Susan Matheson

COO, Maritime Academy Trust

Susan is Chief Operating Officer at Maritime Academy Trust and CEO of the new Maritime Children’s Foundation. She joined Maritime in January 2018 from the Department for Education. Her career started in the government economics fast stream in 2001, where she served at the Department for International Development before moving to HM Treasury in 2004. She spent a decade there, culminating in leading 2012 spending review negotiations for the education team. In 2014 she moved to DfE, where she headed the implementation group, led the central capital unit through the 2015 capital settlement, and then became deputy director to the south west regional schools commissioner, overseeing over 1,000 academies. At Maritime, she leads finance, HR, estates, marketing, IT, and strategic projects. She also founded and now leads the Maritime Children’s Foundation.

Hall 11a

1 Breakout sessions: Series one

The partnership dividend: How do we build and benefit from it?

The ‘partnership dividend’ is realised through an investment in each other, in people, in ‘our place’. It is ‘paid out’ in the increased collective capacity of and for our children, families and colleagues and in stronger, more resilient communities. In this session, James will be inviting trusts to provide tangible examples of this work already underway at the neighbourhood level. He’ll pose some reflection questions to help consider the leadership implications for trust leaders seeking to support their colleagues in this work, for the benefit of the children, staff and communities they serve. Ideal for all trust leaders interested in system leadership, including chief executives, directors of education, and school improvement leads.

1 Workshop series two

Maritime Children’s Foundation: Why did we set it up? How did we do it? What have we learned along the way?

This session is for colleagues in trusts who are curious about the why how and what of setting up a charity. Join us for an overview of our experience over the last 3 years, the good, the bad and what we’ve learned along the way. We’ll share why Maritime chose to set up our charity back in 2023. We will then walk you through the steps we took to set it up - in simple terms, with key learnings along the way. Then we will reflect on what we have learned from just over one year of running the registered charity and the impact that we have had so far.