Cathy Garner, PhD

Innovation and Entreprenenurship

Dr. Garner is an expert in innovation and place-based social and economic development. With a background in knowledge-based innovation; university-company knowledge transfer she has both researched urban development, knowledge transfer and educational outcomes and has developed and led the implementation of practical policies and programmes in these fields.

She holds a number of advisory and non-executive roles both nationally and internationally, including the Scale-Up Institute of the UK, the National Centres of Excellence in Canada, and the World Capital Institute in Mexico. She has undertaken specialised projects on innovation and knowledge-based development in London and clusters across the UK. As Chief Executive of Manchester: Knowledge Capital she built a globally recognised partnership for innovation by bridging the boundaries across business, universities and government.

Previously Dr.Garner established and led an international NGO which addressed the challenge of intellectual property in the development of medicines for the global poor.  She was a founder director of the Scottish North American Business Council and served as inaugural Vice President for International Relations for the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) in the USA. She is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and the Royal Society for Arts in the UK.