Please see our: Central Support Team Structure April 2025
Chief Executive Officer and Senior Executive Headteacher:
Gail Brown has extensive experience in primary education and as a school leader, having taught every age group. She has successfully led a number of schools, taking one from Good to Outstanding and a school in Special Measures to Good in all areas. Gail spent many years working within a local authority context and as part of the National Strategies Yorkshire and Humber Regional Adviser team, supporting, challenging and improving practice and provision.
Director of Education:
Dave Barber has significant experience in primary education, and in senior management positions since 2003. He now serves on a number of sector bodies, using his extensive experience of providing school to school support to bring about positive change.
Finance Director:
Andrew Robinson is a CIMA qualified accountant with a BA in Accounting & Management Control. He has a great deal of experience of working with fast-growing entrepreneurial businesses in senior finance roles. Following his last role as finance & risk director for a financial services company in York, he joined Ebor in April 2017. Andrew is also the trust’s Chief Finance Officer.
Director of People and Culture:
David Wheeler is an HR professional with experience across the private and public sectors. As Head of HR for the Ministry of Justice, he led the delivery of HR services to over 90,000 staff. During his career, David has led substantial business change projects, fostered effective trade union relationships and worked in specialist areas of HR including HR Systems, Pay & Reward and Job Evaluation. He is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD.
Director of Operations:
Richard Swain is a chartered engineer with over 30 years’ experience of engineering, project and operational management within industry. He spent eight years as chair of The Education Alliance (TEAL) multi-academy trust, overseeing significant growth and development. Richard has also been in school governance for almost 20 years.
SEND Lead:
Deborah Meiklejohn has worked in primary education for many years and has taught every age group. She has held the SENCO position in school, including early years settings, in both Gloucestershire and Yorkshire. She works closely with the Local Authority SEND teams and supports our schools in meeting the needs of our children and families. She has strategic responsibility for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities provision across the trust.
Safeguarding, Wellbeing and Behaviour Lead:
Rebecca McGuinn is extremely experienced in safeguarding in education, working in both schools in special measures and local authority safeguarding teams. She has wide-ranging expertise in many different areas of pupil wellbeing and is aware of the challenges education professionals face with complex and challenging behaviour. Rebecca sits on several local authority safeguarding partnership boards, is part of the national safeguarding directors’ association and provides advice, guidance, training and strategic support to school leaders who work in safeguarding and pastoral roles.
Head of Governance and Compliance:
Wendy Harrington joined us in 2022 from a multi-academy trust in Leeds where she was part of the executive team. As well as Governance and Compliance she is our authority on GDPR and is also the trust’s Data Protection Officer. Wendy spent 18 years in banking and as qualified chartered banker she managed multidisciplinary teams specialising in legal, corporate and personal lending. Following a career break to look after her two children, Wendy came into education initially as a school governor.