Fellow, Lesley Sutherland's Interview with Talent Scotland

The Saltire Foundation's Fellowship Programme is a 12-month programme designed to fast-track the careers of gifted and ambitious business-minded individuals and create an alumni network of Fellows who will help to shape Scotland's economic future.

The Fellows study at the prestigious Babson College, in Massachusetts, USA, the world's top-ranked business school for entrepreneurship and they also gain hands-on industry experience in leading international organisations through specially-selected placements.

Lesley Sutherland was one of those selected for the programme in 2009 and she tells TalentScotland about the benefits she gained from her experience.

What is your background?

I've always worked in quality control, firstly in the food industry, but for the most part in life sciences where I have held a number of senior positions with large established companies, small start-ups and also running my own company as a consultant.

Before I took up the Fellowship I was an equity owner in Biopta, a discovery-preclinical contract research organisation specialising in human tissue services.

How did you come to hear about the Saltire Foundation Fellowship Programme?

I subscribe to the TalentScotland e-newsletter, as I like to keep abreast of what is happening in the life sciences sector in Scotland and saw an advert on www.talentscotland.com for the Saltire Foundation.

It looked like a wonderful opportunity. Although it was a big step to take, as it would mean leaving my job and a salary for a year, I believed it would be really useful for me to create my own business.

I went along to the two-day assessment and was delighted to hear soon after that I got accepted on the Fellowship.

How did you find the course at the Babson College in Massachusetts, USA?

It was an amazing experience.

There were people on the course from all sorts of backgrounds and they were all successful business people; a few scientists like myself, entrepreneurs, bankers and some with more technical backgrounds. It was quite intense learning and living together and it really helped having all these different perspectives and learning from their experiences.

The course was intensive and opened up new areas of understanding for me in area such as finance and marketing - and now I can definitely find my way around a balance sheet!

We also had a very high calibre of speakers at the school, from big brands such as Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream and Timberland, which showed us the different ways people approached business and markets.

We spent more than four months at Babson College and then I went to work with GlobalScot Hugh Grant, the CEO of Monsanto based in St Louis, Missouri. He was fantastic inspiration and I worked on developing a marketing plan for one of Monsanto's soya bean products.

When I returned to Scotland at the end of the summer I was seconded to Sitekit (an organisation who specialise in content management systems) in Skye to develop a marketing plan for its products.

What are you doing now you have finished the Fellowship?

With all this new background in business and marketing I have started up my own business consultancy to help companies implement quality systems.

It's based on what I know, but what I can now do a lot better.

My company is called Touchstone Solutions and while my focus is on life sciences, as this is my background, I have other non-science organisations that I am advising about the benefits of implementing quality systems - they are equally applicable to other businesses.

What do you feel your experience on the Saltire Foundation Fellowship has given you?

It has given me the business tool kit I needed to really understand the business world - to run a business and to really know my market - and more confidence to provide strategic advice to my clients. It will really help my business grow.