Adam Nichols – Founder and Managing Director

Adam Nichols, chairman of pictured at the dilapidated Harpenden Free School which is due to open in September 2012.

Adam has devoted his career to transforming the culture of education and learning to make it more relevant and engaging for children and to set them up for successful adult lives.

Adam spent 8 years as Chief Executive of Changemakers, a charity which every year enables thousands of children and young people to unlock their leadership potential. Whilst there he advised Prime Ministers Brown and Cameron on education and youth policy and was named by Charity Times as a ‘Rising CEO Star’.

Adam is the Founder of Harpenden Free School, which opened its doors to its first group of children in 2012. He sits on conduct and capability panels for the government’s National College for Teaching and Leadership, having previously been a council member of the General Teaching Council, and is a non-executive Director of Edapt, a new professional body for teachers.

He has been working with schools for over a decade, during which time he has developed innovative approaches to careers education, created a pan-European accreditation scheme for work experience, led the implementation of the citizenship and enterprise curricula and established a major national government sponsored initiative around pupil voice.  He has also supported a number of school operators with the opening of new schools and academy conversions.

Adam began his career as a community organiser in some of the UK’s most disadvantaged communities, and maintains his involvement at the grassroots through OVO, a community theatre company he founded in 2002. This also enables him to maintain the fantasy that the Royal Shakespeare Company may one day come calling, now that his dream of being a centre forward for Liverpool Football Club has finally died.

Adam comes from a teaching family, counting parents, cousins and inlaws among members of the profession. He is married to Felicity, a primary school teacher, with whom he lives in Hertfordshire with their two children, Anna and Finn. In his spare time he sings jazz with Food of Love, and can occasionally be heard crooning in London’s high class and low rent karaoke bars.

Matthew O’Connor

Matthew O'Connor

Matthew is a strategy consultant with extensive experience of working with schools, the UK Department for Education and its arms length bodies.

He led the development of guidance and support to schools to implement national workforce reform programmes, as well as designing and delivering a range of school improvement schemes on behalf of the UK Training and Development Agency for schools including workforce planning, personal tutoring and support staff deployment.

 

 

Catherine Stevens

CatherineCatherine has held senior roles for several of the UK’s major school operators and developed the UK government’s School Improvement Planning Framework, which has been implemented in 20,000 schools nationwide.  She has extensive educational experience in sub-Saharan Africa, having set up and run schools in Kenya and Uganda.