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Board of Trustees

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Jacquie Smith - Chair | Expiry of term December 2024
Jacquie has worked within the education system since graduation.  Teaching roles have been within EAL and, for the most part, History to GCSE and A-level.  Jacquie has considerable experience of leadership roles within education at middle and senior leadership level in west London. She was appointed Associate Headteacher of Lampton School with specific responsibility for establishing the Teaching School and the SCITT alongside Line Management of a number of departments  and personnel matters.  The role included supporting schools in category on behalf of London Challenge. The school was a founder member of Challenge Partners and as a Senior Leader, Jacquie participated in 6 Quality Assurance Reviews of other schools.  Following her retirement from Lampton Academy in 2017, Jacquie has worked for the Teaching School Council as an advisor establishing their peer review model, assessing trainee teachers for Lampton SCITT, for the EEF on an EAL in the mainstream project and since 2014 for Schole on school improvement in Kenyan and Ugandan schools following the local curriculum. Jacquie continues to train emerging middle leaders for Researchers in Schools and coach senior leaders in London schools.  Additionally she is responsible for some of the training for SENCOs undertaking peer review on WHOLE education’s SEND support programme.  Jacquie has considerable personal experience of SEND - as the parent of an adult daughter with Dravet's syndrome which led to autism and severe learning disabilities. 

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Simon Arnold - Vice Chair | Expiry of term December 2024
Simon has always been community-minded and has been helping local residents for years.  He is a trustee of a charity involved with supporting families of SEND children.  He was also a local councillor between 2018-2022.  In his day job, Simon works in television and broadcast having most recently worked on a few of ITV’s largest reality shows.  Simon has a vast amount of marketing and IT experience and speaks three languages.

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Akin Akintola | Expiry of term December 2024
Akin is an experienced Non-Executive Director and qualified Chartered Accountant with a good mix of using CFO (strategic) and hands on FD/Programme Director skills in a career spanning 25 years covering business development, business modelling, funding for growth, acquisition and divestiture experience in commercial, Not For Profit, Local Authority and SMEs.  Akin has extensive experience of transformation and customer facing programmes, in UK Education sector; service-based businesses, retail and manufacturing operations, in the UK and Internationally, resulting in the change in organisational culture and profit improvements /value propositioning and enhancements.

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Andrew Singer | Expiry of term December 2024
Andrew is a Chartered Accountant with many years experience in the corporate work. He has worked both in the UK and overseas for a number of listed companies, private equity based companies and large privately owned organisations, Andrew is a trustee of a number of charities and has acted as a director of other Multi Academy Trusts.

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Russell Middleton | Expiry of term December 2024
Russ works as a Principal Engineer for a marine engineering company focussing on systems engineering and integration.  He started his career working in university based industrial research and development and since then has worked in a range of technology and IT roles mostly in the defence and medical sectors.  Russ has been a Parent Governor, Chair of Governors and is now a Co-opted governor at Barnhill.

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Ben Spinks - CEO | Ex officio
Ben joined MLP as Chief Executive in August 2023. He is responsible for setting the strategic direction for MLP, for overseeing education standards across the trust’s schools, and for external relationships beyond the trust. Ben was previously Chief Executive at BDSIP Ltd, a social enterprise owned by 56 schools providing a range of school improvement, inclusion, training, advice and guidance to schools across East London. Ben has also held senior director roles at Capita Transformation, the major change consultancy of the Capita Group; and in local government, where he was most recently Assistant Chief Executive at the London Borough of Brent, with responsibility for communications, strategy, community engagement, business intelligence and public health. 

In his spare time, Ben is chair of Trustees at Learning in Harmony MAT, a governor at Sheringham Primary school in Newham, and a charity trustee. Ben has two children aged 11 and 12.   

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