Laura Dawson is chief information officer at the British Council. 

She was previously director of information systems at Save the Children, UK. She has been in the charity sector for over 6 years working first in RSPB. Prior to that she had 20 years in various central government departments including Nesta, Oftel and the MOD.

Laura is currently the chair person for Charity IT Leaders (formerly Charity Consortium IT Directors Group) and she is currently helping change the organisation to be come a Charitable Incorporated Organisation to help bring the networking group forward.

Her main specialisms in the IT world centre around data integration and governance and in helping organisations derive real value from IT. She is actively pushing organisations to recognise which bits of technology are now pure utility and which actually are supporting the USP of the organisation, and add true value. Another area of focus is in supporting organisations as they create effectively devolved IT within the business, helping it flourish within the right frameworks and become truly effective whilst still keeping a wary eye on risk and control.