Our Team

Without exception, everyone at TLET is deeply committed to the very highest outcomes, regardless of their role, recognising the strength of collective contribution and effort.
TLET Leaders

Our academy leaders, driven by exceptional Principals, focus relentlessly on pupils and their outcomes, with everything else as peripheral. They are restless in their leadership, seeking ever better ways to improve in a culture of success. Put simply, they do what it takes to make the difference.

Central team leaders, motivated by an inspiring Executive, lead high performing teams who add value to our academies by providing the environment in which others thrive. They unburden academy leaders, enabling them to keep the main thing, the main thing – pupil and student outcomes.

 

TLET Teachers

Our teachers are highly effective in the classroom, both in the uncompromising quality of their teaching and in the perceptive and individualised attention they give to pupils and students. They are passionate about the subjects they teach and dedicated to the children in their care. Our teachers are carefully recruited and expertly supported to make sure they, like our pupils and students, are always at the top of their game.

TLET Support Staff

Our support staff are the backbone of our organisation and are specialists in their areas of responsibility. Like our teachers, they are well-trained and highly effective at ensuring the smooth operation of our Trust day in, day out


All Executive Trustees Members
James Higham
Chief Executive Officer and Accounting Officer

James Higham

Chief Executive Officer and Accounting Officer

James is an innovative and inspiring leader who has worked in education throughout his professional career in schools across England. He’s driven by his personal values of kindness, loyalty, and endeavour - shaping the way he leads. James is passionate about the transformative power of education and leads our Trust with a singular focus on providing children, young people, and colleagues with an environment in which they can thrive.

He is a former Head Teacher, establishing and leading successful academies with demonstrably high impact on standards for all pupils. As a result, he has first-hand expertise of the relevant administrative, operational and leadership structures that make academies successful. 

In addition to his leadership of our Trust, James works as a systems leader with neighbouring Teaching School Hubs to support school leadership development and school performance. He is a coach for aspiring and new-to-role executive leaders under the National Professional Qualifications programme, and supports and promotes a mastery approach in Maths in his role as Headteacher Advocate for a local Maths Hub.

Marc Goodey
Chief Financial Officer

Marc Goodey

Chief Financial Officer

Marc is an experienced and versatile accountant and leader having worked in the private sector, the public sector and with charitable organisations. He is a Business Studies graduate and fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA).

In Marc’s more recent role prior to joining TLET, he focused on bringing a more structured approach to strategy development, strategic management and change. He has extensive experience in all areas of Finance, including Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Financial Accounting, Management Accounting, Budgeting, Forecasting, Payroll and Cost Management.

Having worked in the past in the Further Education sector Marc has a particular affinity to Education. As well as his extensive fiscal knowledge and skills he brings an abundance of enthusiasm to the Trust.

Alice Wright
Director of Operations

Alice Wright

Director of Operations

Alice has worked in the maintenance and estates field for seven years and in her previous role worked for a large MAT across five schools. Her experience in this role covered legislation, health and safety and reactive and preventative maintenance, as well as large scale building projects.

Alice is enthusiastic about the role of school buildings as productive learning environments. She is keen to put her experience into practice across the trust and work toward making each building, practical, safe, well presented and well preserved for current and future generations of students.

Guy French
Chair of Trustees

Guy French

Chair of Trustees

Guy has extensive experience as a leader in strategy development and change delivery, especially in mergers and recovery situations across the financial services sector. Having worked at Executive and Director roles, he has developed skills including strategy development, investment appraisal, programme delivery, assessing business performance and marketing. He also has extensive experience of the design and management of governance, control and management systems, as well as operational improvement and organisation design.

Before his current role at Coventry Building Society, he was the Strategy Director at an insurance mutual, responsible for strategy, brand, communications and the society’s social impact foundation. Guy started his career at Barclays; ending his time there running global lending operations for the Wealth division. After two years at Northern Rock as part of the turnaround team, Guy undertook a range of consultant and interim roles supporting High Street banks including the Co-operative Bank and RBS.

Guy is passionate about the value of education being married to a teacher and having three grown-up children, two of whom have become secondary school teachers. Guy is also a Local Area Board member at Quest Academy in Rugby where he is the Safeguarding Governor. He has lived in the Rugby area for 25 years and is Chair of his parish council where he is working with others to encourage greater community participation.

Stewart Jardine
Trustee

Stewart Jardine

Trustee

Stewart is a founding member of Transforming Lives Educational Trust. An experienced company director, having worked in and across a variety of learning and skills focused organisations developing and implementing business strategy and policy, and in the development and quality assurance of new learning programmes.

Stewart’s responsibilities have included:
• Business P&L and full budgetary management
• Setting and driving financial and operational KPIs
• Management and oversight of business HR and QA compliance
• Delivering multi-million pound transnational skills development projects
• Managing/negotiating government funded contracts (UK-wide)
• Direct management and delivery of technology infrastructure and innovative online learning provision and assessment platforms.

His most recent employment as Director of Operations for Pearson Education extended to the development, implementation and quality assurance of regulated franchised international qualifications.
Stewart is currently a self-employed Education Management Consultant majoring on quality assurance and business process improvement through business preparedness and implementation of the business, environmental, and occupational health and safety management standards of ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and ISO 45001.

Sue Crosson
Trustee

Sue Crosson

Trustee

Sue was a Primary teacher for 20 years teaching across Key Stage 1 and 2. The latter part of her professional career was as an Associate Tutor, Teaching Fellow and Senior Teaching Fellow at WIE/CPE University of Warwick. She has extensive experience of Initial Teacher Education, including undergraduate, Teach First, School Direct and PGCE Core programmes.

