Gillian Docherty

Gillian Docherty is a British computer scientist. She is Chief Commercial Officer at the University of Strathclyde and President of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce.

Career Docherty joined IBM in 1993 and spent 22 years working in technical sales, financial services, hardware and software. She became a UK senior executive and led the team responsible for driving IBM software propositions to Scottish clients.

Docherty became CEO of The Data Lab in June 2015. The Data Lab was established in 2014, and by 2018 had completed over 100 data science projects in Scotland, estimating that it had generated more than £100 million extra revenue for Scotland's economy. The Data Lab has hubs in Aberdeen, Inverness, Edinburgh and Glasgow and as of 2018 had received over £25m in funding from Scottish Funding Council, Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise, and Highland and Islands Enterprise. In 2015 she launched The Data Lab's MSc programme and in 2016 doubled the cohort to meet the rising demand in big data.

She has spoken at many events including the Big Data Analytics conference and the Glasgow Business Summit. In June 2017 she delivered a TED x talk entitled 2037 - Who's leading? Who's following?. She won the 2017 CEO Of The Year at the ScotlandIS Digital Technology Awards.

She is President of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, having previously served as Deputy President. In 2022 Docherty was appointed chief commercial officer of the University of Strathclyde. In 2017 she was listed in the top 10 most influential data professionals in the UK. In 2018 was named Digital Leader for the UK. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2024.

Personal Docherty is married with a daughter who appeared on stage with her during her TEDx talk.