Gillian Russell

Gillian Russell was appointed Director for Health Workforce in March 2020.

Gillian has many years of experience within the Senior Civil Service in the Scottish Government working across five very different high impact roles.

A lawyer by background, Gillian spent three years advising at senior level across health and social care before moving to a social policy role. In that role Gillian developed experience on enabling assets based approaches and coproduction to deliver better outcomes.

Gillian then moved to reforming and transforming public services by ensuring the effective delivery of the benefits of Police Reform. During summer 2014 she worked on readiness for the referendum outcome. Gillian was appointed Director for Safer Communities in June 2015.

After five years dealing with national security, police, fire and resilience-related issues (including Brexit), Gillian moved to Health Workforce in March 2020. She has been fully engaged in the pandemic response and takes the DG Health and Social Care lead on People.