Sue has detailed knowledge and understanding of all aspects of the current primary and early years teaching and learning landscape, including current research in teaching and learning and the Ofsted framework.

In addition to her professional role, Sue has been Chair of Board of Trustees of charity based in Rugby for the last two years, following five years participation in governance of the charity via the Board.

Sue is the Safeguarding Trustee.

Craig Keady
Trustee

Craig Keady

Trustee

Craig comes from a varied background in education, having held a number of senior leadership roles including Associate Principal. His most recent position was as a Trust-Wide Vice Principal for a large multi-academy trust. In this role, Craig was responsible for pastoral care, safeguarding and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Prior to that, as a senior education consultant for the NSPCC, he delivered safeguarding training and bespoke consultancy.

Craig is now the Director of Client Services for Satis Education, providing recruitment and consultancy services for the education sector.

Simon Rose
Trustee

Simon Rose

Trustee

roses@tlet.org.uk

Simon's professional career in education spans more than two decades. He has been Director of Primary Education at the David Ross Education Trust for the last six years, leading 23 academies under the Trust's Primary Division; responsible for the education of c6000 pupils and for leading c900 staff across a wide geographical footprint. Simon is a highly effective system leader, with significant experience and impact at Director and Headteacher level and was awarded an MA with distinction in Educational Leadership and Management from the University of Nottingham. Simon’s experience as a Headteacher included ten years across two different schools, as well as six months in an Executive Headteacher role. 

In his current role, Simon has led his primary directorate from below national performance measures to significantly above. This is about leading a positive culture where leaders and teachers at all levels drive improvement, and where the power of a knowledge-rich curriculum drives ambitious expectations for all.

In addition to his role as a TLET Trustee, Simon's Non-Executive Director roles include Company Director of Nevill Holt Community Arts and Director / Trustee of Peterborough Diocese Education Trust. Simon also volunteers on an independent safeguarding board for a business overseeing children’s homes. Simon’s youngest daughter joined Houlton School in 2022 and he is keen to support TLET’s continued success over the coming years.

Ruth Walker-Green
Trustee

Ruth Walker-Green

Trustee

walkergreenr@tlet.org.uk

Ruth has worked in education for over 25 years and has developed in-depth knowledge of the sector.  She joined Peterborough Diocese Education Trust (PDET) in the role of Headteacher before being seconded to the PDET Executive as Head of Learning and Achievement.  Shortly afterwards, she was permanently appointed to the Director of Learning and Achievement role and later became Deputy CEO.  Following a rigorous national recruitment process, Ruth was appointed to the role of CEO and presently leads thirty-three schools across Northamptonshire, Peterborough and Rutland.

Ruth has gained extensive strategic leadership experience; the effectiveness of which has been well documented by a range of personnel.  She is able to lead at scale and is skilled in shaping the strategic direction of complex organisations with focussed pursuit of strategic priorities.  She is passionate about ‘making a difference’ - to advance education for the public benefit and ensure all children and young people flourish.

Karen Zardin
Trustee
Philip Davis
Member

Philip Davis

Member

Philip is a skilled chartered secretary and governance professional with experience working in a number of listed companies and other international private limited companies.

Philip currently works for Acrisure Re (an international insurance company) as their Company Secretary, and his principal responsibilities include meeting preparation, drafting minutes, reviewing legal agreements and advising on governance issues such as Board Effectiveness, Risk Management, and the general regulatory environment. His role involves a high level of impartiality, a broad understanding of multiple business functions, and communicating with various stakeholders including directors, external advisers and internal management/staff.

Philip is an associate member of the Chartered Governance Institute, a member of the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn, and in 2017 became a Liverymen of the Worshipful Company of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators.

Laura Howard
Member

Laura Howard

Member

Laura is an experienced Chartered Accountant and independent Finance and Strategy Consultant servicing the Education sector. Laura has held the positions of Chief Operating Officer and Bursar of Bilton Grange Preparatory School, prior to which she was the Director of Finance at Epsom College.

Laura has developed a clear insight into the education sector through her employed work, her previous roles as Governor and Trustee of the Beacon School in Surrey and Trustee of the Transforming Lives Educational Trust.

Laura has extensive experience in budget preparation, cost management, budget monitoring and change management. She has significant experience in preparing and presenting reports for many senior stakeholders such as school Governors, bankers and insurers. She has well-developed people management and leadership skills acquired through the various roles that she has undertaken within her career.

Nigel Snook
Member

Nigel Snook

Member

Nigel Snook was the former Chief Executive of Education Development International which was formed by the merger in December 2002 of GOAL plc and the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry Examinations Board. Acquired by Pearson in 2011, EDI was among the top Awarding Organisations of vocational education in the UK and high stakes international exams.

Working closely with the Board of Directors Nigel was responsible for all aspects of EDI’s business strategy including that of compliance with its obligations as a public company.

Previously Nigel was Chief Executive of Lantra Trust which operates the Sector Skills Council for environmental and land-based industries. Whilst at Lantra Nigel Chaired Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire Partnership working with the local Connexions Services and Next Step contract for the West Midlands.

Nigel began his career with the Department of Employment and subsequently worked for the Manpower Services Commission for 12 years in a range of local, regional and national roles involved with vocational education and training. For two years he was Private Secretary to Sir Bryan Nicholson, the MSC Chairman and headed up the MSC’s largest area office operation covering Birmingham and Solihull.

Nigel is an MBA and a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, the Chartered Management Institute and the Royal Society of Arts and brings a wealth of experience in the management of publicly funded institutions and relationship with the Regulators.

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Pupil - Henry Hinde Infant School Pupil