Pivotal member of The Data Lab’s leadership team secures key promotion
A founding member of the leadership team at The Data Lab, Scotland’s innovation centre for data and artificial intelligence, who has been key in driving its growth has been given a new senior role.
Brian Hills has been promoted from head of data to deputy chief executive and head of service design. He will deputise for chief executive Gillian Docherty, and lead the scaling of The Data Lab’s impact across Scotland through the growth of existing services and developing an “array” of new business opportunities.
Having previously held roles with the likes of Skyscanner, he joined The Data Lab in 2015, and led the design, launch and growth of the centre’s key services from its skills programme to Datafest, its annual flagship two-week data festival, and technical leadership.
Last year, Hills was part of the leadership team that secured a further five years of funding for the centre. He also led the bid to fund the Torch service (supported by Scottish Enterprise and the University of Edinburgh) and has led the development of a culture and values initiative across the organisation.
Hesaid:“asafoundingmember of The Data Lab’s leadership team, and as we begin to look ahead to a post-covid-19 future, my primary mission will be to continue building on our tremendous achievements to date – bringing together business, academia and the public sector to develop and execute new data innovation strategies [that] … ultimately help Scotland maximise value from data.”
Docherty said Hill is “passionate and influential in The Data Lab, and indeed, Scotland’s growing data landscape – and his leadership will be pivotal in driving our ongoing success as we continue to ensure the data science community in Scotland are well served”.