2025 highlights

Sophia is a recent graduate from the University of Cambridge. She now works for the Reach Foundation, a charity whose mission is to combat the inequality gap that still exists in our education system in the UK. She is currently writing a book exploring the intimate stories of students, teachers, families and community leaders in one of London’s toughest boroughs.

James Townsend is an Executive Director at the Reach Foundation, where he leads the Cradle to Career Partnership and Reach's leadership programmes for aspiring Head Teachers and and Trust CEOs. James has previously held leadership roles at Teach First and STiR Education, where he helped found and grow the organisation to reach over 200,000 teachers globally. He started his career as a history teacher in east London.

Anne-Marie has led the Brilliant Club since March 2020. She has developed the charity’s strategy, scaled existing programmes and led the establishment of new areas of work. She is widely acknowledged as a powerful voice in social mobility and education and has advised institutions, ministers and policy makers.

During her time as a Director at King’s College London Anne-Marie provided strategic, institution-wide leadership for social mobility and had significant successes in widening participation, student success, academic support, communication, evaluation and fundraising. Anne-Marie helped to establish the What Works Centre for Access and Student Outcomes and co-founded an award-winning parental engagement and community organising endeavour, Parent Power.

For over six years Anne-Marie held a public appointment as the Independent Chair of the Department for Education’s Bradford Opportunity Area and has significant expertise in place-based working.

Anne-Marie has a Masters with Distinction in Public Policy and Management from Birkbeck, University of London. She holds a University of Oxford Teaching Award and was awarded an MBE for services to higher education in 2018.