Members and Trustees

Abingdon Learning Trust Members

Trustees

 

Ian Behling (Chair)

  Ian provides considerable governance experience, is a former long serving chair of a local primary school and the lead governor for primaries in the Abingdon Partnership of Schools.  Ian is also link trustee on Net Zero, linking with his professional consultancy work in a large multi-national on climate and sustainability.  He additionally brings an in-depth appreciation of how to scale a small organisation as it grows.

Lynn Fathers		   Lynn is the Chair of the Compliance Committee and lead Safeguarding Trustee on the Board.  Lynn has over 20 years’ experience in school governance in the academy and maintained school sectors.  A qualified teacher, School Business Manager and accredited clerk Lynn worked previously in full time and part time teaching and administrative roles before serving in a variety of roles with Oxfordshire County Council and working as a consultant following retirement, developing and providing governing body training and governance reviews. Lynn brings a substantial knowledge of education, compliance and governance.
Michael Nga Michael has a long and varied legal career, having qualified in both England and Wales, Malaysia and New South Wales, Australia. He is presently the Head of Legal for UK and Ireland at BMC Software Ltd (since 2016) and has also been the senior legal advisor at Oxford University Press, as well as working as a solicitor in the UK and Malaysia. 

James Browning		  James has strong business and leadership skills, and is currently the COO of a very large multi-academy trust.  He brings an in depth understanding of how to leverage resources to ensure teachers and school staff can have the biggest positive impact for their pupils.
Jo Milsom Jo is Vice Principal at Abingdon and Witney College. After an early career in the financial sector, she began working in the childcare and early years sector initially but moved through the age groups until starting in the Further Education (FE) sector more than 10 years ago. Jo has experience and expertise in Student Services, Learner Support and Foundation Learning, safeguarding and SEND. She brings deep knowledge of corporate HR and SEND and disadvantaged students to the Board.

Dr Grace Clifton		  Grace is currently Assistant Dean in Education (PGCE Wales) with the Open University and brings this expertise to the Trust as well as her recent experience as a local Abingdon Town Councillor.  She has served as a primary governor in a local church school.  Grace has a broad and deep understanding of all phases of education, especially staff development and ITT.
Heather Darcy Heather is an experienced teacher, initially starting as one of the first TeachFirst trainees, and now is Head of Sixth Form at St Helen's and St Katherine's School in Abingdon.  She brings her professional scrutiny and analytical skills to the Trust Board having worked in a wide range of schools from very challenging maintained to the independent sector.

     

       Dan Young

 Dan brings expertise in marketing to the Board. As Senior Brand manager with Miele GB, Dan brings a perspective that is commercially driven, with experience in marketing, team leadership, commercial management, and propositions development across industries including cyber security and technology.
Terry Watts  An effective, high integrity leader with extensive board level (including CEO) experience in building businesses, from start-up to SME and multinational, multisite businesses in the private and not for profit sector. Terry has a track record of delivering transformational change at pace by winning the trust and support of people at all levels in the team/board. Driven by the desire to make a sustained and valuable impact and create commercially sustainable, growing organisations.
Julian Thrussell Associate Trustee (sits on the Compliance committee)Julian provides advice and expertise in IT security and business continuity.

Jane Johnson

Head of Governance

Jane has seven years experience at senior governance and clerk level roles in small, medium and large multi-academy trusts across Oxfordshire - working with primary, secondary and all through schools.  She has specific recent training in GDPR for schools, cybersecurity, ED1 and Level 3 leading governance qualification.

Her previous career was in management at executive level in the academic bookselling industry with expertise in project management and international customer relations (private companies and PLCs).  Jane is an Economics graduate and life long linguist (Spanish/German).