Lisa Westcott Wilkins

Westcott Wilkins undertook her undergraduate degree in Communications at Ithaca College, and later completed an MA in Archaeology at University College London in 2001.

Westcott Wilkins' first job was director of operations at Museum of the Earth at Ithaca (2003-2005), then she worked at the University of Rochester as a Chief Development Officer (2005–2007). She then moved to the UK where she was the Editor of Current Archaeology in 2007 and remained in post until 2010 when she undertook a Clore Fellowship – an arts and culture leadership training programme – where she was the first archaeologist to undertake the programme. As part of this Westcott Wilkins undertook a placement as Project Manager for the Evaluation of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad where she was influenced to develop a public engagement evaluation methodology which later underpinned the work of DigVentures, the company that Westcott Wilkins founded shortly thereafter. Since 2012, Lisa has been the Founder and co-CEO of DigVentures where she has pioneered the use of crowdfunding, crowdsourcing and digital methods to increase access and opportunities for non-specialists to engage in archaeological practice and research.

In 2012 when the resident Site Dog of DigVentures, Fergus, was interviewed for the Radio 4 Today Programme. All DigVentures Site Dogs have their own staff profiles on their website and they have pioneered Dog Cams.