Digital Xtra's Board of Trustees

Board of Trustees

Digital Xtra’s Board of Trustees is responsible for the strategic management of the charity.

The Board meets at least six times a year and is appointed by its members. All Trustee positions are voluntary.

Polly Purvis OBE

Trustee & Chair

Polly Purvis OBE is Deputy Chair of Converge Challenge and former CEO of ScotlandIS, trade body for Scotland’s digital industries, where she was also Founding Chair of CodeClan. She is a board member of Edinburgh Science and sits on the tech advisory board for JCCA. Polly was previously Director of ScotFIN at IGS, a Scottish agri-tech business. Polly’s OBE was awarded for services to Scotland’s digital technology industry.

David McNeill

Trustee & Finance Officer

David McNeill is the Digital Director for Scottish Council of Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) who he joined from Young Scot where he had been Partnerships & Innovation Director (Depute Chief Executive). Previously, David was a Senior Consultant with Rocket Science UK. David is also a Trustee of Recharge, a youth work project in East Lothian.

Gina Wilson

Trustee & Secretary to Trustees

Gina Wilson is Head of Strategy at Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland. Previous to this, Gina held roles as Head of Innovation & Partnerships at College Development Network and Development Manager at Carnegie UK Trust where she led on digital inclusion initiatives for young people. Gina has worked across the third sector in programme development, grant giving and public affairs.

Michael Hall

Trustee

Michael Hall is a Principal Product Manager at TravelPerk – a business travel tech company connecting people in-real-life in enjoyable and sustainable ways. He has worked in the Scottish tech sector for more than 10 years across Engineering and Product roles, during which time he’s also led various efforts to encourage young people to consider tech as a career choice.

Tanya Howden

Trustee

Tanya Howden is a Computing Science teacher and former Digital Education Programme Manager for HMFC’s Innovation Centre and Learning Experience Designer for Robotical. She is also a trustee of Volunteer Edinburgh and sits on the advisory board for Ada.Scot, an annual festival to celebrate Computing Science. Last year, she started Lassies in STEM to share the stories of Scottish professionals in STEM with young people.

Lisa Imlach

Trustee

Lisa Imlach is Director, CSR Comms and Reputation at Skyscanner, where she leads the travel search engine’s CSR strategy and communications globally. In addition to this role, Lisa worked to overhaul Skyscanner’s charitable giving strategy across 11 offices, which now largely focusses on technology education projects for young people and those under-represented in the technology sector.

Karen Meechan

Trustee

Karen Meechan is Chief Executive Officer at ScotlandIS, the membership and cluster management organisation for the digital technologies industry in Scotland. She has worked in the industry for many years and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of who’s who in the Scottish digital tech scene. She is also passionate about supporting young people to address digital exclusion.

Staff

Digital Xtra is a Scottish charity supporting tech initiatives which teach young people skills such as coding, robotics, cyber skills, and data science while also highlighting the future career opportunities these skills provide. The charity’s model is very straightforward – we work with our industry and government partners to identify, finance, and assist extracurricular initiatives across Scotland to engage more young people in tech.

Kraig T Brown

Partnerships & Development Manager

Kraig Brown joined Digital Xtra from Edinburgh Science where he successfully fundraised for the annual Science Festival as well as Primary and Secondary School STEM outreach programmes. He has a background in both the private and third sector working with a wide range of organisations from SME’s to multi-nationals.

Aniqah Khokhar

Community & Grants Officer

Previous to Digital Xtra, Aniqah Khokhar was a Community Development Officer for East Lothian where she was responsible for the planning and development of several successful community projects. She has a background in Community Education having worked with councils, charities, and community groups across Scotland.