About ImpactEd Group

Jonny founded ImpactEd and sits on the Executive as Group Director for finance, operations and governance. He advises education leaders on strategy and sustainability. He co-founded The Brilliant Club, led the Peter Jones Foundation and worked at BCS Consulting and Accenture. He is an East Midlands MAT trustee, chairs the Group’s Employee Ownership Trustee Board and is Treasurer of The Young Foundation.

Chris is the former CEO of The Brilliant Club and launched the consulting model which has developed to become ImpactEd Consulting. He is a trustee at the Delta Academies Trust and Get Further.

Elin leads ImpactEd Group as a Group Director and member of the Executive. She directs high-profile, cross sector convening work for our partners, including landmark projects on inclusion, AI and oracy. She brings 20 years' experience in education policy and communications and was previously Managing Director of PLMR. She is a trustee of Inspiration Trust and The Together Project.

Róisín was previously co-CEO at the Centre for Education and Youth and Head of Programmes and Evaluation Challenge Partners. Alongside work, Róisín is also a part-time PhD student at UCL in the IoE.

Jo brings 20+ years of experience in school improvement and professional learning, serving as Executive Director at Delta Academies Trust for nine years. Previously, she was Director of English at OGAT and Senior Examiner for Eduqas. Jo is a trustee of New Collaborative Learning Trust and a member of the EEF's Disadvantage Expert Advisory Group.

Yalinie leads ImpactEd Consulting, supporting organisations such as Outwood Grange Academies Trust and the Fair Education Alliance on strategy and improvement. She is a former science and maths teacher and Assistant Headteacher with a Master’s in Teaching. At Teach First she ran the Covid tutoring programme, training 1,000+ mentors to reach 100,000+ pupils. She later held senior roles at Education Development Trust and Ambition Institute.

Tania leads partnerships across ImpactEd Group, convening consortia and quality-assuring evaluations across outcomes from attainment to youth violence. As Head of Evaluation at the Youth Endowment Fund, she directed £35 million of programmes for children experiencing disadvantage. She holds a Cambridge PhD, her research has featured in Forbes, and she chairs Blue Smile.

Maddy is a Director within ImpactEd Consulting and leads our Philanthropy specialism. She works with organisations to develop their fundraising strategy, infrastructure and culture. She also works with funders to enhance their support for charities and authored our Be Fundable report. Previously, Maddy worked for Future Frontiers and The Brilliant Club. She is a trustee of Oxfordshire Community Foundation and Boxing Futures, and holds a PGCert in Philanthropic Studies.

John Jerrim is Professor of Education and Social Statistics, and is Director of the Quantitative Social Science research centre at IOE

Annette leads evaluations for schools, charities, funders and education programmes. She specialises in quantitative and mixed-methods design and in making findings clear to non-specialists. Partners include the Sutton Trust and the Hg Foundation. She was previously a Research Manager at Jigsaw and EdTech Hub. She holds a PhD in Sociolinguistics from Queen Mary University of London.

Beth leads evaluation and research partnerships with Multi-Academy Trusts, schools, charities and funders. Over five years at ImpactEd, she has worked with partners including United Learning, the Careers and Enterprise Company, Get Further, Etio and the Youth Endowment Fund, and helps oversee the School Impact Platform. She holds an LLM in Human Rights from Birkbeck and is fluent in Welsh.

Chris joins from Teach First where he was Head of Evaluation & Impact. Prior to Teach First he was Head of Geography at Queen Mary's Grammar School.

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Ciara leads research and evaluation projects with schools, trusts and charities, with a particular interest in education, disadvantage and child poverty. She has experience designing and delivering evaluations using creative and participatory methods, including work with South London Gallery. Before joining ImpactEd, she taught French and Spanish in secondary schools and worked in school onboarding at education technology organisation Third Space Learning.

Deepta leads ImpactEd Evaluation’s partnerships with funders and charities improving outcomes for young people, specialising in school inclusion, youth-led social action and violence reduction. Partners include the Department for Education, Etio, DHL UK Foundation, Mission 44 and Bite Back. She was previously Research and Impact Manager at an arts and education charity delivering relationship education. She holds an University of Oxford MSc.

Holly works with trusts, schools, charities and funders on strategy, governance, data and bespoke research commissions. She has over a decade of experience working in education and social impact, having previously led evaluations at ImpactEd and SQW. She started her career as a teacher, has been a governor at two schools and holds an MA in Educational Leadership.

Katherine has 15+ years in education, teaching in London and Mexico. National roles include leading conferences at The Brilliant Club, ITT programmes at Teach First, and DfE ECF and NPQ contracts at EDT. She holds an MA in Public Policy from KCL.

Kristy focuses on building new partnerships and overseeing evaluation quality. She brings over 10 years’ experience in education and research, specialising in edtech, with work including evaluation of the DfE’s EdTech Demonstrator Programme and delivery of an edtech testbed pilot. She sits on the DfE-funded EdTech Evidence Board and is a PhD candidate at UCL researching equity in edtech.

