Board of Directors

I have been Chief Executive Officer of Bradford Diocesan Academies Trust since April 2014 overseeing the Trust growth from a three school MAT to Trust of 10 schools and over 7,000 pupils (as of Jan 2016). I am also acting as interim CEO for the set-up of a new Diocesan MAT in the Richmond area of North Yorkshire and sits as a Trustee on the LEAF Academy Trust board to support their re-brokerage in to Abbey Academies Trust. My work for BDAT also enables me to support a number of regional and national initiatives, most recently advising the Diocese of Leeds on their academy strategy and chairing the DfE West Yorkshire Strategic Partnership on collaborative working across education in the region.

I am a political science graduate from Leeds University and Chartered Marketer. I have worked in a number of public sector roles delivering project work across different areas of the children’s workforce from early years, social work and integrated working (every child matters). I previously worked as a team leader in the Academies programme at the Department for Education covering Yorkshire and Humber and the North West.

For over three decades Alison has been involved in the delivery and leadership of academic and vocational learning. After working as a Head of Sixth Form/Assistant Headteacher in two large secondary schools, she took up a role as a Senior Advisor at Doncaster Local Authority, responsible for implementing the 14-19 strategy, monitoring activity across the borough’s secondary schools and supporting structural intervention. Alison is currently Vice Principal at Longley Park Sixth Form College in Sheffield, responsible for curriculum and quality. Throughout her career, Alison has persistently championed strategies to improve teaching, learning and assessment to impact positively on the life chances of young people.

Following a full career as a Warfare Officer in the Royal Navy during which he saw much of the world (especially the Gulf and West Indies) and gained a Master’s degree in Defence Studies, Peter Thompson took early retirement in 1999 and moved to Yorkshire to become the Bursar at Bingley Grammar School, a large 11-18 comprehensive school with some 400 in the Sixth Form. In 2007 he left there to take up the post of Bursar at a small co-educational all-through Independent day and boarding school in North Yorkshire prior to joining Woodhouse Grove School as Operations Director in 2012.

He joined Bradford Diocesan Academies Trust in November 2015 and is the Chief Operating Officer. The Trust is now home to 17 schools – four secondary, 13 primary, with around 1350 staff, 9000 students and a turnover around £56 million per annum. Peter’s role is providing strategic operational leadership and support across the Trust in many areas such as regulation and compliance, HR, legal, data protection, Safeguarding, Health and Safety, procurement, value for money, insurance and many other areas!

Peter’s expertise is in making strategic business decisions to provide the best value support to staff and pupils to give every pupil the opportunity to achieve their full potential. He has delivered a number of high value projects involving new build and refurbishment programmes on time and on budget. As an HR Generalist, he provides advice and support to the management teams and enjoys building and shaping teams of people to meet the ever-changing needs of schools.

Peter has recently completed 10 years as a Governor, Chair of Trustees and Member of a small Multi- Academy Trust in Bradford with a co-located Special School and secondary school and is a Director of the New Collaborative Learning Trust.

Deborah Green is Chief Executive of ucisa a charitable company which represents the interests of Chief Information Officers in HE and FE and the teams they lead. Reporting to and working closely with the Chair of the Board of Trustees, she is responsible for upholding the charitable object of ucisa, providing strategic, operational and personnel management for ucisa and its subsidiary companies.

Prior to her appointment at ucisa, Deborah was Director of Student Recruitment at the University of Hull. Although a lawyer by profession, Deborah has a wealth of Higher Education experience joining Hull after five years, Deborah on the executive board at Leeds Beckett University where she led the Marketing and Corporate Communications Directorate. During her time there, Deborah led a major brand repositioning exercise, as well as one of the biggest communications programmes in Leeds Beckett’s history, in preparation for the university’s name change from Leeds Metropolitan University to Leeds Beckett in September 2014. Deborah also revolutionised the university’s approach to recruitment and the enquirer and applicant experience, developing and launching the university’s first major integrated marketing & recruitment campaigns, which included a range of innovative digital outputs, in addition to their first television campaign; building a multi award winning team in the process.