Judges for the Innovation Award
We are delighted to have had a stellar panel of judges evaluate applications to the Innovation Award 2023. These expert judges come from a range of backgrounds and have varied expertise within education.
Shortlisting Judges
Adam Bones, Deputy Head Teacher, The Bolder Academy
Adam Bones is a Teach First Ambassador, and currently the Senior Deputy Head Teacher of Bolder Academy – a mixed Secondary Academy in Isleworth, West London. Across his twelve years in education, he has led History Departments, helped with sixth form set up and design, supported trainee teachers and helped establish a new start up Academy. He has long been a supporter of education networks, working with and helping to establish Be Bold History, Be Bold Computing, Science in Practice, English in Practice and Tools for Thought. He also has worked with schools as a consultant and regularly delivers talks on educational matters, including in 2022 at the Wellington College Festival of Education.
Binda Patel, Director Of Innovation, The Sutton Trust
Binda has dedicated over 15 years to social mobility and education. She is the Director of Innovation at the leading social mobility charity, Sutton Trust, and has worked on several programmes and activities that have supported thousands of young people across the UK. Binda played a pivotal role in establishing a new digital platform, Sutton Trust Online, which went on to support over 6,000 students during the pandemic which is now the bedrock for engagement for over 12,000 students annually. Binda now leads on the Trust’s ambitious vision of bringing innovation at the heart of their activities. Outside of work, Binda is a trustee at Arts Emergency, Access Accountancy and former trustee and award holder at the Diana Award.
Cath Murray, Chief Development Officer, Right To Succeed
Cath Murray is Chief Development Officer for Right to Succeed, overseeing communications, policy and advocacy, fundraising, and development. Cath was previously the programme lead for IntegratED, a 19-partner programme working to improve outcomes for excluded children across England, and the policy lead on exclusions and alternative provision at the Centre for Social Justice. Prior to this, Cath worked as an education journalist at two education trade newspapers, Schools Week and FE Week, and as managing editor for the parenting website, Netmums. In her early career, Cath lived in Spain and Costa Rica for over a decade, working as a translator and interpreter then managing study-abroad programmes for university students.
Helen Rafferty, Senior Programme Manager, SHINE
Helen has had a varied career in commercial consulting, education, engineering, and science. Her educational background is in science education, particularly physics, and this has included setting up and supporting national teacher and student networks for the Institute of Physics, and leading evaluation and research for the British Science Association. She has also taught maths and science to school and university students, and gained a PhD in Computational Quantum Electronics. Helen began working for SHINE in 2017, when her passion for giving disadvantaged children the very best opportunities in life saw her return to her Northern roots. Helen leads on our grant-making, evaluation and development strategies and is committed to changing the lives of children in the North.
Joe Howlett, COO & Founder, One Degree Academy
Joe is a qualified teacher and headteacher with extensive experience in the education sector, leading at both Secondary, Post 16, and Primary. He currently serves as the part-time Chief Operating Officer of One Degree Academy, an ‘outstanding’ free school. He worked with the school’s trustees to found One Degree Academy and is responsible for the operations of the Trust. He works closely with a network of schools supporting them in operational improvement and delivering outdoor education training. Joe grew up on a rural dairy farm. He won a scholarship to study for the International Baccalaureate in India. .
Jordan Sonko Crawford, Associate Deputy Head, Queens Park Community School
Jordan is the Deputy Headteacher at Queens Park School, with over ten years experience working in mainstream secondary schools. He studied Computer Science at Oxford Brookes and began his career as a teacher of computing. For several years, he has been dedicated to ensuring the schools he works with are truly committed to becoming anti-racist, not only through building a decolonized curriculum, but also leading on CPD, aimed at developing the racial literacy of the school community. In addition to this, Jordan consults for the African Caribbean Education Network (ACEN), delivering anti-racism training to staff at various independent schools across the country.
Kristy Evers, Director of Impact Partnership, ImpactEd
Kristy is Director of Impact Partnerships at ImpactEd, a social enterprise working with both schools and education organisations to reduce the evaluation deficit across the education sector. She has been with ImpactEd for over two years, leading the growth of the Impact Partnerships department from 2 to 14 people currently. The team works with a variety of education organisations to build their capacity for evaluation and run external evaluations. Before joining ImpactEd, Kristy worked in a variety of roles across the education and impact evaluation sectors, from working as a teacher in Singapore to a researcher for a major educational publisher in the UK.
Marika Johansson, Head of Impact & Evaluation, FEA
Marika is the Head of Impact and Evaluation at the FEA. She is excited to bring to this role her experience and passion for education and evaluation. She joins the organization from Teach First, where she led evaluations for programmes supporting school leaders. Prior to Teach First, she lived outside the UK and worked in a range of research roles focused on children and families, including at CARE International and the Gates Foundation. After spending a summer during graduate school on a data project for a school district, she joined the Teach for America programme and taught middle school for three years. Marika has a BA in Human Biology and a Masters in Public Administration.
Rachael Morris, Senior Evaluation Manager, EEF
Rachael is a Senior Evaluation Manager at the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). She is responsible for overseeing the design and implementation of EEF evaluations, as well as contributing to the operational and strategic development of the EEF. Prior to this, Rachael was a Research Fellow at Canterbury Christ Church University, where she evaluated interventions to improve health outcomes in the UK and EU. Rachael holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Kent, where her thesis investigated the underlying mechanisms of non-invasive neural stimulation and its impact on attention and cognitive rehabilitation.
