Adele Every
Cisco
Adele is the Managing Director for Public Sector at Cisco. Focused on driving sustainable business growth through her sales and specialist teams bringing value to government.
Adele drives operational excellence and rigour with a focus on account strategy and planning activities to drive targeted sales and marketing campaigns. Prior to joining Cisco, Adele spent 17 years at Capgemini.
As Vice President she led a high-performing cross functional team to deliver on their largest global account which was circa £1bn per annum to fulfil programmes of national importance including Brexit and COVID-19 support packages. She has also established and sat on innovation programme boards within the public sector focused on bringing a broad ecosystem of partner offers to support the transformation and SME agenda.
She has a mature network across government, connecting MPs, lobby groups, SME tech partners and start-ups and has featured in many tech publications including, Technology Record, IT Pro Journal and the New Statesman.
Dr Ben Calvert
University of South Wales
Before starting his role of Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive Officer, Ben was Deputy Vice-Chancellor at USW and led the academic portfolio with a strong focus on the quality and enhancement of our learning and teaching provision. He has been a member of the Executive team since joining the University as Pro Vice-Chancellor for Student Experience in 2015.
Dr John Cater OBE
Edge Hill University
Dr John Cater OBE is the Vice Chancellor of Edge Hill University, having been appointed in 1993. As a social geographer, he has published extensively on race, housing, economic development and public policy and co-authored major research studies for the Social Science Research Council, the Commission for Racial Equality and their successor bodies.
He was a Director of the Higher Education Careers Service from 1994-2013 and was Chair of Liverpool: City of Learning from 2003-2005. He chaired the Standing Conference of Principals from 2001-2003, having been Vice-Chair from 1997-2001. He was a Director of the Teacher Training Agency and its successor body, the Training and Development Agency for Schools, from 1999-2006 and chaired both the Accreditation and the Audit Committees. He was the Chair of the Guild HE/Universities UK Teacher Education Advisory Group from 2016-2021. He was a member of Department of Health’s Expert Advisory Panel on Nurse Education and Training from 1995-97 and has sat on Universities UK’s Health and Social Care Committee since 2004. He also represented all Vice-Chancellors on the Joint DH/DfE Social Work Reform Board. He represented the sector on HEFCE’s Good Management Practice Panel from 1999-2003, and sat on both the HEROBaC and HEIF1 and HEIF2 Panels.
He is past Chair of the Knowsley 14-19 Collegiate Consortium and the Greater Merseyside and West Lancashire Lifelong Learning Network, and a former member of the QAA’s Advisory Committee on Degree-Awarding Powers.
Dr Michael Spence
University College London
Dr Michael Spence AC has become the new President and Provost of UCL. He takes up the position today after moving to London from his home in Australia, where he had been the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney since July 2008.
Dr Spence is recognised internationally as a leader in the field of intellectual property theory and holds a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Oxford, where he previously headed Oxford’s Law faculty and Social Sciences division. An alumnus of the University of Sydney, he has a BA with first-class honours in English, Italian and Law. His other languages include Chinese and Korean.
Frances Corner OBE
Goldsmiths University of London
The first woman to take on the role, Professor Corner is the academic and administrative leader of the university. She leads the Senior Management Team, which considers major policy issues and oversees the submission of business to Council, Academic Board and Finance and Resources Committee.
Professor Corner has more than 20 years’ experience in higher education leadership, and was previously Head of the London College of Fashion and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Arts London. Previously she was Head of the Sir John Cass Department of Art, Media and Design at London Metropolitan University (2001-2005), and Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Gloucestershire (1998-2001).
In 2009, Professor Corner was awarded an OBE for services to fashion higher education and widening participation in arts education. As a campaigner, she has championed the role of fashion as a force for innovation and change, particularly in the areas of sustainability, health and well-being.
Professor Corner is currently a Trustee at Centrepoint and also sits on the British Fashion Council Industry Advisory Board. In 2018 she was named in the Business of Fashion 500, a professional index of key people shaping the global fashion industry.
James Purnell
The University of the Arts London
James came to UAL from the BBC where he first worked in the 1990s as Head of Corporate Planning. In 1997, he left the BBC to be Special Adviser on the Knowledge Economy, including the arts, internet and broadcasting policy, to Tony Blair after he became Prime Minister.
He was elected Member of Parliament for Stalybridge and Hyde, before becoming Secretary of State for Culture and then for Work and Pensions. In 2009, as Secretary of State for Culture, James commissioned the McMaster Review, which reset the debate around access and excellence in culture.
This led to him joining Rare Day and producing the documentary One Mile Away, which brought two gangs in Birmingham to a truce after decades of conflict and won Best Film at the Edinburgh Film Festival.
James then returned to the BBC in 2013 as Director of Strategy and Digital, developing the BBC’s strategy in the run up to Charter Review. He took up the role of Director, Radio & Education in October 2016 and was responsible for leading teams across BBC Radio & Music, BBC Children’s & Education as well as BBC Arts. He oversaw the development of the corporation’s education strategy, including support for kids and parents at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mark Jefferies
Rolls-Royce
Mark is a senior leader in the Rolls-Royce Central Technology group, with extensive experience of establishing and developing complex industry-academic collaboration. He is accountable for developing, implementing and overseeing the company’s academic partnership strategy.
In addition to developing new collaborations, he brings leadership & focus to the Company’s highly successful network of 29 University Technology Centres. This network now engages over 1300 people, including 500 doctorate students at leading universities around the world. Mark is an Honorary Professor at the University of Birmingham, a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and a Senior Member of the AIAA in the US. He works with numerous companies, universities and other organisations on their strategies for developing major collaborations.
He has over thirty years’ experience in engineering and technology roles, including the leadership of multiple national and international collaborative research programmes. Mark serves on the governance boards of several £multi-million research partnerships both in the UK and overseas, including EPSRC Prosperity Partnerships. In addition he works with related organisations on matters of strategic investment, security, ethics, governance and international collaboration.
