Our Team

Sam is the Deputy CEO for Learn Sheffield with responsibility for strategic, financial and operational management.

Sam is a qualified Public Finance Accountant and member of Chartered Institute of Public Finance Accountancy (CIPFA), joining Learn Sheffield from Sheffield City Council in 2021. Sam has extensive experience in education finance in Sheffield, working in Finance Business Partner roles in the Children and Young people’s portfolio for over 15 years supporting Schools and Schools Services teams. Sam also has experience of private sector accountancy and audit, completing the first stages of her accountancy training in the private sector.

Sam is passionate about providing value for money services to schools to ensure that public sector funding provides maximum benefit for children and young people.

Helen has recently retired following ten years working for the North East, Yorkshire and Humber Region of Ofsted, most recently as Senior His Majesty’s Inspector and Assistant Regional Director. In these roles, Helen has extensive senior leadership experience in Ofsted, including inspection and monitoring of primary and secondary schools and inspection of initial teacher training providers. Her leadership experience spans all of Ofsted’s remits, schools, early years, further education and skills and social care.

Prior to that she undertook a range of school senior leadership roles, including as a headteacher.  Helen has worked as a school improvement advisor and as a primary and secondary science teacher advisor. In both these roles she oversaw improvements at both school and subject level.

Steve joins Learn Sheffield after seven years as an HMI with Ofsted. Most recently, he was the senior HMI in Ofsted's national policy team for SEND and Alternative Provision. In this role, he was responsible for the Area SEND inspection framework, and for Ofsted's approach to the schools inspection of SEND and AP. As an HMI in the North East, Yorkshire and Humber region, Steve led inspections of maintained schools, specialist settings, AP, independent schools, and Area SEND inspections.

Prior to joining Ofsted, Steve taught for 28 years. He held senior leadership posts across four schools, including leading internal AP in two schools, and was headteacher of an 11-18 secondary school.

Lisa is the Programme Manager for Eat Smart Sheffield, which focusses on a whole school approach to food and nutrition. She is responsible for programme development and delivery, as well as associated partnership working.

Lisa joined Learn Sheffield in 2019 as a qualified Registered Nutritionist with an MSc in Nutrition and Public Health Management and has built a wealth of knowledge and experience in school food culture over recent years. Lisa is also a qualified and skilled Programme & Project Manager with over 20 years’ experience of working on numerous public sector projects across South Yorkshire.

Lisa is passionate about encouraging healthy lifestyle behaviours and promoting awareness of how our food choices impact on the physical and mental health of our children and young people, and is honoured to be working with schools to this end.

Stephen is a Project Support Officer at Learn Sheffield working closely with the Learn Sheffield Governance Team and Developing Healthy Attitudes Project.

Stephen joined us in January 2023 after previously completing his degree in Music. Stephen enjoys using the skills he gained in his previous experiences to ensure that the Governance service runs smoothly, as well as providing quality business and admin support to the Developing Healthy Attitudes project.

Stephen is passionate about providing excellent support to stakeholders and other members within the team and works across a range of projects when needed.

Andrew is the Governance and Finance Manager at Learn Sheffield. Andrew joined the team in April 2018 when the Governance Service was transferred from Sheffield City Council.

Before joining the Governance Service in 2011 Andrew had worked in the financial services sector for 24 years dealing with all matters of personal finance. Andrew has completed a Foundation Degree in E-Communications and has recently started AAT Accountancy training to support his work and responsibility for financial transactions at Learn Sheffield. This aspect of his job runs alongside his responsibility for providing professional support and advice to schools and their governing boards.

Having worked in customer services all his life, Andrew is passionate about providing excellent support and training for Governors, the largest volunteer sector in the UK.

Susanna is a Governance Manager at Learn Sheffield, specialising in governor recruitment and retention, and the development of our Governance Professional team. Susanna is building a network of local and national connections which she is keen to share for the benefit of Sheffield’s children and young people. Susanna was a Governance Professional with Learn Sheffield for a number of years before joining the office team in February 2023.

Susanna was a primary school teacher and senior leader in South Yorkshire for over 20 years and has been involved in governance since the start of her teaching career. Susanna has been a chair of governors and has provided coaching to other chairs in Sheffield schools.

Susanna is keen to give training and development opportunities to our Governance Professionals to help them support our settings, and is passionate about ensuring that Sheffield settings are able to recruit governors who are representative of their communities.

Thomas is the Business Services Lead at Learn Sheffield, with responsibility for the coordination of our Sheffield school improvement subscription delivery and facilities management at Albion House.

Thomas has been with Learn Sheffield since the formation of the company in August 2015, moving from the Sheffield City Council Children and Young people’s portfolio to provide support to the early development of the company. Thomas has almost twenty years of experience working with school leaders and Improvement Partners across the city to facilitate highly successful school improvement programmes and training packages.

Thomas is passionate about providing the best quality customer service for all the schools we work with.

Sue is a lead Education Consultant at Learn Sheffield specialising in Online Safety and Relationships Sex and Health Education having left a similar role in Sheffield City Council in 2022 to join the learn Sheffield Team. She leads on a commission from Sheffield Safeguarding Children Partnership to support schools and settings in keeping children safe online and works closely with the Sheffield Safeguarding Education advisors.

