The Secretariat
Gina Cicerone
CEO
Gina has been Co-CEO with Sam since 2019, when they collaborated to co-create the FEA’s new strategy and set-up as a charity. Prior to joining the FEA, Gina led the Teach First Innovation Unit, empowering social entrepreneurs to tackle educational inequality through training, funding and mentoring. Her expertise in this arena stems from her firsthand experience of starting and scaling Fundacion VASE, a social enterprise in Ecuador dedicated to international youth volunteering, her leadership at UnLtd, and her role on the Ashoka Venture Board.
Gina has her Masters in International Development from the London School of Economics, through which she focussed on education, employment and entrepreneurship. Gina is also passionate about sustainability and the arts, serving as Chair of Trustees for the OVO Energy Foundation and Chair of Advisors for Como No, a Latin music producer and festival in London.
Becca Weighell
Head of Youth Engagement
Becca leads our work to ensure that young people, who have faced barriers to their education, are respected and heard in decision making across the education sector, including working with Ofsted and The Department for Education. Her role includes working with our Youth Steering Group, providing youth engagement support to our members and being our Designated Safeguarding Officer.
Becca is a trustee for the Association of Citizenship Teaching and sits on the Reconnect London Steering Group. She also recently completed her master’s degree in Children, Youth and International Development focusing her dissertation on the extent to which children’s right to participate is being upheld in education settings. Prior to the FEA, Becca worked for six years in the humanitarian and international development sectors for War Child UK and Plan International, supporting young people affected by conflict to bring about the change they wanted to see within their communities.
Catherine Sangster
Events Manager
After growing up as a third culture kid, Catherine is passionate about making an impact across our interconnected world. As a result, Catherine holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a Masters in Public Administration, specializing on public-private partnerships, from The George Washington University. Most recently, Catherine concluded the On Purpose program, a leadership and career transition programme for professionals entering the social and environmental impact space. She completed placements at two purpose-led organisations, the Global Alliance of Impact Lawyers and Do it Now Now. Catherine brings several years of summit and conference management in the legal and education space, and has experience in communications and philanthropy from an international non-profit, marketing within a campaign advertising company, and equal education access advocacy.
Chris Haldane
Head of Communications
Chris leads the FEA’s communications strategy, uniting and amplifying the voices of the FEA and member organisations. Chris joined the FEA with over 15 years’ experience in charity communications, most recently as Director of Communications for a large UK anti-poverty charity. Chris has a background in music and creative arts and, as a specialist youth support worker, experienced the impact made when young people’s creative expression is released. Chris is driven to challenge injustice and create a fairer society. Chris lives and works in West Yorkshire
Daniel Rooney
Digital Project Manager
Daniel leads on our FEA Membership Tools, which foster connection and collaboration across the education sector and enable more effective targeting to benefit young people across England. His role involves managing backend development, leading member-facing workshops, and advocating for our Membership Tools to a variety of stakeholders. Prior to joining the FEA, Daniel worked at the music education charity, Voices Foundation, where he designed and managed a digital learning platform for classroom teachers and music practitioners throughout the UK.
Daniel holds an MA in Music Education from the UCL Institute of Education, and originally hails from Chicago, IL, USA. He previously worked as a music teacher before relocating to the UK in 2017. As Digital Project Manager at the FEA, Daniel is committed to using the power of digital technology to make education fair.
Dan Vogel
Evaluation and Youth Engagement Coordinator
Dan joined FEA in 2021 as an intern, before transitioning to a part-time Impact Evaluation role in 2022 while completing his master's degree. In 2024 he became a full-time team member, working across both the Impact Evaluation and Youth Engagement teams. Dan supports the Impact and Evaluation team with analysing and reporting on member engagement data, as well as administrating and developing the FEA’s CRM software. He also supports the FEA’s Youth Steering Group to bring about the change they want to see in the education sector.
Dan holds an MA in Conflict, Security, and Development from King’s College London and a BA in History from Durham University. Dan is passionate about working with young people and is a regular volunteer with Free to Be Kids.
Jane Fernandes
Collective Action and Advocacy Manager
Jane supports FEA members in joint advocacy work including the FEA collective action working groups, which exist to increase member organisation’s influence, impact, and connections.
She holds an MA in Politics from the University of Glasgow and started her career on the Worthwhile Graduate Scheme at Action Tutoring where she worked in both local and national roles, experiencing depth and breadth in primary and secondary English education landscape. She is a trained community organiser and has more recently worked on growing a movement of children and family social workers to create social change at Frontline.
Janeen Hayat,
Director of Collective Action
Janeen joins the FEA from Teach First, where she first worked on the strategy team and then as Head of Networks, which has given her deep experience of the need for, and power of cross sector collaboration in education. Janeen started her career as a lawyer, first for the City of New York, implementing Mayor Bloomberg's education reforms, and then for a corporate law firm in London. After seven years in law, Janeen retrained as a secondary school English teacher, which deepened her understanding of what schools need to support pupils in greatest need. She is also a Co-founder and Non-Executive Director of You Be You, a social enterprise and FEA member working to break down stereotypes for children starting at age five. Janeen lives in London with her partner and three children.
