Defending the integrity of grant giving
I am the Lead for Operations within Callaghan Innovation’s Funding and Contract Management team. We manage all the grant monies which support our customers. Most of my career has been in R&D grants where I started at the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology 17 years ago working on both science and business-facing grant schemes.
My work implementing the R&D Loan scheme, a covid-response initiative, was a particularly satisfying achievement. I managed the Growth Grant Extension project over a year long period, which involved coordinating and implementing around 350 contract variations detailing individual requirements and working documentation for customers. My work also involves overseeing the end to end process within grants including the system administration of our online portal (IMS). There are a lot of moving parts!
It’s important to me that taxpayer funds are managed appropriately and so I proudly take ownership of my responsibilities. Our team all have the same motivation, to provide a good experience for our customers and ensure that our processes are defendable, robust, and the integrity is maintained throughout. Personal and team accountability is critical for this to succeed.