UKRI Chief Information Officer
Christine Ashton is the Chief Information Officer at UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
She was appointed in January 2024. She has been a Non-Executive Director for Royal Bank of Scotland International since September 2020.
As a Fellow of the BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, she is Vice-Chair of its most senior technical group, Fellows Technical Advisory Group, to help the BCS deliver its mission of ‘Making IT good for Society’. She also sits on the DIGIT Lab Advisory Board.
As the former Chief Information Officer for SUSE, she helped apply digital technology to transform product infrastructure after business takeover or merger and initial public offering. Previously, she was the CEO of Cogventive, advising companies during re-structures and transitions.
Before Cogventive, she was Chief Digital Officer in residence at SAP, working to deliver strategic impact from emerging cloud based technology. As Senior Vice President of Technology at Thomson Reuters, she delivered sustainable strategic capability.
Before SAP and Thomson Reuters, she held global roles in companies scaling and undergoing business change, including:
- BP
- BG Group (now part of Royal Dutch Shell)
- Transport for London
- United Utilities
- Associated Octel
She has previously held independent non-executive director roles at Pay.UK and the Home Office. Additionally, she has sat on CEO advisory boards of global technology vendors and many innovative start-ups.
Last updated: 8 March 2024