Our Members and Trustees - Bios

Our Members and Trustees...

Our Members

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• Ben Hutchings
  Member
  Ben Hutchings

  Ben was a governor at Millennium Primary for several years during its turnaround.

  Owner of Millennium Minis Nurseries in London. Their ethos is around childcare being a core community asset and as well as sponsoring children's sport activities across the area, they gift 25% of their profits to local community organisations.

  There are sites in Greenwich, Canary Wharf, Stratford and West London. He will be expanding further over the next few years and each site will offer similar support to their local communities. Later this year he is starting a training company to work with local residents to train them for a career in child care and is complementing this by becoming one of only three nurseries in London to pay the London Living Wage.

  Having previously run his own businesses in recruitment and insurance, Ben now uses that commercial expertise and entrepreneurial spirit in combination with a passion for education to run innovative nurseries across London.

• Anna Thompson
  Member
  Anna Thompson

  Anna is a civil servant for central government, currently working in the Government Equalities Office on legal protections against discrimination. She spent two years on secondment with REAch2 Academy Trust, heading up their governance and policy team - where her big learning point was the real value of the 'fresh pair of eyes' brought by volunteers involved in governance.

  Before 2015, Anna had a range of education policy and delivery roles in central government, including on academies, school improvement, school qualifications and specialist school status.

  Anna loves living in SE London and has daughters in primary and secondary schools. She has lived and worked in France, Belgium and South Africa, where she helped set up a charity providing educational resources, library facilities and reading support for township schools.

• Maria Nash
  Member
  Maria Nash

  Maria has worked in a wide range of services over eighteen years with the Royal Borough of Greenwich (RGB): Organisational Development, HR, ICT, Modernisation, and Corporate Client-side Management (of RBG's wholly-owned direct service organisations). Prior to Greenwich, she worked in contract and project management roles for the Manpower Services Commission, South Thames Training & Enterprise Council (and its American equivalent in Bridgeport Connecticut), Deptford City Challenge, and Lambeth College. She took early retirement in 2016.

  When her son was small she started volunteering in his primary school. This led to election as a parent governor (in 2002), then to Vice-Chair and finally Chair of that same large primary school in Lewisham. She joined Millennium as an Local Authority governor in March 2014 and was Vice Chair there 2017-18. She is also a Governor at another large primary school in Greenwich and represents Maritime Academy Trust on the Greenwich Schools Forum.

• Eben Groenewald
  Member
  Eben Groenewald

  Eben works at REAch2 Academy Trust as the Head of Strategy and Data, with further responsibilities for Risk, Policy, and Systems. Before this, Eben was trained as a teacher of maths and then worked as a civil servant for central government within the Department for Education. Eben is also a serving co-opted school governor for a Local Authority school near his home in South East London.  

• Martin Myers
  Member
  Martin Myers

  Martin is a solicitor, with over 15 years of private and in-house experience in the banking sector.  He is now a lawyer for the Department for Education.  Martin has expertise in lending to public sector entities, notably further and higher education providers.  He has volunteered in school governance, as both a local governor and trustee, since 2014. 

  

Our Trustees

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• Tiffany Beck
  Chair of Trustees
  Tiffany Beck

  Tiffany is a Founding Member of Maritime. She is also a National Leader of Governance, an Expert for The Key for School Governors and supports Sir David Carter's Trust Diagnostic Programme for Ambition Institute. She is a Senior Consultant for PLMR, a public affairs, PR and digital marketing agency. She specialises in all aspects of communications, PR, crisis management and public affairs for the agency's market-leading education practice, supporting schools, trusts, education charities and organisations across the country.

  She was previously Senior Governance Advisor for a large academy trust. Prior to that she worked at a charity specialising in cross-sector leadership development for senior leaders across business, charity and government. Her focus was on sharing expertise in areas of organisational development, including strategic planning, stakeholder engagement, change management, innovation, project management, human resources, brand management and more.

  She was made a Fellow of The RSA for her efforts in education and community activism.

