CST CEO Summit 2027

David is a community worker, co-founder and now co-lead, of the Relationships Project. Good relationships are the foundations of everything that matters. The Project gathers evidence, makes tools, delivers training, runs support networks and is currently developing the Relational Practice Academy - a new centre for applied learning in relationship centred practice.

Amongst other innovations David also co-founded and led Community Links from the kitchen table to the Community Enterprise of the Year award, Discover – the UK's first story centre for children and their families, and Shift – applying behavioural insight and award winning design to social change. He helped to create the Social Impact Bond, chaired the first SIB funded project and established and led the Prime Minister’s Council on Social Action from 2007 to 2010. He was the first Practitioner in Residence at the LSE Marshall Institute, is an Ashoka Senior Fellow and is currently chair of the Flying Seagulls. He was once described by the Guardian as “the godfather of the community sector, equally admired on the left and right”.

Georgia Gould was appointed Minister of State (Minister for School Standards) at the Department for Education on 6 September 2025. She was previously Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office between 9 July 2024 and 6 September 2025. Georgia was elected as the MP for Queen’s Park and Maida Vale in July 2024.

Maggie has worked for many years in senior leadership positions in schools and local authorities. She was the director for leadership development, research and succession planning at the NCSL in England and interim chief executive until 2013.

She now works internationally with leaders and their teams in education and other sectors fostering practices that reduce stress, anxiety and overwhelm and increase effectiveness and resilience through the practice of presence & compassionate leadership. She is the author of Leading with Presence; it's an inside job, published in 2022 by Cadogan Press.

She is a Trustee of L.E.A.D. Academy Trust, of Bedfordshire Schools Trust, The Chair of the School of Contemplative Life, and has just finished a nine year term as a trustee of The Story Museum, Oxford; a museum dedicated to the power of story to change lives.

She was awarded the CBE for services to Education in 2014.