Caroline Parkinson

Caroline Parkinson is Sector Engagement Manager - Creative Industries and Director of Creative for the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI). She works with the Scottish creative and cultural industries to stimulate innovation collaborations with academic expertise within The University of Edinburgh. Prior to this she was a freelance practitioner in photography, and consultant in creative innovation and business skills. From 2010-2014 she was Director of Film, TV, Music, Creative Industries, Skills & Innovation for Creative Scotland, and from 2005-2010 she was Director, Scotland & Northern Ireland for the new sector skills association, Creative & Cultural Skills. She serves on the Board of Architecture & Design Scotland, and for seven years has served in a voluntary capacity as Strategic Director and Presenter of the MOVE Summit, Scotland's Animation and VFX Gathering.

Nicola Osborne

Nicola Osborne (they/them) is Manager of the Institute for Design Informatics, University of Edinburgh; they are co-I for the UKRI Designing Responsible Natural Language Processing (NLP) Centre for Doctoral Training; and co-I of the AHRC-funded CoSTAR Realtime Lab, supporting R&D in converged media. They also work on the EU-funded EKIP: Cultural and Creative Industries Policy Engine project.

Nicola managed Creative Informatics (2018-24) supporting creatives to do innovative work with data and contributing an estimated £78.5m GVA impact for Edinburgh and South East Scotland. Nicola also led a connected Creative AI project (2022-4) and co-edited Data Driven Innovation in the Creative Industries (Routledge 2024). They co-authored Creative Informatics Ethics guidance (downloaded 1K+ times), supported and advised 130 SMEs with their own R&D ethics, and are currently an ethics mentor for the CoSTAR Network.

Ola Wojtkiewicz

Ola Wojtkiewicz is Executive Director at Creative Edinburgh, the largest membership organisation for creative practitioners in Scotland. Since August 2021, she has been leading the organisation's strategic and business development, while undertaking an extensive review of its creative programmes, partnerships and membership. Ola is an accomplished art director with over twenty-five years of experience in the creative sector and a demonstrable career working in the culture and heritage industries, including international festivals and universities. Skilled in lecturing, exhibition and event curation, Ola has managed various projects of national and international standing, including research projects at the University of Edinburgh and exhibitions at the National Galleries of Scotland. She is passionate about inclusive cultural debates, sustainable creative practice and progressive community engagement initiatives.

Chloe Spiby Loh

Chloe has broad experience across multiple sectors producing inter-disciplinary projects connecting public audiences to art and new media. She has produced programmes with Wellcome Collection, Create London, V&A Dundee and Royal Institute of British Architects, where she collaborated with artists, designers and major partners on events, festivals and commissions.

As a Producer on Immersive Arts, she is managing the distribution of £3.6million in ring-fenced funding to artists across the UK through open calls, leading on outreach and engagement in Scotland and working with the first round of awarded artists on realising their projects.

John Hill

John Hill is Enterprise Executive and Coach within Edinburgh Innovations Ltd. He is the facilitator of E-corner in Edinburgh Futures Institute. E-corner was founded 15 weeks ago by Lynne Craig of Design Informatics, and with John's enthusiasm it is growing each week, and is already making an impact, creating valuable connections and sharing expert information from those who have gone before to those just starting out.

For the past 13 years John has supported and inspired entrepreneurs to establish and grow their ventures across a variety of sectors; Robotics, Digital, BioTech, Hard and Soft Tech. John works holistically and transparently, creating a trust-based relationship with his clients through the practical and the emotional journey of building a business.

Fiona Pilgrim

Fiona Pilgrim is KTP (knowledge transfer partnerships) and Social Science Commercialisation Executive at Edinburgh Innovations supporting University of Edinburgh academics to apply their research and expertise through working with companies. With colleagues at the University of Glasgow, she delivered an ESRC funded project investigating how Social Science Academics could engage more effectively with the KTP scheme.

Marina Duka

Marina Duka works on the business development team for the University of Edinburgh and facilitates research partnerships and collaborative efforts between academia and the private/public/third sector. Marina is passionate about taking research out of the university and applying it to solve real world challenges, for public good. While sector-agnostic, Marina tends to support researchers in arts, humanities and social sciences. In facilitating collaborations, she relies on the "Art of Participatory Leadership" techniques and methodologies. Prior to joining the University of Edinburgh, Marina worked in International Development for 10+ years, doing business development and project management. Outside of work, you will find Marina training for a race, or in the kitchen - recreating ridiculous viral recipes.