Our board

Engender’s board is responsible for the organisation’s strategic direction and governance.

Nina Murray, Convener
Nina joined Engender’s board in 2012 and is currently Convener. She has a background in migration and human rights and works as Women's Policy Development Officer at Scottish Refugee Council. She is also Vice Chair of Scottish Detainee Visitors, supporting detainees at Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre, and a Trustee of Ngbotima Charity Trust, supporting young people through education in Sierra Leone.

Emily Thomson, Vice-Convener
Emily Thomson is a Senior Lecturer in the department of Law, Economics, Accountancy and Risk and Depute Director of Women in Scotland’s Economy (WiSE) Research Centre at Glasgow Caledonian University. Her teaching and research interests include feminist economics, the business case for gender equality and international development.

Emily is a member of the International Association for Feminist Economics and a fellow of the International Working Group on Gender, Macroeconomics and International Economics.

Jenny Bloomfield
Jenny is Senior Policy Officer at the Scottish Council of Voluntary Organisations, and has a great understanding of issues relating to the governance and functioning of charities. This includes regulation issues raised by the likes of OSCR; new legislation from UK or Scottish Parliaments such as the UK Lobbying Act; and issues around the political environment that charities operate in. She works with colleagues across the UK on national issues relating to charity regulation and governance and has a UK-wide overview of the charity operating environment.

Emma Hutton
Emma currently leads communications, outreach and participation for the Scottish Human Rights Commission, having previously spent two years in London setting up Equally Ours, a UK-wide campaign to spread the positive story about human rights in everyday life. Emma has also worked as a lobbyist, campaigner and frontline business developer in the social enterprise movement, working in Scotland, London and Australia.

Carla McCormack
Carla works as Policy and Parliamentary Officer for the Poverty Alliance, where she has worked for the past 2 and a half years. Before this she worked in a number of roles in Scottish and UK politics. Carla works closely with women with direct experience of poverty and is knowledgeable about the gendered nature of poverty. She has worked closely with Engender to ensure that we are campaigning for an economy, and a society, that works for women.

Suzanne McLaughlin
Suzanne is a businesswoman who built independent bars YesBar and Liberté from scratch in the past five years. She has given talks on conflict management in the hospitality industry and mentors young women within her business. A board member of Women for Independence: Independence for Women, Suzanne helped steer WFI through its first 18 months and with WFI Justice Watch helped to convince the Cabinet Secretary for Justice not to proceed with the building of a new women’s prison. She was part of the small team within the board who wrote the Manifesto for Change in Women’s Justice.

Maria Pakpahan
Maria is co-founder of Tjoet Njak Dien Foundation – a feminist organisation that she built in 1995 after her return from The Netherlands a place of her exile. As in early 1991 there was a letter of warrant for her involvement in the production - advocacy calendar Land for the People. It was no longer safe for her to hide inside Indonesia. She had to flee to Holland. She got Oscar Brown Memorial fellowship, studied at Institute of Social Studies. She was awarded MA on Development Studies in 1994. In 1995-1997 she worked as the Assistant Secretary of INFID (International NGOs Forum on Indonesia Development) that consist of more than 100 NGOs inside and outside Indonesia during New Order Regime’s reign in Indonesia. She also co-founded Indonesian Women Coalition for Justice and Democracy (known as KPI) in 1998 which was part of reform movement that brought down General Soeharto. She was involved in politics in Indonesia in 2005-2010 as one of the chairpersons of the national executive council of a political party namely PKB (Nation Awakening Party). Maria worked in various UN and EU agencies including the ILO, UNDP and WFP. She was elected to Ashoka fellowship for Innovator for Public in 1999 (3 years). Maria was also awarded Chevening Scholarship by the British Government in 2000. She got MSc By Research in Enlightenment Studies from the University of Edinburgh, then continued to do course on Forced Migration when she got a scholarship from Refugee Study Centre, University of Oxford in 2001.

Susan Rae
A founding member of Hawick Women’s Aid (now Borders Women’s Aid) Susan has been a feminist campaigner for many years and has worked primarily in government or the third sector. She held the office of Equalities/Women’s Officer with NALGO Scottish Borders Executive throughout the '90s and promoted the original Zero Tolerance Campaign in her area. As a Trade Unionist, she has always been involved in the fight for equal pay, terms & conditions for women. Upon moving to Edinburgh and taking up a role with Support@Work (Edinburgh TUC) in 2008, she was able to concentrate further efforts on this through work and Unite the Union, where she is a Third Sector Branch Committee member. She is an Edinburgh Branch Committee Member of the Scottish Greens, and as a Green Party Candidate for the upcoming 2017 City of Edinburgh Council elections, she is a recipient of the Access to Politics award. Susan is also a member of the board of directors at SCVO Credit Union.

Professor Kirstein Rummery
Kirstein Rummery is a professor of Social Policy at the University of Stirling and researches gender equality issues in social policy. She is co-director of the Centre for Gender And Feminist Studies and is currently working with Engender on an ESRC funded project entitled 'Fairer, Caring Nations' which looks at what Scotland can learn about gender equality and care policy.

Lesley Sutherland
Lesley retired from paid employment at the end of 2013, having worked in education and related fields in the voluntary, trade union and public sectors. She began to think about and challenge inequality as a teenager and dates the development of her feminist perspective from then. She was involved in the Scottish Convention of Women and in Women’s Forum Scotland before joining Engender and becoming a member of its Board some years ago. Lesley was deeply involved in the establishment of the European Women’s Lobby, as a founder board and then Treasurer.

Juliet Swann
Juliet’s professional experience focuses on encouraging widespread citizen participation in decision making and assists Engender by ensuring that our work is as inclusive as possible. She is experience in reading and interpreting legislation and brings her knowledge of psephology to provide analyses of gender representation in politics.

Talat Yaqoob
Talat is the co-founder of the Women 5050 campaign fighting for fair representation of women in Scotland. She currently works in public affairs and engagement and previously worked in organisations tackling violence against women, in education rights, international development and community organising. Talat writes a regular feminist blog and is frequently published in an online political magazine.