Wayne Oldfield is the Trust Safeguarding Manager at the Greenwood Academies Trust with responsibility for the strategic leadership of safeguarding across the Trust’s 34 open Academies.

Within this role, Wayne also provides consultancy and support to other MATs and LAs including training, quality assurance and safeguarding improvement services.

Previously, Wayne was Director of Inclusion in a large secondary academy in a deprived area of the East Coast. Within this role, he was responsible for safeguarding, SEND, behaviour and alternative provision and was also Designated Teacher for Looked After Children.

Wayne chairs the Education Sub-Group of the Lincolnshire Safeguarding Children’s Board and is a Member of a National Leading Safeguarding in MATs Steering Group.

Sarah Meader, Senior Director of Human Resources, is a Chartered Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (MCIPD), with over 20 years’ experience of working in Human Resources within the public sector, private sector and not for profit organisations. At Greenwood Academies Trust, Sarah leads the HR function, providing support to 34 academies across the Midlands, employing over 2500 staff in multi-disciplinary environments. 

Prior to this, Sarah was Group Human Resource Manager for a national organisation supporting HR teams across multi-sites and also held a role in the Republic of Ireland, where, with her team, she had the responsibility of recruiting c200 volunteers each year to support therapeutic recreational programmes for children with serious illnesses.

Sarah is passionate about people and has the experience in all HR disciplines to deliver people initiatives that add value and make impact to an organisation.

Through operating at an Executive level in large organisations, Sarah has a strong strategic understanding of HR and significant experience of working with Elected Members, Chief Executives and Trade Unions.

Areas of work include: Strategic HR and Policy Development; Organisational Development (including managing large and small Restructures and Redundancy programmes); Staff Engagement; Managing Absence; Employee Relations; Recruitment and Selection; Talent Management; Learning, Development and Coaching. 

Eddie is an ACA qualified accountant who has spent the last 6 years at Greenwood Academies Trust, the last 4 of which have been as Finance Director.  Over this period Eddie has built the financial infrastructure for the Trust during a period of significant growth, and leads the strategic approach with regard to finance for this £100m turnover organisation.  Eddie is also responsible for corporate governance and is the Clerk to the Trust Board.

Eddie’s previous roles have included senior finance and non-finance positions in the financial services sector, including 12 years at Capital One Bank where Eddie was responsible for the Statutory Reporting team and was Manager of the Operations team for Savings Accounts.  Prior to this Eddie spent 5 years in a professional accountancy firm.

Dawn is an ACCA qualified accountant who joined Greenwood Academies Trust as Financial Accounting Manager in 2013 and is responsible for ensuring statutory compliance and financial integrity across the Trust. She has led the Financial Accounting team through a period of rapid growth at the MAT, implementing cohesive systems and controls for the finance teams across the Trust to follow.

Dawn’s previous role was the Financial Controller at the Independent Living Fund, which was a £350m national resource funded by DWP and where she was tasked with creating a commercial focus and implementing robust accounting and forecasting processes. She has 20+ year’s accounting experience in the private and public sector often playing a key role navigating organisations through periods of change and growth.

Miles is a part-qualified CIMA accountant with 15+ years’ experience in education finance.  In the last 6 years Miles has been responsible for managing the financial planning processes for the Trust over a period of growth from 4 to 32 academies.  Miles has also played a significant role in providing financial expertise to support the successful bids to set up 6 new academies.

Miles’ previous experience includes 9 years at a local authority, of which 3 years as spent providing financial support directly to maintained schools and 6 years as an accountant with responsibility for managing the distribution of c.£150m to 150 maintained schools in the local authority.

Joe is a qualified accountant with over 20 years of internal audit experience in not-for-profit organisations including local authorities, NHS Trusts, housing and social enterprises.  Joe has led the Trust’s Internal Assurance function for the past 3 years providing independent assurance to the Audit Committee and Senior Management over a range of areas including financial controls, risk management, safeguarding, health and safety and data governance.

Previously Joe was Audit Manager at a top 7 practice with operational responsibility for delivering the internal audit function for a range of clients.

After training with the National Audit Office, where he worked on Ministry of Defence reviews, Colin has spent over 20 years in internal audit, mainly covering not-for-profit organisations. These have included local authorities such as Westminster City Council, universities and colleges, charities, housing and social enterprises, and major governmental organisations including the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Colin has also undertaken private sector audit roles, and has worked at clients across the UK and Europe. Prior to 2014, Colin was Assistant Audit Manager at a top 7 practice with responsibility for overseeing all aspects of client relationships, from audit programme planning through audit completion, reporting and attendance at Audit Committees.

Colin joined Greenwood Academies Trust in 2014, and has worked closely with the Principal Auditor to deliver the internal audit and assurance function across all areas of the Trust.

Stephen has worked in a number of senior IT roles for both the private and public sector. For the last 2 years, Stephen has been the IT Director for the Trust, creating the strategic vision and reshaping the organisation to deliver a fully managed, end to end service. Stephen has recently embarked on an ambitious plan to change the core mechanism for delivering IT Services for the Trust which is now delivering huge cost savings and learning opportunities throughout the organisation.

Stephen’s previous roles have included, Service Delivery Director and Technical Manager for a large private professional services provider and a technical advisor to a joint local authorities BSF implementation. Stephen has a significant insight into the technical, organisational, financial, and change management problems facing both Single and Multi- Academy Trusts and was been responsible for ensuring successful outcomes for all of them.

