The Secretariat
Sam Butters, Co-CEO
Sam has led the Fair Education Alliance since 2017, coming together with Co-CEO Gina in 2019 to launch the Fair Education Alliance’s new strategy and to launch as an independent charity.
Before the FEA Sam led Strategy and Planning for Teach First, with a focus on ensuring effective delivery of Teach First’s programmes across England and Wales and new strategy development. She led the strategy for Teach First’s Leading Together programme for School Leaders.
Sam began her career at Deloitte consulting after completing the Deloitte Scholar Programme in audit. She specialised in supporting public sector and education clients. Key projects included a Higher Education sector-wide transformation for how funding and regulation was conducted after the introduction of tuition fees and a project working with Ingeus in the UK and Saudi Arabia to support adult employability and skills.
She is a member of the Board for Skills Builder Partnership and mother to one daughter.
Gina Cicerone, Co-CEO
Gina has been Co-CEO with Sam since 2019, when they collaborated to co-create the FEA’s new strategy and set-up as a charity. Prior to joining the FEA, Gina led the Teach First Innovation Unit, empowering social entrepreneurs to tackle educational inequality through training, funding and mentoring. Her expertise in this arena stems from her firsthand experience of starting and scaling Fundacion VASE, a social enterprise in Ecuador dedicated to international youth volunteering, her leadership at UnLtd, and her role on the Ashoka Venture Board.
Gina has her Masters in International Development from the London School of Economics, through which she focussed on education, employment and entrepreneurship. Gina is also passionate about sustainability and the arts, serving as Chair of Trustees for the OVO Energy Foundation and Chair of Advisors for Como No, a Latin music producer and festival in London.
Becca Weighell, Head of Youth Engagement
Becca leads our work to ensure that young people, who have faced barriers to their education, are respected and heard in decision making across the education sector, including working with Ofsted and The Department for Education. Her role includes working with our Youth Steering Group, providing youth engagement support to our members and being our Designated Safeguarding Officer.
Becca is a trustee for the Association of Citizenship Teaching and sits on the Reconnect London Steering Group. She also recently completed her master’s degree in Children, Youth and International Development focusing her dissertation on the extent to which children’s right to participate is being upheld in education settings. Prior to the FEA, Becca worked for six years in the humanitarian and international development sectors for War Child UK and Plan International, supporting young people affected by conflict to bring about the change they wanted to see within their communities.
Bethel Seyoum, Youth Engagement Coordinator
Bethel joins the Fair Education Alliance after graduating from the Institute of Development Studies with her Master of Arts in Development Studies. Passionate about community/global development and human rights advocacy, Bethel has worked in Canada and overseas, supporting members of vulnerable communities to access health care, education, and other rights. She also has extensive experience supporting young people in creating the change they want to see in their communities and education system, by making their voices heard. Bethel has also co-founded an initiative that works to support children and young people experiencing poverty, to overcome barriers to education in Ethiopia. She is a strong believer in the transformative nature of education and is passionate about advocating for the right to education for all young people.
Catherine Sangster, Summit Manager
After growing up as a third culture kid, Catherine is passionate about making an impact across our interconnected world. As a result, Catherine holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a Masters in Public Administration, specializing on public-private partnerships, from The George Washington University. Most recently, Catherine concluded the On Purpose program, a leadership and career transition programme for professionals entering the social and environmental impact space. She completed placements at two purpose-led organisations, the Global Alliance of Impact Lawyers and Do it Now Now. Catherine brings several years of summit and conference management in the legal and education space, and has experience in communications and philanthropy from an international non-profit, marketing within a campaign advertising company, and equal education access advocacy.
Chris Haldane, Head of Communications
Chris leads the FEA’s communications strategy, uniting and amplifying the voices of the FEA and member organisations. Chris joined the FEA with over 15 years’ experience in charity communications, most recently as Director of Communications for a large UK anti-poverty charity. Chris has a background in music and creative arts and, as a specialist youth support worker, experienced the impact made when young people’s creative expression is released. Chris is driven to challenge injustice and create a fairer society. Chris lives and works in West Yorkshire.
Daniel Rooney, Digital Project Manager
Daniel leads on our FEA Membership Tools, which foster connection and collaboration across the education sector and enable more effective targeting to benefit young people across England. His role involves managing backend development, leading member-facing workshops, and advocating for our Membership Tools to a variety of stakeholders. Prior to joining the FEA, Daniel worked at the music education charity, Voices Foundation, where he designed and managed a digital learning platform for classroom teachers and music practitioners throughout the UK.
Daniel holds an MA in Music Education from the UCL Institute of Education, and originally hails from Chicago, IL, USA. He previously worked as a music teacher before relocating to the UK in 2017. As Digital Project Manager at the FEA, Daniel is committed to using the power of digital technology to make education fair.
