Learn more about our speakers below. Our speakers include leading practitioners in education, expert policy thinkers, and inspirational voices from across the sector. We will be adding more speakers as we approach the conference in November, so keep checking back for more details.
Chief Executive, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Chief Executive, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Peter is the CEO of the CIPD, the professional body for HR and people development. He is also Chair of Engage for Success, was Chair of What Works Centre for Wellbeing, and sits on the board of the College of Policing. He sits on many forums linked to wellbeing, diversity and inclusion, routes in to work and skills, flexible working, and corporate governance.
Peter writes and speaks widely on the development of HR, the future of work, and the key issues of leadership, culture and organisation, people and skills. In 2021, his second book ‘The New World of Work’ was published, exploring the many factors shaping work, workplaces, workforces and our working lives, and the principles around which we can build a future that is good for people, for business and for societies.
Prior to joining the CIPD in 2012 Peter was Chair of the Institute of Leadership and Management, an Executive Fellow at London Business School, and held a number of board level roles. He had a long career in consulting at Accenture working with organisations around the world, and in his last seven years there was global managing director for the firm’s human capital and organisation consulting practice.
He is a Fellow of the CIPD, a Fellow of AHRI (the Australian HR Institute), the Royal Society of Arts, and the Academy of Social Sciences. He’s also a Companion of the Institute of Leadership and Management, the Chartered Management Institute, and the British Academy of Management. He holds honorary doctorates from Bath University, Kingston University and Birmingham City University, and is a Visiting Professor at Aston University, and at Unitar University, Malaysia.
Bestselling author of True North: A story of racism, resilience and resisting systems of denial
Bestselling author of True North: A story of racism, resilience and resisting systems of denial
Sal Naseem is the former Regional Director for London at the Independent Office for Police Conduct, where he spent the best part of a decade working in the police accountability framework in England and Wales. Sal is currently Assistant Director of Insight, Policy & Strategy at Birmingham City Council, and an independent panel member at the National Fire Chiefs Council, supporting its work on culture and inclusion. Sal has worked on some of the most high profile misconduct cases featuring the Metropolitan Police Service in recent years.
As the strategic lead on discrimination, his work focused on stop and search, racism, misogyny, and police culture. Sal sat on the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) Police Race Action Plan Board, and the NPCC National Diversity Equality and Inclusion Board as an independent member. Sal has a law degree from the University of Glasgow and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is the winner of the national Equality Diversity and Inclusion Award from the FDA Union in 2023 and was named as one of the top 50 UK changemakers in the Diversity PowerList in 2024.
Chief Executive Officer, Education Support
Chief Executive Officer, Education Support
Sinéad Mc Brearty is CEO at Education Support, the mental health and wellbeing charity for the education workforce across the UK. She advocates for a systemic approach to wellbeing for the education workforce, attending to the individual, the workplace and the wider policy environment.
Sinéad began her career at KPMG before moving to leadership roles in the not-for-profit sector. She has worked as an organisational development consultant and a lecturer and has been a trustee at a number of charities including Kaleidoscope Trust and Groundswell. She is a currently a governor of a south London primary school.
Partner & Head of HR Services, Browne Jacobson LLP
Partner & Head of HR Services, Browne Jacobson LLP
School and College Trust Leader, Dixons Academies Trust
School and College Trust Leader, Dixons Academies Trust
Faizal has over 20 years’ experience in HR, change, and organisational development, previously working at ALDI, the Co-op and the NHS. He brings a deep understanding of what it takes to build cultures where people feel valued, included and empowered. He is a Chartered member of the CIPD with an MA in Human Resource Management.
Since joining the education sector in 2016 with Star Academies, and moving to Dixons in 2022, Faizal has run a wide range of sector-leading initiatives including equality, diversity, and inclusion (ED&I), professional growth coaching, flexible working (nine day fortnights) and business services transformations.
Co-Founder & Director, Trust Inclusion
Co-Founder & Director, Trust Inclusion
Johan Jensen is a diversity and inclusion expert. Johan has worked with major financial institutions, pharmaceutical companies, charity sector and public sector organisations. In 2017 he founded All-in Education and is now working with a range of education institutions. Johan was previously a director at Teaching Leaders (now Ambition Institute). Johan led stakeholder management at the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) between 2009-2012. He is a first-class honours graduate in International Relations and Political Science from the University of Birmingham, with an MA in Research Methods. Johan is a Founding Trustee of Create Foundation, a charity that supports young entrepreneurs in Brixton, Peckham and Hackney.
Co-Founder & Director, Trust Inclusion
Co-Founder & Director, Trust Inclusion
Linbert Spencer OBE has been helping organisations and individuals to transform themselves for more than 30 years. An author, skilled and experienced learning and development facilitator, consultant and key-note speaker specialising in inclusion, leadership, performance management, personal development and coaching; he has facilitated learning and development seminars and workshops in more than twenty countries and across the UK.
Linbert is active in Bedford where he lives and is Trustee of the HEART Academies Trust and the Harpur Trust – a grant making trust with responsibility for four independent schools.
A former professional actor, international athlete, television presenter and CEO of a national not-for-profit organisation, Linbert has appeared in many documentary television and radio programmes including two appearances on BBC Television’s Question Time. He authored Inclusive Leadership and Why it Matters; The Diversity Pocketbook; How to Build a Multi-Ethnic Church and co-authored several other publications.
Founder, Talent Architects
Founder, Talent Architects
Director of Employer Policy, CST
Director of Employer Policy, CST
Having worked as a solicitor in private legal practice for over 20 years, Natalie now manages a business providing HR and legal support for the education sector across northern England. In this role, Natalie works closely and collaboratively with trade unions in the sector, chairing a consultation group for academies. She sits as a director on the board of a multi academy trust and as the vice chair of a primary school interim executive board. Most recently she has been appointed to the Confederation of School Trusts as Director of Employer Policy, working to represent the interests of trusts as employers.
Executive Director, People, Infrastructure & Innovations, Ted Wragg Trust
Executive Director, People, Infrastructure & Innovations, Ted Wragg Trust
Tamsin has combined the skills and experience from a career in primary leadership and then in business and operations in secondary schools to now lead on operations and innovations at the Ted Wragg Trust. She loves working with leaders in education to create organisational cultures where staff feel valued, included and empowered to transform lives and strengthen communities to make the world a better place. Growing up in Torbay and having lived most of her life across the region of Devon and Cornwall she is passionate about making the South West the best place in the country to go to school and to go on to have a life of opportunity.