Debbie has an insatiable curiosity for how finance can be used to help vulnerable people and communities and has spent 20 years in the social investment sector. This journey began in Chicago at IFF one of the largest Community Development Finance Institutions in the US.
After coming to live in Scotland with her family in 2007, Debbie brought her international experience and personal passion to Social Investment Scotland where she spent 10 years, working to increase access to capital with communities across Scotland. With a keen interest in social impact and diversity and equality she has sat on various UK-wide social investment intermediary advisory groups and was instrumental in bringing Aeris (an impact investment credit rating for the CDFI sector in the US) to the UK.
She now brings her contagious energy, and positive demeanour to Inspiring Scotland to work on intandem supporting the charities to establish this national mentoring programme.
In her spare time, she loves walking her Border Terrier, running and is ‘slowly’ writing a family inter-generational cookery book.
This blog shares some practical tips from our Survivors of Childhood Abuse Support (SOCAS) fund teams’ experience alongside resources you can use to develop your grantmaking practice. It follows on from a presentation to the 4th Meeting of the Trauma-Informed Grantmaking Community of Practice on 27 Feb 2025. Trauma happens when we experience very stressful,
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Today (Thursday 27 February 2025) the Support in the Right Direction fund team launched a report focusing on the last round of funding, which ended in March 2024, and lasted almost six years. During this time, 31 organisations received funding of £15.8 million to provide independent support to people navigating the social care system to
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We are pleased to share that Equalities Minister, Kaukab Stewart has announced a £2.4 million funding uplift for over 100 organisations supported by our Delivering Equally Safe fund. The funding boost will bring the total Scottish Government investment in Delivering Equally Safe (DES) up to £21.6 million for 2025/26. The announcement was made during Ms.
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