Meet the Scotland Committee

Dr Lesley Sawers (Chair)

Lesley is currently a non-executive director of Crosswinds Developments Ltd and a Trustee of Age Scotland. She is also a Director of GenAnalytics Ltd, a specialist analytical and market insights consultancy. Previously Lesley was Vice Principal and Pro Vice Chancellor for Business, Enterprise and Innovation at Glasgow Caledonian University, Chief Executive of the Scottish Council for Development and Industry and Deputy Chair of the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency. She has also held senior executive positions at Scottish Power plc, Royal Mail, CACI Inc and VisitScotland. She is also a past Trustee and Chair of Action for Children (Scotland), Chair of the Royal Mail Advisory Board Scotland and Chair of the Scottish Cities Alliance.

As Scotland Commissioner, she also serves on the Equality and Human Rights Commission Board of Commissioners. Find out more about our Commissioners. 

Mariam Ahmed

Mariam works for a NGO providing advocacy for women experiencing domestic abuse and specialising in support of women from migrant and ethnic minority backgrounds. She is a Director for Scottish Women’s Aid, Chair of the Glendale Women’s Cafe and a member of the Scottish Minority Ethnic Women’s Network.

Lindsey Millen

Lindsey is the Policy Manager at Close the Gap, Scotland’s expert policy advocacy organisation working on women's labour market participation. She leads on Close the Gap’s work on the public sector equality duty and education and skills policy, alongside working with employers to enable them to take action to tackle gender inequality in their own organisations.

Having worked at Close the Gap for over seven years, Lindsey has extensive experience in policy advocacy and development, employer engagement across the public, private and third sectors, and collaboration with colleagues across the women’s and equalities sectors in Scotland and the UK. Alongside this, she is a member of the board of Rape Crisis Scotland, working to end violence against women in all its forms.

Tatora Mukushi

Tatora is a UK-based human rights lawyer currently working in the Scottish Government Legal Department.

Tatora is on the Solicitors' Roll in England and in Scotland, with litigation and advocacy experience in criminal defence, asylum, immigration, mental health and incapacity including pioneering cases in each of these areas.

As a Legal Officer for the Scottish Human Rights Commission Tatora undertook the Commission’s intervention into the leading case in the Lock-Change eviction litigation wherein he participated an award-winning social justice collaboration. He led the commission’s work in relation to digital forensics and advocated to the Scottish Police Authority and Police Scotland. His current work with Shelter Scotland is centred around structural flaws in the system for housing and sustaining refugees and asylum seekers, and the legal framework for EEA nationals as a consequence of the United Kingdom’s departure from the EU.

Tatora is registered as a curator-ad-litem to the Mental Health Tribunal for Scotland. 

Tatora convenes the Racial Inclusion Group for the Law Society of Scotland for whom he has published on racial justice.

Rami Okasha

Rami is the Chief Executive of CHAS, Children’s Hospices Across Scotland. In this role, he leads work to support children with life-shortening conditions, and their families, in hospital, homes and hospices. Previously, he was the Director of Transformation and Innovation at CHAS.

Until 2018, he was Executive Director of Strategy and Improvement at the Care Inspectorate, Scotland’s largest scrutiny and improvement body. There, he was responsible for leading the Care Inspectorate’s improvement support activities across the care sector, and directed approaches to scrutiny methodology, intelligence, organisational development, corporate reporting, involving people who experience care in decisions, communications and policy development. He co-led the development of Scotland’s Health and Social Care Standards, working with people who use and provide care to ensure these are outcomes-focused, based on human rights and wellbeing, and person-led. Before joining the Care Inspectorate in 2013, he worked in public affairs, communications, policy development, and also as a trade union officer for the EIS, where he represented teachers in the workplace, including involving discrimination issues.

Register of Scotland Committee Members’ interests

The governance framework sets out rules and guidance for Scotland Committee Members on conflicts of interests, and we maintain a publicly available register of Committee Members' interests. Declarations of interests are available to download as Word documents, below.

• Lesley Sawers declaration of interests (23KB, Word)
• Mariam Ahmed declaration of interest (41KB, Word)
• Lindsey Millen declaration of interests (54KB, Word)
• Tatora Mukushi declaration of interests (55KB, Word)
• Rami Okasha declaration of interests (43KB, Word)