Graham is a qualified accountant who has spent the last 20+ years in various senior Public Sector positions.  For the past 8 years Graham has been the Deputy CEO and an Executive Director of Greenwood Academies Trust.  This role includes the responsibilities of a Chief Operating Officer, as well leading on safeguarding and pupil enrichment for over 16,000 students. 

Graham’s previous roles have included the Director of Resources for Children Services and the deputy Statutory Finance (S151) Officer for large unitary local authorities.  Graham was responsible for a significant number of professional services as well as annual revenue budgets of over £200m and for delivering major capital programmes, such as a £250m Building Schools for the Future Programme.

A member of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, PRINCE 2 Practitioner and Building Management graduate, is Operations Director for Greenwood Academies Trust, responsible for strategic Direction and leadership of Projects, Risk, Procurement, Estates, Health and Safety, Catering, Media and Communications.

Darren is an experienced Programme and Project Manager successfully leading high profile, high value projects and programmes in Local Authorities, Consultancy and Construction. Darren has developed the academy conversion project methodology within Greenwood Academies trust and has supported all conversions since the Trust was established. Darren has delivered a number of high profile and high value Procurement projects supporting multiple clients in the process such as MATs, collaborations between multiple LAs. He has gained a reputation for developing innovative procurement solutions which have delivered significant savings and service improvements.

Darren has developed and implemented a number of assurance procedure and systems including Risk Management, Health and safety and Statutory compliance reporting, acted as client for new build academy projects, commissioned, designed and managed multiple Capital building, lifecycle, refurbishment and maintenance programmes and developed strong partnerships with Architects, Technical Consultants and Contractors.

Julie acts as Project Manager for converting academies and setting up of new provision academies within Greenwood Academies Trust. She has been with Greenwood Academies Trust for 7 years and she is well versed in different types of conversions including, sponsor led, fast track, foundation schools, maintained schools plus re-brokerage projects (Single Academy Trusts moving to a Multi-Academy Trusts). She has successfully managed 26 conversion projects to timeline which include primary schools, secondary schools and PFI schools.
She has also successfully managed the setup of new provision schools including working on construction projects for Primary, Secondary and Special Schools. Julie is a Prince 2 Practitioner and has an invaluable knowledge of the conversion process and provides an excellent resource to all parties through the process. Julie is well aware of the potential risks associated with conversion projects and ensures these are managed throughout.

Julie also co-ordinates the risk management process for the Trust and manages the marketing and communications team.

Prior to joining Greenwood Academies Trust, Julie worked at Tribal plc where she managed a team of HR and Administration professionals and project managed large scale events for the Local Government sector.

As the Enrichment Programme Manager, Martin’s role is to develop links with our business partners and to provide all of our students with the chance to complement their classroom learning with an exciting range of enrichment activities that will challenge and inspire them to develop to their full potential as skilled, confident and socially adept young members of society.

Martin Waring joined the Greenwood Academies Trust in February 2010 having spent the previous three years as the Head of Training System Integration at Ascent Flight Training in Bristol.  His role included overall responsibility for the curriculum development of all flying training courses for the UK Armed Forces.  Before this, Martin completed a thirty-year career in the Royal Air Force, culminating in his final appointment as the Deputy Commandant of the RAF College at Cranwell.

Martin is a qualified teacher and has worked in the education and care sector for over 35 years. Moving from the maintained sector Martin went on to run one of the largest Outdoor Education Centres in the South East of England and was an Assistant Director for the Shaftesbury Homes and Arethusa. In 2003 Martin began work as the Outdoor Education Adviser for Nottingham City Council going onto lead a large multi-disciplinary department delivering a range of educational services to schools both within Nottingham and beyond. In his current role Martin is a Senior Adviser for Academic Resilience within the Greenwood Academies Trust responsible for supporting Academies in the delivery of Character Education and Personal Development.

Beyond this work Martin established and was Chair of the Medway Children’s Fund, he has been Chair of the Outdoor Education Advisers’ Panel and he is currently Chair of the Outdoor Council, campaigning for the value and benefit of outdoor learning. Martin has also been involved in publishing a range of educational resources for outdoor learning, character education and staff CPD.

Sian is a qualified teacher who has predominantly taught business studies to young people aged 14 - 19 as well as undertaking the role of Head of Year since 2010.  For the past 2 years Sian has been the Careers and Employability Education Adviser for Greenwood Academies Trust.  This role involves working with careers leads across 32 academies to develop a stable careers programme of inspirational work-related activities for pupils aged 4 - 18.  In 2015 Sian was nominated for and won the Business in the Community 'Community Champion' award which recognised the opportunities created for Nottingham Academy students through a number of initiatives and experiences that were introduced through working in partnership with Nottingham employers.

Sian’s previous roles have included working for a number of large pharmaceutical companies as a sales representative including AstraZeneca, Daiichi-Sankyo and Ashfield Healthcare. 

Jamie is a qualified PE teacher who has spent the last 20+ years working with children across all sectors of education.  For the past 5 years Jamie has held the position as the Director of Sport for the Greenwood Academies Trust. This role incorporates the overall responsible for PE/Sport across all GAT’s academies, with the overarching aim of ensuring all pupils are able to access outstanding sporting opportunities.

Jamie’s was previously employed in the public sector as a local authority Sports Development Officer, operating in one of the most coastally deprived areas of the country. This experience has been pivotal to Jamie’s approach in the development of PE/Sport within GAT and has enabled the Trust to gain national recognition in areas such as “Character Education”.