Lauren leads complex evaluation partnerships at ImpactEd Evaluation, designing mixed-method evaluations for charities, funders, trusts and schools, with particular expertise in health, wellbeing and early years. Partners include the Thrive Approach, Barnardo’s and the Royal Horticultural Society. She spent eight years as a primary teacher, Early Years Curriculum Leader and phonics specialist, and is Safeguarding Governor at a special school.

Lucy has 10 years' experience in school partnerships, edtech and evaluating school programmes through working in widening participation and as Programme Director at Learning with Parents.

Mayowa has 8 years experience in the children’s tuition industry, supporting students from early years to GCSE level. She has worked in various education delivery roles and more recently within people and operations management.

Georgia runs the systems and services ImpactEd Group works on, from the CRM to commercial reporting, outsourced partners and AI, and is the Group’s Data Protection Officer and Designated Safeguarding Lead. She previously ran operations at a modern slavery consultancy, building compliance infrastructure and overhauling IT and cybersecurity. She is a Sutton Trust alumna with a DipHE in Criminology and Law.

Olia is a Management Accountant at ImpactEd Group. She oversees day-to-day finance, leads monthly reporting and works with directors and budget holders to develop budgets and analyse income and expenditure variances against forecasts. She brings eight years of finance experience across education, healthcare and membership organisations, including roles at United Learning and City College Peterborough.

Tabitha manages and delivers mixed-methods evaluations helping charities, schools, trusts and education organisations understand their impact. Her work includes attendance research with the Harris Federation, alongside projects for Ambition Institute, Football Beyond Borders and the Tutu Foundation UK. She was previously a Project Worker at Investing in Children, a children’s rights charity, co-producing research with children and young people.

Tom has over 10 years experience using data to inform & inspire those who work to make a difference to young people. He has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and a Winston Churchill Fellowship.

Sonia Thompson is Headteacher and Director at St Matthew’s Research School in Nechells, Birmingham. She has written widely on curriculum and pedagogy, contributing to numerous publications including WALKTHRUs 3, Reading Teachers, and a chapter in The ResearchED Guide to the Curriculum. Sonia is the author of An Ethic of Excellence In Action, part of Tom Sherrington’s In Action series. She serves on councils and trusts; such as the Education Endowment Foundation, CofE National Education Society, Classics for All, and Voice 21. Sonia has advised the DfE on writing frameworks, sits on the NPQ review panel, and was a Commissioner for the Oracy Commission.

Dr Sonia Ilie's research explores education inequality, looking at the socio-economic factors which shape children's and young people's access to, and outcomes from, education. She focuses particularly on fair access and equitable participation in higher education and how earlier educational experiences affect this. Sonia investigates these issues primarily in relation to the English education system, and also at a macro scale in low- and lower-middle income contexts. Sonia has substantial experience leading large-scale research in education, exploring the effectiveness of established interventions to improve student learning and narrow socio-economic attainment gaps, using experimental and quasi-experimental designs.

Dr Robert de Vries is Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Sociology and Deputy Head of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Kent. His research focuses on inequality, social mobility, and public attitudes towards welfare and social policy. He has led and contributed to research projects funded by UKRI, the Leverhulme Trust, and the European Research Council. Robert teaches quantitative methods and data analysis and has published widely in leading sociology and social policy journals. He is also the author of Critical Statistics and contributes to public discussions on evidence-based policy and the interpretation of social data.

Professor Neil Humphrey is the Professor of Psychology of Education at the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, UK. His research focuses on what we mean by wellbeing, why wellbeing matters, what matters for wellbeing, and what works for wellbeing, in children and young people. Neil’s research has been funded by NIHR, ESRC, TNLCF, DfE and others. When he is not working at the University, Neil moonlights as an unpaid taxi driver for his three daughters.

Matt Jones OBE has served as Principal of Ark Globe Academy since May 2012. Globe Academy is a mixed all-through school for students aged 4–18 in Elephant and Castle, with a Sixth Form that launched in September 2014.

Matt serves nationally as a RISE Advisor for the Department for Education and senior education advisor and member of the Premier League’s Education Advisory Board.  

He founded The Elephant Group in 2018 to improve fair access to top universities and now chairs its board. Since 2015, Matt has chaired the Southwark Association of Secondary Headteachers, collaborating with local leaders on key education issues.

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Jane was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Northern Education Trust in April 2025, overseeing 30 academies in disadvantaged communities. Her leadership is defined by a sustained track record of success in school improvement. As Deputy CEO (2018–2025), she partnered with the executive team to drive a transformation resulting in every academy being rated 'good' or 'outstanding', with outcomes consistently exceeding national averages. Her expertise spans her time as a Head Teacher, Executive Head Teacher, National Leader of Education, and Deputy Director for the Regional Schools Commissioner, consistently delivering rigorous improvement and exceptional results.  

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