Women Do Boards - Case Study
Sarah Quinn
About Women Do Boards
Women Do Boards is a Digital Trustees programme run by Third Sector Lab in partnership with Scotland Women in Technology. It supports women working in digital, data and technology to understand charity governance, build confidence in their board-level contribution and explore carefully matched trustee or board adviser opportunities. Participants receive practical learning, peer support, informal introductions and follow-up support.
Women Do Boards helped Sarah Quinn recognise that decades spent translating complex digital change had already given her valuable board-level skills, and supported her into a local board advisory role with Home-Start Glasgow North and North Lanarkshire.
Case Study
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Women Do Boards
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Case Study ✳︎ Women Do Boards ✳︎
Sarah Quinn has spent around 30 years working with technology and major digital change. Today she is Director of Programme Delivery at the University of Glasgow, where she leads project and portfolio management across programmes ranging from IT infrastructure to new CRM and timetabling systems.
Much of Sarah's work is about translation. Digital teams are not the university's core business, so she helps colleagues focused on learning, teaching and research understand what technology change means for them. She knows the language, the common pitfalls and how to find the right answers, even though she is not a computer scientist and has never written a line of code.
Sarah had considered trusteeship for several years but was uncertain about what it involved. Questions about time, liability and whether she had enough knowledge kept her from acting. When she saw Women Do Boards, she decided not to overthink it and began her application straight away.
The programme helped Sarah understand the role and introduced her to charities she might never otherwise have encountered. Her match with Home-Start Glasgow North and North Lanarkshire has developed into a board advisory role. The arrangement gives Sarah and the charity space to learn together and decide how her digital perspective can be most useful.
Home-Start supports families with young children facing difficulties. Its work is rooted in personal relationships, peer volunteers and in-person family support, rather than technology. Sarah can help the organisation feel confident about its digital foundations while exploring future opportunities that could strengthen or extend its services.
The local connection mattered too. The charity works in the area where Sarah lives and serves on the community council, and its office is only around ten minutes away. Meeting the team face to face has helped make the relationship feel real.
Sarah's advice to other women in digital is not to confuse board-level contribution with technical delivery. 'You're not going in there to run their tech,' she says. 'You're going in there to help them navigate a landscape that, for many of them, is not their day-to-day world.'
Women Do Boards is a Digital Trustees programme run by Third Sector Lab in partnership with Scotland Women in Technology.
Director of Programme Delivery at the University of Glasgow | Board advisory role with Home-Start Glasgow North and North Lanarkshire