Rod Bristow – Pearson President
Rod Bristow is President of Pearson UK, made up of Pearson's education businesses in the UK; Edexcel, the UK's leading awarding body, Heinemann, Longman and Financial Times Prentice Hall. He has worked in education and publishing for thirty years in higher education, schools, colleges, professional training and learning technologies in the UK and Internationally. He was appointed President of Pearson's UK educational publishing businesses in 2000. In 2010, he was appointed President of Pearson UK. He is a Trustee for the Education and Employers Taskforce, a Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts and past President of the Publisher Association.
Sandra Kelly, Whitbread Group PLC
Sandra Kelly is an experienced Learning and Development professional with specialist knowledge of embedded Apprenticeship and Skills for Life work based learning programmes. Sandra has been instrumental to the design and development of a learning culture in Whitbread, essential for internal progression and unlocking talent and potential. Apprenticeships are at the heart of this strategy. The blended vocational skills learning range, described by Ofsted as ‘well designed and greatly valued’ and the award winning development programmes are driving high engagement and aspiration enabling ambitions to be achieved at all levels.
Trevor Luker, Managing Director, Pearson Work Based Learning & EDI
Trevor Luker is Managing Director of Pearson Work Based Learning (UK) and EDI. Trevor joined Pearson in September 2004 as Head of UK Education for Edexcel, becoming Deputy Commercial Director in April 2006 and Commercial Director in June 2007. In 2009 he was appointed Managing Director of Pearson Work Based Learning. In June 2011 Pearson acquired EDI, and Trevor has been leading the integration of the two businesses. Before joining Pearson, Trevor worked for a period as an independent business consultant, he also spent five years working in the US. He holds a Masters in Business Management.
Nick Linford – Editor, FE Week
Nick Linford is author of both the Hands-on guide to post-16 funding (www.fundingguide.co.uk) and the Hands-on guide to post-16 performance and data (www.dataguide.co.uk). Nick was Director of Planning and Performance at Lewisham College for six years playing a leading role in capacity building on the use of funding, performance, data quality and curriculum planning in the learning and skills sector. Nick is now Managing Director of Lsect and Managing Editor of FE Week, the only newspaper dedicated to the further education sector.
Maryam Momla – BTEC Apprentice
Maryam Momla is currently working in the BTEC Apprenticeship team as a Business Administration Assistant since 2010. She has completed a Level 2 in Business Administration and is progressing onto a Level 3. Maryam has added qualifications of BTEC in ICT Practitioners and BTEC in Travel, Leisure and Tourism. After that she worked in retail for many years in which she has a supervisor level. Maryam has regular input in many different tasks such as helping manage administration for her team such as customer queries and bookings.
Euthan Newman
Is a tutor at South Thames College, and winner of the 2011 ‘Outstanding BTEC Teacher or Tutor of the year’ award. Euthan has worked with community groups as a support worker, youth team leader, drama/music facilitator also alongside occupational therapists in providing activities for individuals with mental illness. He has written, recorded and produced a Children’s CD dealing with some songs relating topical and problematic issues among children such as ‘being different’ and ‘saving the environment’. Euthan enjoys studying, playing table tennis and football, playing the piano, composing music and organising fundraising events and concerts.
Rod Smith – Managing Director, Pearson Vocational and Applied Learning
Rod Smith is currently the Managing Director of Pearson’s UK Vocational and Applied business. He has been involved in educational services businesses for over 20 years holding senior positions within Reed Educational, Harcourt and for the last 5 years Pearson/Edexcel. Rod’s background has been in Marketing, Strategy, Innovation and Business Development. Recently he has led the re-development of Pearson’s world class BTEC suite of qualifications – now followed by over 1 million students a year in the UK alone.
Chris Skidmore - MP for Kingswood
Chris was born and grew up in Longwell Green and now lives in Bitton. His family has lived in the local area of Kingswood for generations. Before entering politics, Chris worked briefly in journalism for the People Magazine and as a historical researcher, before going on to write his first book, a biography of the Tudor king Edward VI in 2007. Chris has continued to write, publishing his second book, Death and the Virgin in 2010 and a book on the Battle of Bosworth due later in 2012. He currently teaches history part-time at Bristol University. In his spare time, Chris enjoys playing the guitar and going to music concerts (as a Bob Dylan fan, he’s seen him four times!).
Stephen Exley – Times Education Supplement
After graduating from Warwick University, Stephen started his career in journalism on the Cambridge Town Crier in 2004, before moving to its sister title, the Cambridge News. After becoming the newspaper’s education correspondent in 2008 and breaking a series of stories followed up by the national newspapers, he moved to the Times Education Supplement in 2010. Stephen has been nominated for the Newspaper Society Weekly Newspaper Awards, EDF Energy East of England Media Awards, Education Journalist of the Year Awards and Avanta Press Awards.