Robin Chu, Director of Strategic Projects, School for Social Entrepreneurs
Robin is Director of Strategic Projects at School for Social Entrepreneurs. He leads on scaling forward Match Trading and Enterprise Grants - a new way of grantmaking that places power in the grant recipient and leads to more sustainable impactful organisations. Prior to SSE, he was founder and CEO of CoachBright, a national social mobility charity that supports disadvantaged pupils become more independent and resilient to challenge for university and high level apprenticeships. Robin also is a trustee of Career Accelerator who support diverse young people into tech careers.
Deborah Coughlin, Founder and Author
Deborah Coughlin is an InnovateUK Women in Innovation Award Winner. She founded Method X Studios to tackle health inequalities in mental health using tech, mental health science and entertainment. Alongside MXS she is working with transformational leadership programme A Million Realities in research and development of a new programme focused on adolescent mental health.
Farihah Alam, Deputy Head Teacher, Buile Hill
Farihah is a Deputy Headteacher in Salford, Greater Manchester. Prior to working in the North West, Farihah worked in a number of high-performing academies and free schools in inner London. Farihah is also a governor for a secondary school in Manchester and sits on an advisory group for Equality and Diversity for a multi-academy trust. She is currently on maternity leave following birth of her first child in October 2022.
Final Judges
Lisa Crausby, Executive Director of Education, Star Academies
Lisa is responsible for the development of the trust’s education strategy, which seeks to secure and maintain excellence in all aspects of work across all the trust’s schools. She has responsibility for teaching and inclusion services, through which the trust supports its staff to meet pupils’ varied needs and secure excellent learning.
Lisa joined Star from a multi-academy trust where she was the Chief Education Officer responsible for transforming the education of over 12,000 pupils from areas of high deprivation. Previously, Lisa was the Inspector Adviser for Service Children’s Education with responsibility for securing high personal and academic achievements across the Ministry of Defence’s secondary and middle schools worldwide. Lisa has over ten years’ experience inspecting primary and secondary schools and is a passionate linguist.
Ed Laver, Global Sellside Enterprise Service, Bloomberg LP
During his 22-year career at Bloomberg, Ed has held a number of leadership positions in which he has been responsible for managing senior client relationships across the UK, Northern Europe, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Following 13 years in sales, Ed moved to Bloomberg's product department, where he was responsible for building solutions for compliance professionals at some of the world's largest buy-side and sell-side financial institutions.
As a member of Bloomberg's London Office Committee, Ed is an executive sponsor of the Black Professional Community and co-leads a career acceleration programme designed to support women, minority and ethnic colleagues.
Ed is also a qualified mental health first aider. In his spare time Ed is a coach for kids cricket, rugby and football and can be found on a golf course regularly.
Kana Maniwa, Global COO for Specialist Sales, Bloomberg LP
Kana is the Global COO for Specialist Sales. Joined Bloomberg in March 2016, she has been working on various client-facing roles before her most recent position, reporting directly to Global Head of Specialist Sales Paul Tivnann. Kana is also the co-lead of EMEA Bloomberg Pan Asian Community since July 2021. She graduated in BA & MA War Studies, King’s College London.
John Roberts, Director of Product and Engineering, Oak National Academy
John is Director of Product and Engineering at Oak National Academy, and Chair and co-founder of Edapt, which provides edu-legal support to teachers in England and Wales. John also advises a number of organisations including Teach Your Monster to Read (Usborne Foundation). Qualifying as a teacher through Teach First in 2007, John was later Director of Standards at a secondary school in the North West.
Elijah, Youth Steering Group Member, Fair Education Alliance
Elijah is 17 and from the West Midlands. He is currently studying A-Levels, and hopes to study Education at university. In the future Elijah wishes to contribute to educational research with a specific focus on the destinations of marginalised students and how to best enhance outcomes. The alternative provision education he experienced during secondary school fuelled his interest in improving the education system for all pupils and furthered his understanding of the social policy behind education. This is his first year on the FEA Youth Steering Group. Elijah is also Chair of the Careers and Enterprise Company Youth Advisory Group.
Olia,Youth Steering Group Member, Fair Education Alliance
Olia is 18 lives in London. She would like to become a lawyer in the future and is currently studying English, History, and French for her A-Levels. Olia strongly believes that young people should not be limited by their socioeconomic background and is passionate about making education accessible to all. This is her second year in the FEA Youth Steering Group.
Sam Butters, Co-CEO, Fair Education Alliance
Sam brings 15 years of experience in strategy, business and organisational leadership, and is committed to having a social impact and creating a fairer world. Sam has led the Fair Education Alliance since 2017, coming together with Gina in 2019 to launch the Fair Education Alliance’s new strategy and to launch as an independent charity.
She started her career on the Deloitte Scholar Programme in Audit and then went into Consulting where she supported a range of public sector and education clients with organisational challenges. 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.
After Deloitte she led Strategy and Planning for Teach First, with a focus on ensuring effective delivery of Teach First’s programmes across England and Wales, internal operations improvements and development of new strategies for the organisation (including developing a strategy for supporting School leadership in disadvantaged areas).
She is also a member of the Board for Skills Builder Partnership.
Gina Cicerone, Co-CEO, Fair Education Alliance
Prior to joining the FEA, Gina led the Teach First Innovation Unit to nurture social entrepreneurs to tackle educational inequality through training, funding and mentoring. This enabled a portfolio of 20 start-ups to scale from reaching 30,000 pupils to over 500,000 in 5 years.
In 2008, Gina founded Fundacion VASE, an NGO in Ecuador dedicated to volunteer exchanges and youth leadership development. After five years as CEO, she handed over leadership to pursue her Masters in Development Management at the London School of Economics. Prior to joining Teach First, Gina supported individuals to start and scale their social ventures at UnLtd. Gina is a governor of Clapham Manor Primary School, a trustee of the OVO Foundation and on the Ashoka Venture Board.