Over the course of the last twelve years, my position in the Foundation Centre at Durham University has developed from a primarily teaching-focussed role to team leadership and now Head of Academic Programmes, which includes oversight of sessional, part-time and full-time staff as well as student employees. The student cohort at Durham University Foundation Centre is usually split between one-third international, two-thirds mature students, which represents the largest group of students from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds in the university, including students who may have been in foster care, ex-military personnel, student parents, pensioners, refugees, students who are among the first in their family to attend university, and/ or who may have complex support needs as a result of disability, illness, mental health issue or learning difficulty. As an educator working with these students in an elite university, I am in a unique position to both enable students to reflect upon social inequalities that transect gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, class, age, and disability, as well as to directly challenge societal imbalance through educational achievement.