Sue is a former physics teacher, head of department and middle leader in a secondary school. She has extensive experience in teaching and learning using learning technologies and worked for more than 20 years in the application of learning technologies in education, more recently specialising in online safeguarding.

Over the last few years, in line with national strategy, online safety education sits within Relationships Health and Sex Education and Sue played a leading role in creating the current curriculum for Relationships, Sex & Health Education in the city. More recently she has been leading on a Developing Healthy Attitudes Project via the South Yorkshire Violence Reduction Unit across the county.

Sue is a school governor for a special school in Sheffield. She is passionate about ensuring that children and young people have access to high quality learning and support to help them thrive in all aspects of their lives.

Homaira is part of the Policy and Democratic Engagement team in Sheffield City Council and will be working as part of the Learn Sheffield team to support the work of the Sheffield Education Race Equality Working Group.

Homaira has a primary teaching and school leadership background and joined SCC two and a half years ago to work on equalities. Following the findings of Sheffield’s Race Equality Commission in 2022, her work plan has been mainly focussed around advancing race outcomes both internally within the council and externally across the city by working with a variety of partners and community organisations.

Chris is a Governance Support Admin Officer at Learn Sheffield, providing support for the governance and clerking services across a range of responsibilities.

Chris started his career in education teaching primary-aged children in China, before moving to a global education provider where he further developed his knowledge and skills in a management and later a specialist role.

During his career, Chris has specialised in MS Excel and other systems and brings a wealth of data and reporting experience to his role.

Chris is motivated by helping schools and our partners while keeping children and young people at the heart of everything we do.

Ruth is the Research and Development Manager at Learn Sheffield with a wide range of responsibilities including support to the CEO, communications and the coordination of a number of projects and training programmes.

Ruth joined the team in July 2021, initially working within the governance team before broadening her role.

Following a degree in Modern Languages, Ruth trained as an ESOL teacher and has taught in several European countries and has worked as a teaching supervisor in China. Ruth also has a PRINCE2 Project Management qualification and uses the skills from this, combined with her education experience to support Sheffield’s education settings.

Ruth is driven to support the creation of socially responsible training programmes for schools to ensure that children and young people have the knowledge and skills to support them in their future lives, helping to nurture caring and responsible future generations.

Evelyn is the Operations Lead with responsibility for supporting the delivery of Commissions, together with a lead role in coordinating recruitment and HR across Learn Sheffield. In recent years Evelyn’s commission work has focussed on providing support to the Inclusion Taskforce delivery and taking a lead role in events management, supporting the delivery of several large SEN conference events.

Evelyn has been with Learn Sheffield since the formation of the company in August 2015, when she moved from SCC to provide support to the early development of the company. Evelyn is an experienced admin manager with a background in high street banking and over 20 years supporting a range of education settings from early years through to higher education.

Evelyn is particularly interested in giving a great customer service experience to all Sheffield schools and our partners.

Rebekah joined Learn Sheffield in 2024 as Governance Support Admin Officer, supporting the Governance Team with the organisation of board meetings along with assisting with governor and clerk recruitment.

Rebekah has a range of administration and project management experience including developing and coordinating hands-on ecology programmes for schools and colleges across South Yorkshire.

Rebekah is keen to provide an exceptional service to schools and governing boards and is passionate about making a positive contribution to outcomes for children and young people across the city.

Jane is a Governance Officer within the Governance Service with responsibility for the planning and coordination of Governing Board meetings for around 140 schools across Sheffield and other Local Authority areas. Jane joined Learn Sheffield in April 2018, following the transfer of the service from Sheffield City Council.

Jane has a wealth of knowledge around school governance and has recently undertaken accredited professional training for Governance Professionals to support the clerking team employed by the service. Jane also has the National Professional Clerks qualification from Leading Edge University.

Jane has firsthand experience of Governance in both Primary and Secondary settings and works closely with schools and Governing Boards to ensure that they receive excellent service from Learn Sheffield.

Thom has been a teacher at Malin Bridge primary school in Sheffield since 2012. He also works for Learn Sheffield to improve PSHE provision across South Yorkshire. Thom has created resources and teacher training workshops about PSHE, online safety, and the protected characteristics under The Equality Act. He supports schools to increase their awareness of anti-discrimination practices, develop their PSHE curricula and improve Personal Development delivery.

Andy is the Governance Lead for Learn Sheffield, which includes heading up the Governance Improvement Service and supporting and advising the Learn Sheffield Board. He also leads on Data Protection and provides Data Protection (GDPR) support to a number of schools in the city.

Andy has more than 40 years’ experience in education in the city, first as a lecturer in further & adult education, later moving into the area of IT and learning technologies in the local authority, including leading the ICT strand of the Building Schools for the Future programme in Sheffield from 2012 to 2017.

Andy was involved in the early stages of establishing Learn Sheffield in 2015 and joined the company in 2017, initially as Operations Director. He is a governor in a number of schools in the city and is passionate about ensuring that our schools and settings have all the support they need to help make our schools be the best they can be.