Dan Vogel, Impact and Evaluation Coordinator
Dan supports the FEA’s analysis and reporting of member engagement data. Dan also works at the University College of Osteopathy, creating and monitoring community partnerships and engagement data, and engaging in outreach through the UK Research and Innovation’s Knowledge Exchange Framework. He graduated from Durham University in 2020 and has since moved back to London.
Jane Fernandes, Collective Action and Advocacy Manager
Jane supports FEA members in joint advocacy work including the FEA collective action working groups, which exist to increase member organisation’s influence, impact, and connections.
She holds an MA in Politics from the University of Glasgow and started her career on the Worthwhile Graduate Scheme at Action Tutoring where she worked in both local and national roles, experiencing depth and breadth in primary and secondary English education landscape. She is a trained community organiser and has more recently worked on growing a movement of children and family social workers to create social change at Frontline.
Janeen Hayat, Director of Collective Action
Janeen joins the FEA from Teach First, where she first worked on the strategy team and then as Head of Networks, which has given her deep experience of the need for, and power of cross sector collaboration in education. Janeen started her career as a lawyer, first for the City of New York, implementing Mayor Bloomberg's education reforms, and then for a corporate law firm in London. After seven years in law, Janeen retrained as a secondary school English teacher, which deepened her understanding of what schools need to support pupils in greatest need. She is also a Co-founder and Non-Executive Director of You Be You, a social enterprise and FEA member working to break down stereotypes for children starting at age five. Janeen lives in London with her partner and three children.
Jessica Dunks, Events and Communications Manager - Fair Education Awards
Jessica's diverse experiences converge into a passion for innovation in education. She is excited to join the Awards team as Events and Communications Manager, collaborating with early-stage innovators and FEA members dedicated to addressing educational inequality.
A University of Nottingham graduate in German, Spanish, and Portuguese, Jessica's global education journey kicked off as an English Teaching Fellow for NGO Heart for Change and the Colombian National Ministry of Education. Working in a Medellin secondary school provided valuable insights into the challenges faced by students in under-resourced communities, leading Jessica to establish The Bright Kites Foundation. Since 2018, she has been running a transformative language and cultural exchange programme for Colombian students in London. Jessica completed her PGCE at UCL’s Institute of Education, teaching Spanish in London secondary schools. Inspired by the transformative power of education, she also founded Roots Up Languages during the pandemic, fostering a community of Spanish and Portuguese learners and native speakers both online and through London events.
Naomi Turner, Operations Manager
Naomi works as Team Coordinator and Executive Assistant. She is first port of call for anyone looking to know more about the membership process. Naomi looks after the team day to day and makes sure the FEA runs smoothly. She has joined the team after 4 years in the private sector and previously worked with young people. Naomi comes from a family of teachers giving her an insight into the UK education system.
Rachel Tait, Director of Operations and Impact
Rachel leads the FEA's evaluation and impact management strategy and supports our Award Winners with their research and evaluation. Rachel started her career at youth social action charity Student Hubs, working on everything from programme design to volunteer management to evaluation (as you do in small teams!). She saw what a big difference good impact measurement made to programme quality, relationships, staff and volunteer motivation, communications and more. She then spent four years at charity think tank and consultancy New Philanthropy Capital (NPC), where she provided strategy and impact measurement support to charity and funder clients, conducted research on topics such as what works in engaging young people in arts and culture, and led the Inspiring Impact programme which offers free impact measurement support to charities and social enterprises across the UK.
Siwan Davies, Director of Scaling Impact
Prior to joining the FEA Siwan lead on third sector and innovation partnerships where she developed and managed high profile partnerships with third sector organisations and supported innovation partners to scale. Having always been passionate about Education, in 2013 Siwan completed her PGCE, has taught in mainstream to alternative and non-formal education settings and has experience developing accredited training and curricula. Having graduated with an LLB from Cardiff University, Siwan worked for the Children and Young People’s Assembly for Wales and the British Youth Council. Specialising in youth voice, advocacy and campaigning, she lead and developed programmes to support young people to have their voice heard by decision-makers and institutions on a national and international level.
Soizic Hagege, Head of Innovation Award
For the past ten years, Soizic has worked at the intersection of social entrepreneurship, education, youth work, and innovation. After three years working at the YMCA George Williams College on innovative funds such as the Enterprise Development Programme, she is excited to join the Awards Team at the Fair Education Alliance as a maternity cover for the Head of Innovation role.
Previously, she worked on a variety of education and entrepreneurship programmes across a variety of institutions, including universities, institutes, corporations, and social justice organisations in Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, and South Korea, and on several research projects in Ecuador, Tunisia, and Canada.
Tisha Verma, Head of Innovation Award
Tisha brings ten years of experience in quality and fair education. She completed Teach First and was an English teacher for five years in the UK and abroad. After this, Tisha moved to global education policy and advocacy at Save the Children UK and co-led the collective action of Send My Friend to School, the UK coalition on global education inequality. Tisha’s first-hand experience of the power of internal innovation spurred her to join the Fair Education Alliance to lead the Intrapreneurship Award. Tisha has Masters degrees in International Education Policy and in Education Leadership.