Jessica Dunks
Events and Communications Manager - Fair Education Awards
Jessica's diverse experiences converge into a passion for innovation in education. Her role sits in the Awards team, collaborating with early-stage innovators and FEA members dedicated to addressing educational inequality.
A University of Nottingham graduate in German, Spanish, and Portuguese, Jessica's global education journey kicked off as an English Teaching Fellow for NGO Heart for Change and the Colombian National Ministry of Education. Working in a Medellin secondary school provided valuable insights into the challenges faced by students in under-resourced communities, leading Jessica to establish The Bright Kites Foundation. Since 2018, she has been running a language and cultural exchange programme for Colombian students in London. Jessica completed her PGCE at UCL’s Institute of Education, teaching Spanish in London secondary schools. She also founded Roots Up Languages during the pandemic, fostering a community of Spanish and Portuguese learners and native speakers in London and beyond.
Naomi Turner
Operations Manager
Naomi works as Team Coordinator and Executive Assistant. She is first port of call for anyone looking to know more about the membership process. Naomi looks after the team day to day and makes sure the FEA runs smoothly. She has joined the team after 4 years in the private sector and previously worked with young people. Naomi comes from a family of teachers giving her an insight into the UK education system.
Rachel Tait
Director of Operations and Impact
Rachel leads the FEA's evaluation and impact management strategy and supports our Award Winners with their research and evaluation. Rachel started her career at youth social action charity Student Hubs, working on everything from programme design to volunteer management to evaluation (as you do in small teams!). She saw what a big difference good impact measurement made to programme quality, relationships, staff and volunteer motivation, communications and more. She then spent four years at charity think tank and consultancy New Philanthropy Capital (NPC), where she provided strategy and impact measurement support to charity and funder clients, conducted research on topics such as what works in engaging young people in arts and culture, and led the Inspiring Impact programme which offers free impact measurement support to charities and social enterprises across the UK.
Saradia McCahon
Impact and Evaluation Manager
Saradia supports our Award Winners to strengthen their impact, evaluation and research capacity. Alongside this, Saradia also works on building impact insight within the FEA, the FEA members, and across the wider education sector. She holds an MA in Education and Psychology from UCL Institute for Education, where she specialised in the sociology of education, child development and social research methods. Before joining the FEA, Saradia spent three years at ImpactEd Evaluation, worked with various organisations and charities across the education sector. During this time, she designed and delivered end-to-end impact evaluations and fostered the development of impact and evaluation capacity within the wider sector.
Siwan Davies
Director of Scaling Impact
Prior to joining the FEA Siwan lead on third sector and innovation partnerships where she developed and managed high profile partnerships with third sector organisations and supported innovation partners to scale. Having always been passionate about Education, in 2013 Siwan completed her PGCE, has taught in mainstream to alternative and non-formal education settings and has experience developing accredited training and curricula. Having graduated with an LLB from Cardiff University, Siwan worked for the Children and Young People’s Assembly for Wales and the British Youth Council. Specialising in youth voice, advocacy and campaigning, she lead and developed programmes to support young people to have their voice heard by decision-makers and institutions on a national and international level.
Soizic Hagege
Head of Innovation Award
For the past ten years, Soizic has worked at the intersection of social entrepreneurship, education, youth work, and innovation. After three years working at the YMCA George Williams College on innovative funds such as the Enterprise Development Programme, she is excited to join the Awards Team at the Fair Education Alliance as a maternity cover for the Head of Innovation role.
Previously, she worked on a variety of education and entrepreneurship programmes across a variety of institutions, including universities, institutes, corporations, and social justice organisations in Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, and South Korea, and on several research projects in Ecuador, Tunisia, and Canada.
Sam Butters
Co-CEO (on maternity leave)
Sam has led the Fair Education Alliance since 2017, coming together with Co-CEO Gina in 2019 to launch the Fair Education Alliance’s new strategy and to launch as an independent charity.
Before the FEA Sam led Strategy and Planning for Teach First, with a focus on ensuring effective delivery of Teach First’s programmes across England and Wales and new strategy development. She led the strategy for Teach First’s Leading Together programme for School Leaders.
Sam began her career at Deloitte consulting after completing the Deloitte Scholar Programme in audit. She specialised in supporting public sector and education clients. Key projects included a Higher Education sector-wide transformation for how funding and regulation was conducted after the introduction of tuition fees and a project working with Ingeus in the UK and Saudi Arabia to support adult employability and skills.
She is a member of the Board for Skills Builder Partnership and mother to one daughter.
Tisha Verma
Head of Innovation Award (on maternity leave)
Tisha brings ten years of experience in quality and fair education. She completed Teach First and was an English teacher for five years in the UK and abroad. After this, Tisha moved to global education policy and advocacy at Save the Children UK and co-led the collective action of Send My Friend to School, the UK coalition on global education inequality. Tisha’s first-hand experience of the power of internal innovation spurred her to join the Fair Education Alliance to lead the Intrapreneurship Award. Tisha has Masters degrees in International Education Policy and in Education Leadership.