experience and skills related to projects supporting people and disadvantaged communities.

    She has a wide experience of working with public, private and third sector organisations. Claire is currently project manager for our evaluation of the Premier League 4 Sport project, which aims to increase young people’s involvement in sport. Claire has also managed a healthy living project, which encouraged residents in Stoke on Trent to improve their health and wellbeing. Claire holds a BA (Hons), an MSc in Urban Regeneration and MA in Town and Country Planning. She is also a qualified trainer.

    Tel: 0161 212 1102

  • Analysis and technical team

    We are experts in designing and building databases and websites. We created a database to map mainstream services for the Local Strategic Partnership in Rochdale.

    We also created a database for Yorkshire Forward to map interventions that aim to improve young people's understanding about the world of work. We have created websites national organisations like The Big Lottery Fund sponsored programmes. For Sport England we train and support users on a web based real-time management information tool (Value Mapping) for collecting monitoring data.

    We have skills in survey design and management for postal and online surveys. Projects include a multi-annual household survey to evaluate the Western Isles Better Neighbourhood Services Fund and an electronic survey to evaluate the Skills in Regeneration pack for the Scottish Centre for Regeneration. We can also use SMS text surveys to contact people. This has proved to be useful when trying to get responses from young people. We use GIS mapping to show unemployment and economic activity levels in the South of Scotland as part of the labour market intelligence project. We can use these skills to show in a visual way service need and delivery for other programmes.

    We are experts in statistical analysis using SPSS. We used this in our analysis of the Birmingham SRB household survey and evaluating UK online centres across England for the DfES.

    We are experts in sourcing and analysing secondary data. We have established skills in analysing the labour and skills market. For the last three years we have provided labour market intelligence for the South of Scotland labour market intelligence project including annual reports, quarterly newsletters and a dedicated website.

  • Emma-Reetta Koivunen

    Emma-Reetta has strong qualitative research, community engagement and teaching skills. She has worked on research and evaluation in several health and well being projects. For example, NHS Salford Smoking Cessation project; Heritage Lottery Fund supported project Parks for People and BIG Lottery funded Way of Life project on healthy lifestyle.

    Emma-Reetta has experience of working in housing and regeneration consultancy and research and teaching in University of Tampere, Finland and Manchester Metropolitan University. She has a MSocSc in Social Anthropology and a PhD in Information and Communications. Her academic research experience is on internet use in rural communities, and on tourism and everyday life. She has conducted extensive research in the Shetland Islands.