Speakers

Dr Marie Julie Chenard currently serves as Head of Social Value in the Civil Society and Youth Directorate in DCMS where she runs the VCSE Contract Readiness Programme and leads on wider policy development to increase the participation of charities and social enterprises in public procurement. A key contributor to the Civil Society Strategy, she has also worked on the collaborative commissioning of public services, and, in her earlier years at the Cabinet Office, advised on philanthropic giving.

Prior to joining the civil service in 2014, Marie Julie led research programmes at the foreign policy think tank LSE IDEAS, and trained at the European Commission delegation in China. She holds a PhD from the London School of Economics in International History.

Issel has over 12 years of international development experience, specializing in issues of social mobility, human rights, and governance. Issel worked as a Senior Consultant for Deloitte Consulting, strengthening government practices at the local, national, and international level. Issel also worked for over 8 years in the areas of governance, anticorruption, and political economy at the World Bank. In 2019, Issel founded Sembrando Sentido, a non-profit organization with the mission to harvest knowledge and tools to strengthen Civil Society advocacy efforts for more transparent, responsible, inclusive, and efficient government practices in Puerto Rico.

Issel has a B.A. in International Development from American University and a Master of Public Policy from Duke University. She is co-author of publications such as “Contracting in Recovery: Strengths and Weaknesses in Procurement Processes with CDBG-DR Funds” and the World Bank primer “Understanding Policy Change: How to Apply Political Economy Concepts in Practice” and writes op-eds regularly.

Mary was appointed as Strategic Programme Manager for Scotland Excel's
construction, transport and environment category teams in June 2021. Since taking
up this post, she has overseen the launch of new frameworks supporting Scotland's
net zero ambitions. This has included working with Scottish Enterprise and the
Scottish Government Supply Chain Development Programme to identify mechanisms
for inclusion of supply chain innovation for carbon reduction opportunities in Scottish
local government procurement.

Mary is an experienced leader with extensive background in local government and
the private sector. Before joining Scotland Excel, she was the Corporate
Procurement Manager at Perth & Kinross Council and lead for a multi-council
procurement reform programme.

Camila Salazar is OCP's Head of Data Analytics and Learning, working with partners globally to take a data-driven approach to improve public procurement outcomes. She leads OCP’s data use support to partners, developing methodologies on how to use open contracting data and advising on how to improve data quality to achieve specific goals, reforms, research, monitoring, and advocacy. Camila also supports OCP’s capacity-building activities.

Before joining OCP, Camila worked as an open data analyst and consultant in Latin America, working on research projects and training public servants, journalists, university students and civil society in open government, open data, data analysis and data journalism. She also worked as a data and investigative reporter in Costa Rica.

Camila holds an MSc in Applied Social Data Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science as a UK Foreign Office Chevening Scholar and holds a BA degree in Economics, a BA and a Licentiate degree in Journalism and Communications from the University of Costa Rica.

Dr. Katherine Sugar is a researcher at the University of Oxford and the University of Edinburgh.

At Oxford, Katherine research is concerned with urban sustainability, with a particular interest in the governance of low carbon and inclusive transitions at the local level. She currently works on GoZero, a project funded by UKERC which examines the governance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) for net zero across the UK's four nations.

At Edinburgh, Katherine also works at the School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh. She is Cohort Lead on the Masters in Energy, Society and Sustainability. She is also undertaking research on finance and public procurement for net zero and has a particular interest in local authority governance.

Katherine has a PhD in Geography from the University of Glasgow.