East London School Business Leaders 2022 Conference & Exhibition

Ben Hardy

Ben is a Stakeholder and Engagement Lead in the Schools Commercial Team at the Department for Education. The team's role is to support the delivery of the Schools' Buying Strategy. Before joining the DfE, Ben was part of the leadership team at Schools North East, a school-led regional network for all 1,150 schools in the region. In his role as Relationship Manager, Ben was responsible for developing and implementing effective engagement with a wide range of stakeholders including CEOs, CFOs, Head Teachers, School Business Professionals, Local Authorities and other charitable organisations. He worked closely with schools, Multi Academy Trusts and clusters to enable the Schools North East to identify and address the key challenges they face. Prior to this, Ben worked with leaders and governors at schools, MATs and LAs across the country for The Key. Ben is Vice Chair of Governors at a primary school in Newcastle where he is link governor for curriculum and Special Educational Needs. He also has experience as a school governor at a small special school where he chaired the leadership and management committee responsible for overseeing a location move, the recruitment of a new headteacher, the restructure of the governing body and an Ofsted inspection.

Blaire Palmer

Blaire is a world authority on the changing face of leadership and work. An author, speaker, coach, consultant and commentator on future trends in business, with more than two decades of experience coaching and provoking boards and senior leaders, Blaire shares her funny, insightful and challenging ideas about leadership and change with audiences around the globe, inspiring them to find ways to start running their companies in partnership with their people, lose the ego around leadership and re-think what leaders are here for in the post-Industrial Age. As one of the youngest female producers of the BBC’s flagship “Today Programme” Blaire spent a decade breaking stories and shaping the UK news agenda before her fascination with leadership and change led her to train as one of the UK’s first corporate coaches. Since then she’s written 3 successful books on the subject of leadership and is regularly quoted in the media.

Chris Jermy

Chris is Head of Business Development and since joining Zenergi in 2013 he has undertaken a number of roles, predominantly focused on supporting education, I&C and Local Authority customers fulfil their energy needs better. Chris has covered most roles within the sector at some point, including account management, energy procurement, leading a complex query specialist team, compliance (Chris is an accredited public buildings and domestic energy assessor), energy auditing, renewable feasibility studies, and project management. More recently Chris has taken on the position of leading the business development team. Chris’ broad understanding of the energy world helps to bring a well-rounded understanding to any customer enquiry.

Claire Delaney

Claire has led an organisation that has a 20-year successful track record of supporting major education transformation programmes across the country. Place Group has helped local authorities raise more than £4bn to rebuild and remodel school buildings, and supported educational sponsors to establish more than 100 new schools in areas of high demand and deprivation, including primary and secondary mainstream, SEND and AP. Ten years ago she set up an education procurement consulting business, Schools’ Buying Club to help schools and trusts focus on optimal back office service delivery, efficiency and compliance. She oversaw the establishment and operation of a regional Schools’ Buying Hub in the South West on behalf of the Department for Education, providing procurement advice and support to over 2,000 schools and creating the blueprint for a national schools procurement service. Most recently Claire established Everything FM, a framework providing schools and MATs with a fast, efficient and compliant way to procure local supply chains and develop value for money contracts. Claire’s passion and commitment to education lead her to founding Bellevue Place Education Trust in 2012 with a vision of bringing together the best of state and private sector education to deliver better outcomes for children. The Trust established seven new schools, and today operates ten primary schools judged as Good and Outstanding by Ofsted. Claire brings strategic knowledge of the education sector as well as in-depth commercial and business experience. A long standing partner of ISBL, she is a schools procurement expert, presenting to school business leaders across the country on how they can excel in their profession and benefit their schools and trusts with better value and higher quality goods and services.

Laura Drury

Laura began her professional career as a performer and trained at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts. Her passion lay in theatre; particularly Shakespeare, comedy and farce. She always felt she had great comic... wait for it... timing! She started delivering communication skills programmes as a ‘side-line’ but rapidly became interested in the psychology behind the work, and trained as a coach. She became passionate about helping others believe in themselves and achieve their goals. Laura is determined to help as many people as possible experience what positive psychology can do for them. Over the past eleven years, Laura has created, delivered and facilitated various training programmes at all levels within the public and private sectors. Some of her more recent clients include; EE, SSP, the CIPD, the Civil Service, Global and Exterion Media. She specialises in communication, impact, influence, coaching and leadership. Laura has also worked in education with the English Pocket Opera Company; devising opera workshops for children from ages 3 to 11. She has delivered physical education sessions based on mathematics for Key Stage 1 and facilitated programmes to raise financial awareness for teenagers. Described by her husband as vertically challenged (or just small), Laura is as spirited and determined as she is short. She is also warm, intuitive and has the ability to create an instant rapport with those she works with, using humour to help them push boundaries and go outside their comfort zones.

Tom Wallace

Tom works at Browne Jacobson as a Senior HR consultant in the Education Team and has over 12 years’ experience working with schools and trusts, including working for a number of years with the largest trusts in the country. Tom is experienced in all levels of HR management including complex union negotiations, high level safeguarding cases and large restructures Tom specialises in pay and reward initiatives and has supported numerous trusts with executive pay and structure reviews, including creating trust-wide pay scales/job families and R&R incentives. Tom is extremely passionate about improving education through proactive HR strategies and has supported many schools and trusts in developing HR initiatives and 5-year plans to achieve this.