SEG helps tackle a range of challenges facing the education sector.My role is identifying high quality M&A opportunities, working with the leadership teams of growing education businesses to complete deals and onboard in a thoughtful and effective way, then work together on growth and collaboration - across multiple brands and service lines.

10,000 students across 12 sites: Pre-School, Primary, Secondary and Adult Learner divisions.Strategic turnaround, improved student renewals, better staff pay and working practices, redesigned the summer school business model, recovered and successfully launched the investment in international pre-school. The changes I led doubled surpluses for the British Council’s English Language schools in Hong Kong, improved staff pay, and focussed on meeting the real needs of the learners.

I carried out an external review of education services for the Council and proposed they setup a trading entity to compete with private sector alternatives and generate income during a period of tight funding. Having plenty of experience in this, I developed the business plan and investment case, then saw through the set up and rapid growth phase of what came to be called EES for Schools, forming the most successful government-owned education venture at that time in the country.I then developed a business case for sale of the business for the Council to realise the financial benefits of the venture’s success. This happened and is now called Juniper Education.The project generated £millions in surpluses and sale proceeds for its public sector owners.

“Quite simply the most innovative school improvement partnership in the UK” (Education Investor award judge)I was hired to spearhead growth in this private public JV - an organisation that had no experience of how to assess and enter a market or win new business at scale. It was filled with lovely people but had no real strategy for growth. I focussed initially on a small but enterprising group of rebels who had the vision to pursue opportunities in an emerging market - national school staff training and assessment contracts. We won bid after bid and grew a business within a business to the surprise and delight/relief of the leadership team. We went on to win other large education service contracts. The business trebled. Interestingly the legacy services, that the original leaders imagined would be the thing to grow, remained as they were with little true market opportunity, the business simply grew around them. I’ve seen this lesson now many times over the years - it’s often better to grow something new with high potential than to change something long established with little market potential or internal vitality for growth.Designed and led strategy, operating and commercial model for several education ventures, bids and projects up to £125m.Led growth of Four S/Babcock Education, an innovative public-private joint venture, trebling turnover.Led and won multiple bids for national education contracts delivering professional training and assessment to staff in schools.Led a multifunctional technical, commercial and advisor team to win the £125m Positive Partnership education services bid with Devon CC, then set up of Babcock LDP, a new public-private joint venture with 300 staff. This generated returns for the Council at point of sale as well as ongoing returns from their stake in the business as it served hundreds of schools in the SW of the U.K.

On returning to the UK I worked for a range of education start ups. I created content for and managed development of e-learning products for UK schools and for the B2B English learning market in Japan.I set up teams, systems and processes, CRM, renewals, usage tracking, sales teams, sold products and services and managed sales and customer service teams.

My time in China was overseeing the teaching team at the first JV English language school, I believe, in Mainland China. This was an exciting time to be hiring a team, setting up and running a school or education business in China. Rapid change, a society becoming more prosperous from a very low base and becoming more open to the wider world. We created a curriculum, hired and trained local and overseas teachers, experimented with course types and durations for different kinds and ages of learners, delivered classes. Living in Shanghai was fascinating and fast paced.

My goal was to travel the world, learn from the cultures and people I encountered, have good experiences and grow as a person. It turned out that I really enjoyed teaching and worked at it as a craft, researching, trying out and listening to others, especially my students.I taught English in several countries, using a range of teaching methodologies, some home grown in the culture or even in the individual school, and others well established as part of the canon of teaching literature and research. I found a foreign language was not only a tool for the people learning it but a way of them widening their experience of life and thinking about the world in new ways, transformative at times in ways I wouldn’t have imagined.