• Nick Osborne
  CEO and Accounting Officer
  Nick Osborne

  Nick is CEO of Maritime Academy Trust and a National Leader of Education. Throughout his more than 20 years as a teacher and leader, Nick's focus on developing and motivating staff has led to the transformation of numerous schools. Â

  He was inspired to create Maritime because of his belief that the key to improving children's life chances is by always looking for ways to drive meaningful collaboration. With authentic collaboration, staff can share ideas, reduce workload and learn from each other, creating opportunities that will have a massively positive impact on the children and communities they serve. Â

  Nick has a passion for curriculum design that balances the knowledge and skills needed to prepare children for whatever comes next and getting the most educational impact possible with every available resource. He has three children of his own and is a governor at his boys' school.

• Astrid Korin
  Standards & Achievement Chair
  Astrid Korin

  Astrid is a transformational, executive coach and coaching skills' trainer, trained by the Animas Centre for Coaching - accredited by the ICF and EMCC. Astrid had over 18 years' experience working with senior leaders in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors around the world (UK, UAE, Vietnam, Ethiopia, South Africa, Ghana, Moldova, Brunei), helping them to define, articulate and achieve their goals. Prior to starting her coaching business, she was Head of Consultancy with Education Development Trust overseeing the quality of delivery of a large and varied portfolio of education consultancy projects in the UK and overseas covering topics such: leadership for learning, teacher professional development, system reform/strengthening, accountability (including inspections), early years and girls' education. Â

• Sarah Armstrong-Taylor
  Finance, Risk and Audit Chair
  Sarah Armstrong-Taylor

  Sarah is a chartered accountant with over 20 years experience, specialising in financial planning and reporting, risk and controls and investor relations. Â She began her career with Deloitte and then held senior finance roles within Johnson Matthey Plc.

• Louise Obi-Drake
  Trustee
  Louise Obi-Drake

  Lou is passionate about creating spaces where people can thrive, whether that is within organisations, institutions or places. She has 20 years' experience working in the space of developing people, which started in HR at Sainsbury's through to most recently developing leaders in charities and social enterprises. Her current work focuses on training and development, specifically in the areas of leadership, social change, innovation and enterprise.

  Having worked across private, higher education and charitable organisations in both small and large organisations, in a variety of roles, she believes her varied experiences enable her to identify different ways of doing things, taking the best ideas from one space to another.

  Outside of formal work, she is a Museum of Happiness trainer and has been a registered waste collector, both equally amazing learning experiences in creating positive change.

  Lou believes 'there is little success where there is little laughter' and that the power of play and creativity is an underrated tool in identifying innovative solutions to our greatest challenges.

• Sunny Lu
  Trustee
  Sunny Lu

  Sunny is passionate about the business in general and has worked in the big blue chip company with extensive international leadership experience. Sunny has a track record of leading sustained cultural and behavioural change, setting up new facilities, establishing a global fast make supply chain and delivering annual services contracts worth more than US$1 billion. The recent EMBA study at Cambridge enhanced further strategic leadership development.

• Martin Fitzwilliam
  Trustee
  Martin Fitzwilliam

  Martin Fitzwilliam is the National Director for Primary Education for E-ACT. He joined E-ACT from St Thomas Aquinas Catholic Multi-Academy Trust where he has worked as Director of Performance and Standards since 2018. Martin helped found the trust and has been responsible for the 18 primary schools as well as working closely with secondary colleagues on 3-19 agenda. Â Martin is a National Leader of Education (NLE), an Ofsted inspector and Director of the Leicestershire Teaching School Hub, a partnership of 209 schools. Â Previously Martin was Executive Headteacher and Headteacher at Christ the King Catholic Primary in Leicester where he led the school to outstanding. He is a Lead Ofsted Inspector.

• Nidhi Dholakia-Wellens
  Trustee
  Nidhi Dholakia-Wellens

  Dr Nidhi Dholakia-Wellens is a Child Clinical Psychologist and has worked in the NHS for almost 20 years. Prior to specialising in child mental health services, she trained across the life span. She has worked across different teams within CAMHS but since 2016 has worked in a schools based team (which she was involved in setting up within CAMHS). Part of the remit of this team is to provide consultation and training to schools in a local South East London borough. Nidhi is passionate about prioritising children's emotional well-being, as well as that of staff within schools, as she believes this is what leads to young people from all backgrounds being able to maximise their potential. Having worked and lived in the areas in which the schools in the Maritime Trust are based, she feels she can bring good professional and personal knowledge to the role.