Nicola Hughes

Unit Head – Contributions, Finance and Business Management, Scottish Government

For over 12 years, Nicola has worked in various child-focused practitioner, policy and leadership roles in local government, third sector and national government. She has worked with care experienced children and families, as well as those affected by poverty and discrimination. From 2017, she led a multi-disciplinary team within Save The Children to design and deliver national programmes in schools, communities and the home to further the wellbeing and educational attainment of children. Moving to Scottish Government in early 2020, she has led programmes of work to support public authorities to further realise the rights of children in Scotland, and now, work with in-care providers to deliver financial and non-financial redress for survivors of historical childhood abuse.  

Ruth Kydd

Insurance Manager, City of Edinburgh Council

Ruth started working in insurance in 2004, and has worked in insurance with local government since 2015. Her current role is Insurance Manager for the City of Edinburgh Council and is a committee member of the ALARM Scotland Group.

Alan Thompson

Motor Fleet Risk Consultant, Zurich Resilience Solutions

Before joining ZRS, I spent over 35 years within law enforcement working within the roads policing function, homicide and serious multi agency investigations. For the last eight years I was the lead investigator and manager of the road death investigation team. This provided me with a unique insight into road collisions, their causes, and opportunities to reduce them. During my career I developed an interest in people development leading me to become a qualified police trainer working in such diverse areas as criminal, company and road legislation and practice. As I moved into a new career, I became the performance training manager for two collaborating forces and developed my knowledge of collision causation, driver behaviour and the various ways to manage driver risk.
Having left the police world I moved into consultancy with Gallagher Bassett spending the next five years developing and delivering fleet interventions to improve safety, inform underwriting and reduce loss.