Member Article

Janet returns to north east to help power Opencast's further growth

An experienced leader in digital transformation has returned to her native north east to help power the further expansion of one of the UK’s fastest-growing tech consultancies.

Janet Onyia, who grew up in South Shields, has moved back to the region from Scotland to take up the newly created role of director of transformation and change at Opencast.

After completing a degree in politics and international relations and business at the University of Aberdeen, Janet worked for the Scottish government’s international development agency and a manufacturing and services company before being appointed a senior technology strategy consultant at the University of Edinburgh.

Based in the Scottish capital, Janet then moved to Lloyds Bank as a project manager and scrum master and then on to professional services giant Accenture where she was a strategy and operations delivery lead.

“I’d been looking for a new challenge and I also wanted to return to the north east so the timing of this new role was perfect for me,” says Janet, who has moved to Newcastle.

“I firmly believe in doing good while also doing well – of a firm having a purpose, but also being successful and sustainable. This is exactly what I saw with Opencast – the company’s values align perfectly with mine and I’m so happy to contribute to something special.”

Janet’s role, a new one within Opencast, is to oversee all transformational activities within the company, with a specific focus on change management. Since 2022 the company has more than doubled in size, and opened city hubs in London, Edinburgh, Leeds and Glasgow.

“I want to ensure we have the right fundamentals and foundations in place for further expansion. I’ll be focusing on our internal change management and transformation activities to allow us to keep growing at the rapid rate we’ve been expanding.

“And I want to make sure we’re expanding without losing everything that is so great about us, which means keeping the unique Opencast culture. People love working here for the interesting and important work we do, but also because of the nurturing and supportive culture that has always been at the core of the company.

“I’m really excited to be part of the team that will propel us forward to our next phase of growth.”

Janet is a fellow at Founders of the Future, a programme for the UK’s most promising tech entrepreneurs and a non-exec board member of Sheffield Hallam University. In 2021, Janet was named in Google’s UK top 10 list of black business role models.

Welcoming Janet’s appointment, Opencast chief executive Tom Lawson said: “We’re thrilled Janet has joined us in such a vital role – she is a global tech delivery leader with an impressive record of leading large-scale digital transformation projects and programmes.

“She has led major projects in cloud, platforms, open banking and data migration for financial companies, and her impressive career to date also includes work in the central government, higher education and energy sectors. Janet will steer all of our strategic change projects to ensure we continue to deliver on our ambitious plans for growth.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Hoults Yard .