UCISA25 Leadership Conference

John has led King’s approach to operating models and frameworks to professionalise IT. This has been key to our transformation and journey towards service excellence. Now BTS and HERM are here, King’s no longer “build our own” but we adopt frameworks supporting collaboration and accelerated service excellence within King’s and across the HE sector.

Deborah joined UCISA as CEO in May of 2019, bringing with her a wealth of marketing and Higher Education experience, most recently as Director of Student Recruitment at the University of Hull following five years as Chief Executive of Marketing Leeds and 5 years at Leeds Beckett University, where she was a member of the Executive Board. She is no stranger to leading member organisations, having led the Law Society’s regional team earlier in her career, supporting 14,500 solicitors in Yorkshire and the North East and introducing a wealth of new initiatives and services, resulting in her receiving the Yorkshire Enterprise Award and being recognised as Yorkshire Lawyer of the year in 2007 for her services to the profession.

Fraser Muir is Global Director of Information Services at Heriot-Watt University and leads the provision of a converged information service provision to the University's 5 campuses. This includes library, technology support, infrastructure, network, security, research support and technology enhanced learning. Fraser also leads the University digital strategy and digital transformation initiatives.

Emma co-chairs the UCISA UX Group and heads up the UX Service within Learning, Teaching and Web Services at the University of Edinburgh. She’s interested in helping colleagues understand the positive impact UX can have and encouraging the holistic adoption of user-centred practices and approaches within Higher Education.

After spending almost a decade in technology consulting, continually bridging the gap between technology and business, I became a solution architect, application architect and eventually enterprise architect for organisations like ACCA, Heineken and Edrington Distillers, where I led their global architecture team. I took the leap to Higher Education at University of Glasgow in June 2022, tasked with establishing an Enterprise Architecture function. It’s a very different world to luxury spirits, but everywhere is unique, and I believe Enterprise Architecture can be incredibly powerful and effective in an HE context.