Our Staff
Executive Team
Tony Nelson – Chief Executive Officer
Chris Holmwood – Chief Education Officer
Ruth Seagar - Chief Primary Education Officer
Jez Bennett – Principal of the LTC
Julia Strong – Chief Operating Officer
Jeanette Wilson-Smyth – Chief Financial Officer
Central Services Team
Our highly experienced and dedicated Central Services team supports the schools across the Trust in all aspects of school finances, human resources, IT, compliance and premises management. This means that our Headteachers and their teams do not need to worry about the business side of their organisation and can focus their efforts on delivering excellent education.
The team comprises of:
- Mrs Jeanette Wilson-Smyth – Chief Financial Officer
- Mrs Julia Strong – Chief Operating Officer
- Mrs Claire Johnson – Director of People Services
- Mornè van Niekerk - Director of IT
- Ms Hannah Carty – Governance and Operations Manager
- Mr Liam Broxup – Estates Manager
Please do not hesitate to contact any of our team if you would like advice in a particular area of expertise. We are always more than happy to help.
Education Team
Our education team fucuses on identify, sharpening and sharing best practice across and beyond our schools.
- Chief Education Officer - Chris Holmwood (full time) –Focus on adaptive teaching, SEND, Reading and subject leader development.
- Principal of the Leadership and Training Centre - Jez Bennett (full time) –Oversight of the Trust educational offer, especially reflective development (QA) and exploration of aspects of shared curriculum and curriculum led financial planning
- Primary Education Officer – Ruth Seagar (full time) – Oversight of the primary education offer.
- Director of Pastoral - Steff Healy (full time) - Work with pastoral leaders across the Trust to evolve the 5D behaviour curriculum, particularly focusing on developing the internal capacity of each school.
- Director of Sixth Form - Becky Mayles (full time from Sep 2025) –Work with the 6th form team to shape and share best practice across our four sixth form sites which serve a community of almost 1,400 students.
- Director of Data and Digital Services - Steve Livesey (0.6 FTE) –Committed to ensuring that these powerful tools impact in the classroom.
- Director of Maths - Ross Lemmon (0.2 FTE) – Shares and shapes best practice in maths, with a focus on KS3
- Director of English - Jess Letts (0.2 FTE) – Shares and shapes best practice in English with a focus on KS3, transition and reading.
- Acting Director of Professional Development - Liz Jobling (0.6 FTE) – Supports the delivery of work in the leadership and training centre
- Director of 5D Bacc- Claire Wright (0.1 FTE) – Responsible for the development of the 5D Bacc across the Trust
- Director of Shared Curriculum - Gemma Williamson (0.1 FTE) – Uses research led approach to co-construct and define what a great shared 5D curriculum looks like. Exploring where and how joint planning can best support teachers and students across schools, ensuring synergy and optimisation of implementation.
- Director of Ped Tec- Ben Butlin (0.1 FTE) –Identifies and shares the practice in how technology can directly support teaching and learning in and beyond the 5D classroom and coordinating the exploration of strategies to improve efficiencies in staff working practice.