Having worked for over 15 years in the skills arena for Skills Development Scotland, Scottish Enterprise and Careers Scotland, Alison came up with the idea for Skillfluence during a sabbatical in Silicon Valley.

Whilst there, she studied at 3 different institutions and attended numerous events. The universities were so well connected with start-up culture, business, and investors that Alison knew there was a need to mirror this in the UK.

Alison got to work on making more connections to join the dots between outstanding research and real-world impact and influence.

While Alison was building Skillfluence, she was still working full-time, using her evenings and weekends to create training programmes and develop the platform. Eventually, she took the leap and made Skillfluence her full-time job.

Skillfluence is a tech-based blended learning approach to train PhD students and researchers in essential business and soft skills. It is unique, innovative and unmatched in the Higher Education market

Since its founding in 2015, Skillfluence has trained over 10,000 researchers and worked with more than 60 universities in the UK and Europe.

Miked-up "Our Women Entrepreneurs" - features the start-up journeys of some of the incredible female founders putting Scotland on the map for business innovation, and is supported by Royal Bank of Scotland.