Emma Beal is an experienced education professional who has led, managed and delivered across a broad spectrum of educational areas within South Yorkshire over the last 22 years. The key thread of this work is securing educational inclusion. As Principal and Chief Executive of The Northern College, her role is to continue the proud and distinguished history of inspiring positive change through adult education. Emma is committed to ensuring students are equipped with the necessary skills to participate and succeed across all aspects of their lives.
Emma’s experience, knowledge and skills include developing new curriculum, quality improvement and partnership. Her previous roles include Assistant Principal for Curriculum, Quality and Market Development here at Northern College and Assistant Director for Lifelong Learning at Sheffield City Council. Emma has a Masters in Science (Health & Wellbeing) and was able to use this learning and research to contribute to wider educational policy development in the local area. Emma is the College Ofsted nominee and a member of the College Safeguarding Team.
Mark is committed to the education and learning environment and holds/held a range of positions including:
Formerly, Mark was the Chief Executive of Bury Council until 2011, and prior to that held a number of senior officer positions at Oldham and Leeds City Council.
Other voluntary roles included:
National Young People’s Learning Agency
(Deputy Chair and Chair of Audit) – 2009 – 2012
Learning and Skills Council National Board – 2007 – 2010
Chair, Society of Metropolitan Chief Executives – 2009 – 2011
Non Exec Director Whitehall Industry Group – 2006 – 2011
Bury College Board – 2005-2009
Oldham 6th Form College Board – 1997 – 2001
Mark received an OBE in 2011 for services to Local Government, and has an MBA.
Seb has lived in Heeley, Sheffield, for over 40 years.
He rejoined Northern College’s governing body in April 2021 following a three year stint as chair of governors of The Sheffield College, where he had served as a governor since 2008. Seb is a member of Northern College’s Audit Committee.
Seb spent over 20 years teaching and writing training courses for trade union representatives for the TUC, initially at the former Granville College in Sheffield. During the 1990s he became a specialist in online learning, since when he has worked for a wide range of private and public sector organisations helping them make better use of digital learning.
Seb stood down in 2012 after ten years as Chief Executive of the Association for Learning Technology, the leading professional body for Learning Technology in the UK. Between 2012 and 2021 Seb was a trustee of NOCN Group, the Sheffield-based awarding and end-point assessment organisation.
Ann grew up and was schooled in South Yorkshire. After graduating from the University of Manchester with a BA Hons in Psychology, she trained as an accountant and subsequently as a Company Secretary, taking various roles including Financial Accountant at the Institute of Cancer Research, Company Secretary at KAE Group Ltd and Company Secretary at Samuelson Group. In 1990 Ann became General Treasurer for the Confederation of Health Service Employees before becoming Director of Budgets and Resources at UNISON (the merged public services union), during which time she also studied for her MA in Strategic Financial Management at Kingston University.
In 2000, Ann joined the Institute of Hospitality and as Managing Director of Hospitality Assured, and Deputy Chief Executive of the Institute of Hospitality the professional body for leaders and aspiring leaders in the hospitality, tourism and leisure sectors, had extensive experience of advising hospitality providers in all sectors on business excellence processes and service development.
Ann is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators, as well as of the Institute of Hospitality.
Being a long time independent member of the Northern College Audit Committee, a previous governor of Kingston University and Chair of Governors at Nash College Bromley, has provided her with a good grounding in education governance.
Ann is married and lives in Surrey. Her interests include, time permitting, travel, reading, theatre, music and gardening.
Professor Tim Thornton has long been involved in Higher Education in South and West Yorkshire, with a particular interest in the expansion of opportunities in high quality university study.
Tim has worked at the University of Huddersfield for over fifteen years. Appointed Head of the Department of History, English, Languages and Media in 2003, Tim was on secondment at University Centre Barnsley as its first Head during 2005-06 and became Dean of the School of Music, Humanities and Media in October 2006. He was appointed Pro Vice-chancellor (Teaching and Learning) in October 2008. Tim was appointed as Deputy Vice-Chancellor in September 2015.
Tim is a historian who studied at New College, Oxford. In 1997 he was awarded the Royal Historical Society’s David Berry Prize for his work on the Isle of Man; in 1999 he was proxime accessit for the Society’s Alexander Prize for an essay on the palatinate of Durham. He was the first scholar based in a new University to win one of the Society’s prizes.
Colin is a highly qualified and experienced practitioner in the further education and skills and higher education sectors, who is comfortable in a range of leadership and governance settings. Colin has recent experience on University, College and Awarding Body boards. He is honorary university visiting research fellow at Leeds Trinity University where he is also a visiting lecturer. Colin’s current and recent experience relate to the development of technical education including collaborative models, teaching of technical subjects and leadership. He has also been supporting the Education and Training Foundation with Offender Learning and the implementation of the Prevent Duty.
Previous roles have included with the Learning and Skills Improvement Service and also as LSC Regional Learning and Quality Director. In this role he led the teams for Quality Improvement, Equality and Diversity, Health and Safety and Learners with Disabilities and/or Difficulties.
Sue’s home is in Sheffield and she worked in Sheffield local authority for 20 years, firstly as a teacher in 4 different secondary schools and then as a schools adviser. Then she moved into national policy work, including writing (and rewriting!) the National Curriculum and supervising the national tests. She also led work on the content and shape of examinations at GCSE and A Level, and of regulating the exam boards. Her last national role was Director of Curriculum for England.
Sue has then gone on to help several countries to consider their strategy and policy for education. She has led teams from the ministries of education in Rwanda and Oman, in revising the shape and content of their whole school curriculum and assessment arrangements.
Since leaving her national role she has been both a Board member and the chair of several charities, both in mainstream education provision and in arts organisations which work with young people and schools on local and national levels.
Sue’s first involvement with young people was through teaching English, and she has continued to support a love of reading and writing, particularly in young people. She has been involved in research and projects on creative writing internationally. In 2013 she was awarded an MBE for Services to Literature.
She has always believed in the power of education to offer essential skills, knowledge and understanding, and to improve life chances for all and hopes to help Northern College students find their futures through studying here.
Neil is the Head of Finance at Northern College and is a staff governor.
Neil is a qualified accountant and has worked for a variety of organisations in the private, third and education sectors. Neil always aims to contribute as a board member wherever he can, using his knowledge and experience to help the College in a governance capacity.
Ray has spent over 40 years providing IT services to the world wide financial industry. He worked for Midland Bank (then HSBC) in network and computer operations up until the 1990s. He became Managing Director of Transaction Network Services UK in 1995, taking the business from a start-up with zero employees, no revenues and no customers, to become the leading provider of payments networks in the UK, with 250 employees, 95% market share and £60M in revenues. Subsequently, Ray ran their European business and then moved to Washington DC to run their global payments business where he lived for 7 years. Ray’s key strengths are communication skills, technology, people management and mentoring, business process, project management, revenue creation and profit generation.
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