Head to Head with Jennifer Henderson, Chief Executive and Keeper (Registers of Scotland)

Our CEO, Jo Causon will be meeting with Jennifer Henderson, Chief Executive and Keeper of Registers of Scotland, as part of our Head to Head series to discuss leadership and challenges faced.

Jennifer is the Chief Executive and Keeper of the Registers of Scotland (RoS), which is the government body responsible for compiling and maintaining 23 public registers in Scotland, including the oldest national Land Register in the world. As Chief Executive, Jennifer has strengthened the customer focus at RoS, making active use of customer feedback to improve the speed of service by digitising and automating the registration processes and the timeliness of access to information by introducing more self-serve options.

Jennifer has been with the UK Civil Service since 1994. Prior to her current role she was at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, where she supported the initial phase of the Building Safety Programme established in response to the fire at Grenfell Tower.

Jennifer’s previous roles include two different Executive Director positions; Operations Director, and Transformation Director, at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (part of the Ministry of Defence), where, in 2017, she received a UK Women in Defence Award for the promotion of gender equality within Dstl.

In parallel with these roles Jennifer was also a Non-Executive Director of Ploughshare Innovations Ltd, which supports the spin-out of defence technology into civilian applications.

Jennifer is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and a member of the Accounts Commission for Scotland; working with other members of the commission to hold councils and other local government bodies in Scotland to account and helping them improve by reporting to the public on their performance.