Board of Management

Liz Connolly

Liz was appointed as Principal of West College Scotland on 3 September 2018, she was formerly Vice-Principal Corporate Development. 

She was born and brought up in the East End of Glasgow and has an honours degree and an MBA from Strathclyde University. She attended Harvard University to study Executive Development.

Liz worked for the Scottish Development Agency before its merger with the Training Agency in 1991 to become Scottish Enterprise. She then spent the next 16 years with Scottish Enterprise, becoming Chief Executive of three separate Local Enterprise Companies, as well as Operations Director for the West of Scotland.

Liz left the organization in 2010 to spend time working on charity projects, including the building of a community centre in a village in South Africa. She has since assisted in similar projects in Nepal and Cambodia.

Before joining West College Scotland, she project-managed the merger of Anniesland, Cardonald and Langside Colleges to create Glasgow Clyde College.

She is a board member of Targeting Innovation and has recently joined the board of Interface, which connects organisations from national and international industries to Scotland’s 23 higher education and research institutes.

Nick Allan

Nick brings over 35 years of business experience to his position with West College Scotland, having spent his career working within the property sector.

A chartered surveyor, he is the managing director of Nick Allan and Associates Ltd, providing strategic property advice across the private, public and voluntary sector.

In addition he is a Non-Executive director on various boards spanning the built environment, social housing, community empowerment and economic regeneration sectors.

His knowledge and experience, coupled with his passion and enthusiasm for education, are the cornerstones of his aim to continue to successfully develop links between industry, professional bodies and the college.

Andrew Hetherington

Dr Andrew Hetherington, (recently retired ) has wide experience and has worked as a Chief Executive, General Manager and in specific high level environmental management roles. Andrew has 35 years direct experience in the field of Environmental Initiatives and is recognised internationally as an expert and is regularly requested to attend as a key note speaker.

A qualified Environmental Practitioner Andrew is a founding director and member ( by examination) of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment of which he was elected as it's first Chair. An Honorary Fellow for services to the Environment, he is also a Chartered Environmentalist.

Andrew was a member of the James Watt College, Board of Management prior to the creation of West College Scotland.

John McMillan

Coming from a legal background and after training with a large commercial practice, John spent most of his career in the public sector, working for Scottish Enterprise, Scotland's economic development agency, where he was, for a number of years, a senior legal manager.

He served on the Board of Management of Reid Kerr College from 2011, latterly as Chair of the Change Committee, in anticipation of the creation of West College Scotland. He has a strong interest in legal and governance matters is currently the Chair of the Audit Committee and is the Senior Independent Person on the Board.

As regards hobbies, John is a member of his local golf club in Paisley, and support the local football team.

Linda Johnston

Linda is the Business Strategy Manager at North Lanarkshire Council and has extensive experience of change and transformation programmes, redesigning public sector services to meet the varying needs of users .  With a passion for supporting others to reach their full potential Linda has led the development of School/Employer partnerships to offer young people the opportunity to develop life skills, created job opportunities and mentoring support for young people with complex needs and supports young entrepreneurs to grow and develop sustainable business models.

Linda has chaired national policy groups, including the development of the public sector complaint’s handling procedures on behalf of the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman and has successfully delivered a number of high profile events.  These include the triathlon and time trial events for G2014 Commonwealth Games, the British Transplant Games where she welcomed over 1200 transplant athletes and their families to North Lanarkshire and designed a marketing campaign to increase the number of sign-ups to the Organ Donor Register in Scotland. More recently, Linda was Chair of the Local Organising Committee to deliver the Go Live festival event at Strathclyde Country Park as part of the Glasgow 2018 European Sporting Championships with over 20,000 local people attending the activities.  

Angela Wilson

Angela joined West Dunbartonshire Council as Director in March 2012.  She has strategic oversight of wide ranging services which help to support the day to day running of the Council, providing a positive workplace and delivering better outcomes for the citizens of West Dunbartonshire.  These services help to improve the lives of all who work, live and visit the area.

Angela’s career to date has been in the public sector, having previously held posts in Central Government in her early days prior to moving to Local Government in 1996 where she joined South Lanarkshire Council’s Personnel Services team and worked there for 11 years.  A promotion opportunity saw Angela join South Ayrshire Council in late 2007 and she enjoyed over 4 years as the Head of HR and Customer Services.

As a member of CIPD, Angela has enjoyed professional roles in Local Government including HR Adviser to CoSLA and President of Society of Personnel Directors Scotland enabling cross council working, and collaborative engagement with Trade Unions and colleagues at a national level.  She continues to be involved in Scotland wide partnerships across the public sector and is a member of Solace Scotland.

Vanessa Thompson

Sabira Akram

Sabira has accumulated a wealth of senior management skills over a period of 20+ years and is a highly motivated Project Manager and Senior Consultant with particular expertise in delivering business

processes and systems that satisfy both functional goals and meet performance and quality targets. 

She studied towards her executive MBA at Heriot Watt University and has an honours degree in Physic and Chemistry as well as an MSc in Software Technology.

She also considers it an enormous privilege to serve as a Panel Member for Children’s Hearing Scotland which exists to help protect the safety and wellbeing of vulnerable children and young people in Scotland.